{"id":24253,"date":"2019-07-11T19:12:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24253"},"modified":"2019-07-11T19:13:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:13:04","slug":"auroras-bid-for-community-better-challenge-falls-short-but-earns-high-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/auroras-bid-for-community-better-challenge-falls-short-but-earns-high-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora\u2019s bid for Community Better Challenge falls short \u2013 but earns high marks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Aurora\u2019s bid to be named Canada\u2019s Most\nActive Community \u2013 and win $150,000 for local recreation projects — may have\nfallen short to Enderby, BC, but Aurora still has some bragging rights,\naccording to Activate Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Enderby was crowned Canada\u2019s\nmost active community in ParticipACTION\u2019s Community Better Program and, along\nwith the crown, over $150K towards local physical activity initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Community Better Challenge aimed to\nget people across the country up on their feet and moving together more. Over\nthe course of May 31 to June 16, more than 265 million physical activity\nminutes were tracked across the country through the ParticipACTION app. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Enderby took home top national\nhonours, the top community in Ontario was Marathon, which received $20,000\ntowards recreation programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCongratulations to Enderby, BC and all\nthe regional winners,\u201d said Elio Antunes, President & CEO of ParticipACTION\nin a statement. \u201cThe Community Better Challenge was an amazing opportunity to\nengage all Canadians, community leaders, politicians, organizations and schools\nin physical activity and sport and show how everything gets better when you get\nactive \u2013 your sleep, your relationships and even your community. Canadians want\nto connect with others in their communities and the Challenge proved that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it proved that in Aurora too,\naccording to Activate Aurora. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora launched its bid to be named\nCanada\u2019s Most Active Community at the Aurora Family Leisure Complex last May.\nFrom the outset, the bid received the endorsement of community leaders, sports\nteams, and companies like Goodlife Fitness and 9Round. This community support\nonly grew as the weeks wore on, with Newmarket-Aurora MPP \u2013 and Deputy Premier\nof Ontario \u2013 Christine Elliott endorsing the local bid through a video recorded\nin the Aurora Community Arboretum, and with volunteers reaching tens of\nthousands of people at the Aurora Chamber Street Festival last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled with the participation and\nenthusiasm from our residents and organizations,\u201d said Rob Weese, Chair of\nActivate Aurora, in a statement. \u201cSport Aurora and Activate Aurora may have\nbeen driving the local campaign, but it really was a team effort. We would like\nto thank our schools, fitness clubs, Community Services department, local\nbusinesses and Sport Aurora members. There were many key players in this\nachievement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also knew this would also take a\n\u2018hands on\u2019 approach,\u201d added Laurie Mueller, Executive Director of Sport Aurora.\n\u201cSo, we visited our schools, clubs and other organizations, and met with those\nwho would be tracking and inputting all the activity from their classes,\nprograms and teams, and we made sure they were comfortable with the process \u2013\nright until June 16.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all, Aurorans recorded an impressive\n17,487,120 active minutes, but each total was adjusted for population size,\n\u201cgiving much smaller communities an opportunity to win\u201d according to Activate\nAurora and Sport Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe knew that, regardless of the outcome, all those who participated\ndeserved congratulations,\u201d said Mr. Weese. \u201cWhen you look at all our efforts,\nincluding the amount of community engagement and goodwill this generated with\nlocal organizations, we have a great story to tell. This is a very fitting\nconclusion to our Activate Aurora project. It has brought together our sport\nand physical activity community, demonstrated the sheer volume of activity and\nenthusiasm a Town of this size can generate, and showed how we can rally around\na common healthy purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s bid to be named Canada\u2019s Most Active Community \u2013 and win $150,000 for local recreation projects — may have fallen short to Enderby, BC, but Aurora still has some bragging rights, according to Activate Aurora.<\/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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24253","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\/p3D2k4-6jb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 09:11:00","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\/24253","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=24253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}