{"id":2542,"date":"2013-06-12T17:35:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T21:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=2542"},"modified":"2013-06-19T18:05:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T22:05:28","slug":"lbp-students-unofficially-blow-a-world-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/lbp-students-unofficially-blow-a-world-record\/","title":{"rendered":"LBP students (unofficially) blow a world record"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

They came, they chewed, they conquered \u2013 at least unofficially.<\/p>\n

Students of all ages from Lester B. Pearson Public School, their teachers, parents, and people from the surrounding school community came together on a rainy night last Thursday to attempt to set the world record for the largest number of people in one place at one time all blowing bubbles with chewing gum. <\/p>\n

As the numbers were crunched well into Thursday evening by teachers and volunteers, including Aurora Mayor Geoffrey Dawe, the numbers were released Friday and, pending a final review by the Guinness Book of World Records people, they set the record.<\/p>\n

As students and volunteers worked hard over the last few weeks getting ready for the Lester B. Spring Fair, kids throughout the building practiced their bubbles \u2013 in some cases for the very first time \u2013 in the joint effort to take Guinness by storm. <\/p>\n

They needed at least 540 people to do it, and as the soggy, dripping masses of people filed back into the school after they were observed from the roof of the building by Mayor Dawe, adjudicators, and photographers \u2013 and a camera hoisted far above the crowd by the Central York Fire Services \u2013 they came back in with a sense of accomplishment. <\/p>\n

They were led into a \u201cLBP\u201d formation on the field by marshals taking them out in groups of 50 to be double sure about the number of people taking part in the competition. As they took their places, students got in a few practice bubbles \u2013 large, deliberately small, and anything in between \u2013 for the road. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited, I\u2019ve only practiced one time and I\u2019m pretty good,\u201d said Elizabeth, getting ready to head in with her classmates, before adding with a laugh: \u201cMy friend is ashamed because he can\u2019t blow a bubble and, well, we\u2019re the cool people!\u201d
\nPiper shared her excitement. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is going to be really cool to actually try and make it into the record book,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Added Breanna: \u201cIt\u2019s a once in a lifetime opportunity to get into the Guinness World Record books.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the groups were ushered onto the mucky field, parents stood on the sidelines, covertly blowing their own bubbles in case they were drafted in at the last moment to fill out any gaps or push the numbers over the top, including Malcolm, whose daughter Alex is in Grade 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [the value of this] is to have fun, be with their friends, and show their school spirit,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they do set the record, my daughter is going to be pretty proud and have a story to tell her grandparents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waiting for the moment of truth, Principal Arin Otis stood on a bench at the front of the formation, as a t-shirt cannon was loaded to fire some much needed dry garments into the crowd for when it was all over. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been one of the best picnics,\u201d said parent Louise Dyer as the ballots were counted and participants dried off in the school\u2019s corridors. \u201cEven though we\u2019ve had one of the worst weathers, we have been coming to this school for nine years now and this is the second time it has rained this badly, but it has been one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how the view was from up top looking down at the record beaters, Mayor Dawe took some time before heading into help make the tabulation.
\n\u201cI think everybody is crazy!\u201d he said of the people he saw from above with a chuckle. \u201cThis is obviously a very good school community.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They came, they chewed, they conquered \u2013 at least unofficially.<\/p>\n

Students of all ages from Lester B. Pearson Public School, their teachers, parents, and people from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2503,"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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/2013-06-12-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-F0","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 11:47:22","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\/2542","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=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}