{"id":16780,"date":"2017-03-15T18:09:40","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T22:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16780"},"modified":"2017-03-15T18:09:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T22:09:40","slug":"exhibition-salutes-the-family-side-of-two-community-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/exhibition-salutes-the-family-side-of-two-community-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition salutes the family side of two community leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever passed by Ada Johnson Park or strolled through the Norm Johnson Hall of Education at the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame and wanted to know more about these familiar names behind the landmarks?
\nNow is your chance to do just that at the Aurora Cultural Centre as Ada and Norm\u2019s grandson Bruce Johnson and granddaughter-in-law Lisa piece together artefacts from their family\u2019s history to tell a very Aurora story.
\nChances are, you already know a bit of the story. If you\u2019re an Aurora graduate of a certain age, you might have had Norm as your high school principal or coach. If you came to Aurora as a new Canadian, you might have met Ada in your ESL program. Or, if you\u2019re on the younger end of the spectrum, you might have known Ada as Aurora\u2019s longest-ever resident, who died in April 2013 just a few months shy of her 110th birthday.
\nBut there is much more to the story, Bruce and Lisa attest.
\n\u201cAda grew up here and was very active in the community,\u201d says Bruce of his grandmother, who arrived in Aurora as an infant, moving to her grandfather\u2019s farm upon the death of her father, which stood just north of Yonge and Wellington. \u201cShe had 110 Christmases, and 109 of them were in Aurora, all within a 1 km radius because she lived on her Grandfather Robson\u2019s farm, moved onto Connaught Street when she married, and after Connaught Street at the age of 99, she moved into Park Place Manor. It is an incredible story to have spent that much time in one community. I know she loved it, and it is nice to have the opportunity to show the history of Aurora\u2019s longest-living citizen.\u201d
\nAlthough he didn\u2019t live to as grand an age as his wife, Norm Johnson left a significant impact on the community. Graduating from the University of Toronto with an engineering degree, he found he could only get a job at about 75 cents an hour. Jobs that could be had after a stint at teacher\u2019s college seemed to be the more lucrative option and he went down that road.
\nAfter receiving his teaching degree, he had three options, says Bruce, but chose a position at the former Aurora High School \u2013 now Williams \u2013 when it was on Wells Street because it was close to his home in Snowball and closer to his sweetheart in Aurora.
\nA veteran of both the First and Second World Wars, he was also a varsity athlete, skills which served him well as he took on coaching duties for various sports teams at the local high school, where he served as principal for five years.
\n\u201cHe gave a lot more back than he ever took out of the community, and I think he is one of the great founders of this community,\u201d says Bruce.
\nTogether, they were a dynamic duo, becoming active members of the community and providing a safe harbour for what would now be described as \u201cat risk\u201d youth who attended the high school.
\nIt was with a great deal of pride that Bruce and Lisa embarked on this journey through their own family history in putting together this exhibition, which runs through the end of the month. They already had a good baseline from a small book Ada wrote for her family at the age of 99 sharing her memories of what it was like to grow up in Aurora.
\nShe told of Aurora\u2019s dirt roads, its boardwalk sidewalks, and being able to walk her cow down Yonge Street and tying it up at Tannery Creek for the day while she ran home to do her chores.
\nIt also gave Bruce the opportunity to marvel at how interconnected the paternal and maternal sides of his family are.
\nCase in point, Ada planned to give birth to her son Dave \u2013 Bruce\u2019s father \u2013 at home. They had all the birthing linens ready to go, but Dave was in breach position and had to be delivered at the hospital. The unused linens were leant to the Knowles family and were ultimately used in the birth of David\u2019s mother \u2013 and the father of this young girl was ultimately the man Norm Johnson succeeded as principal.
\n\u201cMy parents basically knew each other from birth, but going through public school they pretended they hated each other,\u201d says Bruce with a laugh. \u201cEventually when my father was in university, he needed a nice girl to take to a concert that was being held at Eaton Hall. He asked my mother and they were sweethearts from then on.\u201d
\nAnd thus, Bruce is here \u2013 along with Lisa, who now gives back to Ada\u2019s long-time home as an active volunteer at Park Place Manor \u2013 to tell the tale.
\n\u201cMy favourite Ada Johnson saying came when she would try to convince us to have an extra piece of pie for dessert and she would say, \u2018It\u2019s a poor skin that won\u2019t stretch a bit,\u2019\u201d says Bruce.
\nAdds Lisa: \u201cWhenever you would step inside that house on Connaught, it just had this calming influence. Whenever I was down, I would visit her and I would always come away feeling great.\u201d
\n\u201cWhenever something important in life was happening, whether it was a test at school or something important for work, she would say, \u2018Give me a call and I will concentrate for you.\u2019 She would send her prayers and positive vibes towards you. A lot of people in this world have done better in life because of Ada\u2019s concentration and positive vibes.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever passed by Ada Johnson Park or strolled through the Norm Johnson Hall of Education at the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame and wanted to know more about these familiar names behind the landmarks?
\nNow is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/2017-03-16-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4mE","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 07:43:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}