{"id":34495,"date":"2024-04-18T16:48:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T20:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34495"},"modified":"2024-04-18T16:48:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T20:48:30","slug":"museum-exhibition-shines-light-on-aurora-disasters-and-resilience-to-come-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/museum-exhibition-shines-light-on-aurora-disasters-and-resilience-to-come-through\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum exhibition shines light on Aurora \u201cdisasters\u201d and resilience to come through"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month, the skeleton of the first of Aurora United Church\u2019s two new steeples is set to be hoisted into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design of the new steeples echoes those that were part of the landmark downtown Aurora landmark for generations that were felled first by wind and, ultimately, fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s emblematic of how wind, fire and water have impacted the shape of Aurora and have been the make or break of local landmarks, and this is the focus of a new exhibition staged by the Aurora Museum and Archives at the Royal Rose Gallery, just steps away from the Aurora United Church site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest exhibition to be showcased at the Royal Rose Gallery uses primary documents and photographs to chart how Aurora dealt with severe weather and disasters both natural and man-made beginning in 1893 when a tornado \u2013 then thought to be a cyclone \u2013 swept through the downtown core, damaging both the church and the site of Aurora\u2019s first Town Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up is a 1924 explosion at a match factory once located between Berczy Street and the present GO rail line, which took place just before Christmas that year, claiming the life of the factory manager and seriously injuring another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnly those two people \u2013 which is unbelievable for an explosion in a residential zone,\u201d says Jeremy Hood, Museum Assistant at the Aurora Museum & Archive. \u201cIt\u2019s so compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward a couple of decades and exhibition-goers can see documents from a significant flood in 1946, followed in 1965 by a fire that destroyed Aurora\u2019s then-sole ice arena, sparked by a lit cigarette just days before Maurice \u201cThe Rocket\u201d Richard was due to visit. The site of the arena, just north of Chartwell Park Place on Yonge Street, remains vacant in a testament to what was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next in the timeline is another fire in Aurora\u2019s downtown core in April 1972 when Textile Bargain Centre, a very narrow standalone building, was destroyed \u2013 making way for the staircase which now connects shops, restaurants and businesses on Yonge Street to parking on Temperance Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then \u2013 the Aurora United Church fire almost exactly 39 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are fascinating moments in Aurora\u2019s history,\u201d says Hood, noting that part of the exhibition was previously curated virtually on their site and through their On The Spot app. \u201cElements of this may appear in our grand exhibit that we\u2019re planning for Aurora Town Square in our large-scale exhibit and cases, but we haven\u2019t decided what is going to go into that just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These instances, he adds, are examples of Aurora\u2019s resilience as a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe use the Aurora United Church as the most recent example,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were able to go through that impossibility that happened to them and they\u2019re still going strong, operating 10 years later out of a temporary location and eager to get back. They didn\u2019t falter in all that time. I know a lot of military history, and you can\u2019t really destroy people\u2019s morale that easily. I think people are very much willing to come together and help each other out and see themselves through these problems and know that things are just temporary regardless of how bad things seem in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou see the beams sticking out from a smoking ruin or people knee-deep in floodwaters, but it recedes and it gets rebuilt \u2013 and for Aurora, pushing 200 years here, very few buildings of that original era survive, but we are doing our best and the more we respect that history, the more we can preserve it, remember it, and honour that resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

This month, the skeleton of the first of Aurora United Church\u2019s two new steeples is set to be hoisted into place. The design of the new steeples echoes those that were part of the landmark downtown Aurora landmark for generations that were felled first by wind and, ultimately, fire. It\u2019s emblematic of how wind, fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34496,"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-34495","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\/2024\/04\/2024-04-18-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8Yn","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 10:07:22","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\/34495","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=34495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}