{"id":26882,"date":"2020-07-02T19:18:35","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26882"},"modified":"2020-07-09T19:55:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T23:55:07","slug":"sportscaster-joins-forces-with-museum-to-share-story-of-canadas-birthday-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/sportscaster-joins-forces-with-museum-to-share-story-of-canadas-birthday-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Sportscaster joins forces with Museum to share story of Canada\u2019s Birthday Town"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Canada Day is usually one spent on the road for\nsportscaster James Duthie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A resident of Aurora for more than a decade, the TSN\nanchor is often in studio as Canada\u2019s birthday falls on the NHL\u2019s first day of\nfree agency and is rarely able to return home in time other than to pick up his\nkids from Canada Day fireworks at Lambert Willson Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, as Canada Day approached this year, Mr. Duthie was\nlooking forward to a new kind of holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a chance to make new memories at home with his\nfamily \u2013 including a new French bulldog puppy \u2013 as well as a chance to use his\ntalents to share how his adopted hometown became known as \u201cCanada\u2019s Birthday\nTown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To coincide with Canada Day, the Aurora Museum &\nArchives launched a new website to help Aurorans celebrate the special day in a\nnew way. Expanding on an online exhibition and short film from 2017 which\ncharted how Aurora earned the patriotic title, the museum took their raw\nmaterials and brought on Mountain Goat Film Company to re-interpret the\nexhibition in a fresh way \u2013 in a story told by a new voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step was enlisting a voice that was both fresh\nand familiar \u2013 and local. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I was asked to narrate this film, I couldn\u2019t pass\nup the chance to not only learn the history of how Aurora became Canada\u2019s\nBirthday Town, but also bring the story to life,\u201d said Duthie. \u201cI was surprised\nto learn how Aurora was ahead of its time celebrating Canada Day on July 1 and\nafter seeing the film I can honestly say that this community has earned the\ntitle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good timing also played a part in the collaboration, he\nadded with a chuckle: \u201cWith the pandemic and the fact I am a sportscaster with\nno sports!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am not from Aurora in the sense that I moved around\nthe country a lot and just moved here 10 years ago, but it has really become my\nhome,\u201d he told The Auroran. \u201cIt is where I have raised my kids, so there is\ndefinitely a real sense of home here and putting down roots, so anything I can\ndo to get involved with my community, I\u2019m there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is indeed the case. For the last several years, with\na few exceptions due to prior work commitments, Mr. Duthie has served as the\nemcee for the annual induction ceremony for the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame, an\nevent that was put on ice for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is through his work with the Aurora Sports Hall of\nFame that the Aurora Museum & Archives connected with the host.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis opportunity sounded really neat,\u201d he explained.\n\u201cSelfishly, I suppose it is cool to have your voice on something that is in the\narchives of what I now consider my hometown. I had heard this \u2018Canada\u2019s\nBirthday Town\u2019 thing before, in passing a few times over my ten years, but,\nfrankly, I never knew what anybody was talking about! But, as a journalist, we\nget into this business because of our curiosity to learn things and I just\nfound it was a really interesting story that a bunch of residents on Richardson\nDrive just came up with the idea of having a party. From there, I guess you can\ntrace all the Canada Day festivities across the country, which I think is a\npretty cool story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Mr. Duthie looked forward to spending his first full\nCanada Day at home with his family in many years, he said he hoped residents\nwho take the time to visit canadasbirthdaytown.ca to watch the documentary take\nnew stock in the place they call home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope for the people of Aurora it is a source of pride\nand also nostalgia,\u201d he said. \u201cFor a lot of long-time residents, I hope it does\nconjure up a lot of memories and I am also hopeful that people outside Aurora\nget to see the story and recognize [where it started].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanada Day has always been one of my favourites. I used to live in Ottawa and it was my favourite day of the year when in my teens and twenties because we would go down to Parliament Hill and it was just such a massive party. To think that the origins of Canada Day festivities started on a street in Aurora I think is pretty cool. I am really hopeful that people across the country somehow get to see the video and realize it all started here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Canada Day is usually one spent on the road for sportscaster James Duthie. A resident of Aurora for more than a decade, the TSN anchor is often in studio as Canada\u2019s birthday falls on the NHL\u2019s first day of free agency and is rarely able to return home in time other than to pick up […]<\/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-26882","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\/p3D2k4-6ZA","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 07:12:46","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\/26882","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=26882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}