{"id":16791,"date":"2017-03-15T18:14:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T22:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16791"},"modified":"2017-03-15T18:14:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T22:14:29","slug":"inside-aurora-birthday-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-birthday-town\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: Birthday Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Brock suggested in his column last week, the Town has been a bit tardy in preparing for Canada\u2019s upcoming 150th birthday.
\nWe have lots of ideas: a military tattoo, an indigenous peoples ceremony, fireworks, a big parade, repainting the mural at Yonge and Wellington to depict former Town councillors.
\nOkay, so maybe that last one hasn\u2019t been raised yet. But there are many suggestions.
\nIn fact, we could literally have anything money could buy. If only we\u2019d thought to set aside money to pay for any of this, instead of going to the Federal government at the last minute along with hundreds of other municipalities with a cup with \u201cplease give\u201d scrawled on it.
\nIn any case, despite much discussion, with time running out to get things lined up, there\u2019s a bit of a scramble.
\nThis shouldn\u2019t really come as a big surprise. After all, Aurora is well known as the Procrastination Capital of Canada. I\u2019m sure that wording will be added to the signs on our borders… when they get around to it.
\nThere have been a number of examples over the years of the Town\u2019s aversion to prompt decision making.
\nLibrary Square? Discussions have only been underway since the last century. But we\u2019re almost to a decision. Definitely before the twenty-second century.
\nYonge Street redevelopment? Another one that dates back to the late 1900s. Sadly, adding a few planters and banners has done little so slow the exodus of businesses to Bayview.
\nPetch House? It took over a decade to agree on where and how to rebuild it. Unfortunately, the decision didn\u2019t include the most important part: what to do with it. Give us another ten years and we\u2019re bound it figure out a permanent use for it. Well, twenty years, tops.
\nWhich got me thinking, based on our Town\u2019s aversion to making decisions at a rate any faster than glacial speed, we really need to start thinking now about what to do for Canada\u2019s 175th birthday.
\nSo to get things rolling, here are a few ideas for our demisemiseptcentennial.
\nNothing says \u201cbirthday\u201d like a \u201cparty.\u201d We could hold it on Yonge Street. Since there will probably be no businesses left along there by then, traffic should be minimally impacted.
\nIn fact, we may not even need to formally close the road. Just like we did when we were kids playing street hockey, participating bands, vendors and party goers could just yell \u201ccar!\u201d every ten minutes when a lone vehicle passes through.
\nIf cash is a problem when it comes time to celebrate our 175th, we could always go with the less expensive option of renaming something. For example, Diamond Jubilee Park used to be called Civic Square Park.
\nIt doesn\u2019t even have to be a location with a formal name. After all, Municipal Way was once just the Town Hall parking lot.
\nBut if there is funding (and yes, we should start saving now), an obvious idea is a memorial project.
\nIn 1967 for Canada\u2019s 100th birthday, we built a library. This year for our 150th, we\u2019ll tear it down as part of the Library Square redevelopment (I know; you can\u2019t make this stuff up, and I guess we\u2019d better think of a more appropriate name for \u201cLibrary Square\u201d).
\nTo maintain this tradition, in 2042 it\u2019s likely that we\u2019ll be planning to bulldoze whatever we put up this year. So we might as well start thinking of something appropriate to replace it. Perhaps a Memorial to Procrastination.
\nEven that we should be able to pull together in time, but we will need to start planning now, or else it\u2019ll have to go on the bicentennial anniversary idea list.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: machellscorners@gmail.com
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By Scott Johnston As Brock suggested in his column last week, the Town has been a bit tardy in preparing for Canada\u2019s upcoming 150th birthday. We have lots of ideas: a military tattoo, an indigenous peoples ceremony, fireworks, a big parade, repainting the mural at Yonge and Wellington to depict former Town councillors. Okay, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4mP","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 08:39:37","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\/16791","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=16791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}