{"id":26813,"date":"2020-06-18T19:26:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T23:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26813"},"modified":"2020-06-18T19:26:47","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T23:26:47","slug":"canadas-birthday-town-celebrated-in-video-exhibition-just-in-time-for-canada-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/canadas-birthday-town-celebrated-in-video-exhibition-just-in-time-for-canada-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s Birthday Town celebrated in video exhibition just in time for Canada Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019re ever in doubt about the power of community,\nconsider the origin of Aurora\u2019s nickname \u201cCanada\u2019s Birthday Town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started with a simple street party on Richardson Drive\nand grew into so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, building on an exhibition from 2017, the story of\nhow Aurora earned this patriotic reputation is the subject of a new video\nproduced by the Aurora Museum and Archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur 2017 exhibition told the story of how that\ndesignation came to be, how celebrations were formatted, and explored the\nheyday of the celebrations from the 1960s \u2013 1980s,\u201d says Michelle Johnson of\nthe Aurora Museum & Archives. \u201cUnderstanding that this year\u2019s celebrations\nfor Canada Day will have to be virtual, we thought this was a great time to\nre-format the exhibition to tell the story in a new way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Museum knew just where to turn for a professional\nassist. Building on their recent award-winning collaboration charting the community\u2019s\nties to the Queen\u2019s York Rangers regiment, the Museum enlisted the Mountain\nGoat Film Company to bring this story back to life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora was on the cutting edge of celebrating Canada\nDay, so this is a story that deserves to be told far beyond a physical\nexhibition,\u201d explains Ms. Johnson. \u201cAurora being Canada\u2019s Birthday Town really\ncame from a group of residents on Richardson Drive who wanted to have a party\non July 1 when no other municipalities were necessarily doing so, and Aurora\nwasn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack in 1967 \u2013 1968 they threw a party to celebrate\nCanada and that led to a proclamation in 1969. This story really showcases the\ncommunity spirit that existed on Richardson Drive and emphasizes how ahead of\nthe times Aurora was. Then, people knew it as Dominion Day and it wasn\u2019t until\n1982 when it became known as Canada Day and municipalities started having their\nown celebrations. People came and gathered in Aurora for these celebrations for\ndecades before their own municipalities held events.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these early celebrations must have been sights to\nbehold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a bed race, for instance, that took place\nbetween the Council members of Aurora and Newmarket. Each team was challenged\nto furnish a racing mattress for the occasion. Other activities included a\n\u201cgreasy pole\u201d contest, a balloon race, community races and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unique souvenirs were also produced proclaiming Aurora\u2019s\ncelebratory spirit and the Canada\u2019s Birthday Town logo is still familiar to\nlong-time residents \u2013 as well as to anyone who has come out to Lambert Willson\nPark in recent years for the Town\u2019s annual Canada Day bash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, those celebrations are now on hold until July\n1, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but this timely video reminder will\nlaunch on the museum\u2019s website (auroramuseum.ca) to help fill the celebratory\nvoid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs people are gathering and social distancing in smaller\ngroups and smaller numbers this year, I hope they can take pride that this\ncelebration is a major part of Aurora\u2019s history and whether you\u2019ve celebrated\nin crowds of thousands in previous years or celebrating with just your family\nin your own back yard in your own little way, it is really engrained into\nAurora\u2019s spirit to take pause and just really celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Museum would also like to remind you to pause before\nthrowing out any of your Canada Day decorations or window displays \u2013 or even\nbefore deleting any celebratory photos from your iPhone. We\u2019re living through a\nhistoric time right now and the Museum wants to know how you\u2019re celebrating the\noccasion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are actively trying to collect and capture the\nexperiences of Aurorans during COVID-19,\u201d says Ms. Johnson. \u201cIf people are\nmaking window decorations, those are the things we are interested in. If you\nshoot a video on your phone of your family sitting around the barbecue or\nquestioning your family members on what Canada Day means to them and recording\nit, those are all things we would love to have in our collections to tell the\nstory of how Canada\u2019s Birthday Town still celebrated Canada\u2019s birthday while\npaying attention to social distancing and social isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think now more than ever it is important for Aurorans to do something special on that day a little bit out of the ordinary, to do something to celebrate because part of the Aurora legacy is celebrating Canada Day. However Aurorans choose to celebrate, whether it is a jam session on your porch or a video, it can really say a lot about the kind of times we\u2019re in and the Aurora experience during COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re ever in doubt about the power of community, consider the origin of Aurora\u2019s nickname \u201cCanada\u2019s Birthday Town.\u201d It started with a simple street party on Richardson Drive and grew into so much more. Now, building on an exhibition from 2017, the story of how Aurora earned this patriotic reputation is the subject of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26814,"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-26813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2020-06-18-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Yt","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 16:08:16","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\/26813","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=26813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}