{"id":21033,"date":"2018-06-28T10:30:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T14:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21033"},"modified":"2018-06-28T10:30:50","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T14:30:50","slug":"time-travellers-diary-canadas-birthday-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/time-travellers-diary-canadas-birthday-town\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME TRAVELLER’S DIARY: Canada’s Birthday Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may have heard that Aurora is Canada\u2019s Birthday Town, but do you know how that came to be? Let\u2019s travel back to 1967\u2026
\nMomentum from Canada\u2019s Centennial celebrations was building across the country and the very successful Montreal Expo ignited a patriotic fever that was sweeping the nation.
\nIn Aurora, Canada\u2019s centennial celebrations consisted of a four-day program of events. The theme was \u201cMarch on Centennial Fun\u201d and was inspired by the main Saturday event \u2013 a re-enactment of the 1837 Lloydtown March. What might be surprising for today\u2019s reader is that this took place during the middle of June, not July 1st. At the time, July 1st was just a regular day without fan fair and jovial festivities. Enter the residents of Aurora\u2019s Richardson Drive who had their own ideas about how to celebrate Canada\u2019s Centennial.
\nA few days before July 1st, residents of Richardson Drive formed a committee, headed by Norm Stewart, and arranged an evening full of activities that would celebrate Canada\u2019s birthday \u2013 on the actual day. The festivities began at 7 p.m. with a children\u2019s costume parade and races. Almost every home on the street was decorated with Christmas lights or Centennial themed displays. The street party was repeated the following year and by 1969 the whole town wanted to participate in celebrating July 1st!
\nOn June 9, 1969, Town Council approved a proclamation that declared Aurora as Canada\u2019s Birthday Town. Soon after a by-law was passed ordering stores to close on July 1st. Approximately 15,000 people attended the inaugural two-day celebration, which was praised by surrounding communities and featured in the evening edition of the CBC news broadcast. The celebration featured fireworks, firefighter competitions, a parade, races, a beer garden as well as a performance from Bobby Gimby \u2013 who happened to arrive by helicopter.
\nIt might be hard to believe, but Aurora was very ahead of its time in celebrating July 1st. At the time it was not normal for a municipality to make a holiday out of Canada\u2019s birthday. Year after year, both residents and people from out of town flocked to Aurora Canada\u2019s Birthday Town to celebrate July 1st. Each year a new commemorative mug\/stein was produced and handed out with admission to the beer garden \u2013 I\u2019m sure a few of our readers have one or two tucked away in their kitchen cupboards.
\nOf course, Aurora\u2019s celebration inspired patriotism along with local and national pride. It also prompted a more unexpected outcome as Ron Wallace recalls, \u201cJuly 1st joined Aurora, because prior to that, Aurora was three towns, the North End, the South End, and the Old Town\u201d (Aurora Banner, June 25, 1975).
\nIn 1982 July 1st was re-named Canada Day and municipalities were encouraged to plan their own local festivities to celebrate the country. I\u2019m sure that these other celebrations were fantastic, but as great as they were, I\u2019m equality positive that none could compare to those first years when Aurora celebrated the day under the banner of Canada\u2019s Birthday Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Johnson You may have heard that Aurora is Canada\u2019s Birthday Town, but do you know how that came to be? Let\u2019s travel back to 1967\u2026 Momentum from Canada\u2019s Centennial celebrations was building across the country and the very successful Montreal Expo ignited a patriotic fever that was sweeping the nation. In Aurora, Canada\u2019s […]<\/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-21033","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\/p3D2k4-5tf","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 20:17:39","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\/21033","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=21033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}