{"id":17686,"date":"2017-06-28T17:41:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T21:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17686"},"modified":"2017-06-28T17:41:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T21:41:28","slug":"aurora-gears-up-for-canada-150-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-gears-up-for-canada-150-celebrations\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora gears up for Canada 150 Celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Cakes are being made, parade-marchers are practicing their paces, and national and community bands are polishing up their brass \u2013 Aurora\u2019s Canada Day Celebrations are just around the corner.
\nThis year, as the nation marks 150 years since Confederation, organizers say the pressure is on to make this year\u2019s festivities extra special, beginning with, as tradition dictates, the Canada Day Parade.
\nFor the second year running, the Canada Day Parade will feature a shortened route, beginning at Mosley Street in the north, running south on Yonge Street to Murray Drive.
\nIt will showcase colourful floats, community organizations, children\u2019s groups, and marching bands.
\n\u201cEverything is framed in the Canadian context,\u201d says Shelley Ware, Special Events Coordinator for the Town of Aurora, if this year\u2019s extra \u201cinfusion\u201d of Canadian pride. \u201cThe parade has a very strong multicultural theme to it. We have many different cultures represented with their performances, including Mexican dancers in full Mexican costume, a flare of colours from a variety of colours infusing the traditional marching bands, and we have also increase the size of the Governor General\u2019s Horse Guards\u2019 presence this year.\u201d
\nFollowing the end of the parade at 11 a.m., the party shifts once again to Lambert Willson Park for celebrations through 10 p.m.
\nThe festivities begin with a free pancake breakfast from the Optimist Club of Aurora, while quantities last, a ceremonial cake cutting led by Mayor Geoff Dawe, Citizen of the Year Peter Van Schaik, Members of Council, and leaders from Aurora\u2019s \u201ctwin\u201d, Leksand, Sweden.
\nThe first half of the celebrations in the park will also include performances from the Aurora Community Band, which will debut a new original composition, a Birds of Prey show featuring Canadian wildlife, and Canadian musicians throughout the day.
\n\u201cAfter the Birds of Prey visual performance, we will be moving into Blue Radio, a tribute to Blue Rodeo, and we will also have one of our local bands, called The Chums, perform,\u201d says Ms. Ware. \u201cThen we will have our annual Aurora Teen Idol competition before capping the event off with The Wheat Kings, a tribute to The Tragically Hip, before a really dynamic fireworks display.\u201d
\nMs. Ware is hoping the torrential downpours experienced this week will have cleared well in advance of the Canada Day Party, particularly for the Fireworks Display.
\n\u201cThere is probably more pressure to want to get it right and to ensure that we\u2019re trying all things from all angles, and also hoping that we are meeting the expectations within the community,\u201d says Ms. Ware of the extra-special Canada Day. \u201cThe whole Canada 150 theme is a very easy theme to work with because our history is very vast, very diverse and very rich, so it is easy to pull elements from to celebrate which we have been able to infuse throughout all of our events to date and those being executed this summer onwards to the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Cakes are being made, parade-marchers are practicing their paces, and national and community bands are polishing up their brass \u2013 Aurora\u2019s Canada Day Celebrations are just around the corner. This year, as the nation marks 150 years since Confederation, organizers say the pressure is on to make this year\u2019s festivities extra special, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4Bg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 01:17:07","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\/17686","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=17686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}