{"id":36487,"date":"2025-06-26T18:10:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36487"},"modified":"2025-06-26T18:10:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:10:51","slug":"fleury-street-gathers-for-historic-party-and-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/fleury-street-gathers-for-historic-party-and-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleury Street gathers for \u201chistoric\u201d party and recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Each year, as the summer approaches, residents of Fleury Street gather for their annual street party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s always a chance to catch up with neighbours and have some fun before summer holidays get underway, but this year\u2019s party was extra-special as it featured the unveiling of a historic plaque marking 48 Fleury Street \u2013 and helping to do the honours was Aurora\u2019s official Town Crier, John Webster, whose family once called the dwelling home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Webster\u2019s grandfather, Donald (Dan) Webster, a notable local school trustee, made the house a home for many years and, today, it\u2019s known as the Scott-Webster house, sharing recognition with the building\u2019s first owner, Walter Scott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also on hand for the ceremony was local historian Jacqueline Stuart, whose research helped make the case on why the house, which lies within the Town\u2019s only Heritage Conservation District, was deserving of a little extra recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually one of those cases where the house itself is not particularly distinctive, but is one of \u2013 actually, in this case, a block full of homes all much of the same period from the nineteen-teens and somewhat similar styles,\u201d Stuart explains. \u201cIf you change just one of them \u2013 if you took down #48 and made it into a fake French chateau, it\u2019s really going to spoil the look of the street. It\u2019s going to upset it. This keeps the flavour of the street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She describes it as an example of a \u201cpleasant house\u201d for Aurorans with \u201ccomfortable incomes\u201d according to the era, not necessarily \u201chugely wealthy people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a couple of values [of the house] \u2013 one is the context. There is kind of a flavour to that street and you don\u2019t want to put it at risk by changing one of the houses hugely or something like that,\u201d Stuart continues. \u201cThe other value is generally known as \u2018associative value\u2019 if it is associated with a particular industry [for example], but it is usually a person. This Donald Webster \u2013 or Dan Webster, as he was confusingly known \u2013 was very well-known in the community, lived here forever, but he was on the school board for 30 years and continued to Aurora in that way for a long time \u2013 and in lots of other ways, too, I\u2019m sure. That was a particular distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designations like these help preserve \u201ccontext\u201d in Aurora, she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, I would put a huge glass dome over Aurora and not change anything \u2013 old, new, whatever, let\u2019s just keep it exactly what it is \u2013 however, that is not going to happen, and of course, it shouldn\u2019t,\u201d says Stuart with a laugh. \u201cYou have to have places for people to live, a huge problem these days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She says she\u2019s glad homes in the Fleury Street area are part of the Heritage Conservation District, but says more can be done to preserve the community\u2019s architectural flavour in years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFleury Street is in a special area and after that district was established, quite a few people in Southeast Old Aurora, south of Wellington, east of Yonge Street, wanted to establish a Southeast Old Aurora Heritage Conservation District,\u201d says Stuart of streets in and around the Town Park area. \u201cThat [idea] went quite a distance down the road, but it was eventually rejected, I suspect, because of a certain amount of \u2013 I\u2019m never sure whether it\u2019s misinformation, disinformation, or just gossip; who knows, but word got out that, \u2018If your property is in an area like that, you\u2019ll never sell it because\u2019 because there are restrictions around changes to your house \u2013 but they\u2019re not humungous restrictions, really, but there are some. People who lived in the proposed new district began objecting to its designation because they were fearful of whatever would happen to their own properties if they decided to alter them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was disappointed that that southeast area did not achieve overall designation because, again, there’s streets, parts of streets and so on that have a particular aura, if you like, that I think is worth preserving. It seems to me now every couple of months you drive down the street and see another house has been demolished and has been replaced by a giant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Each year, as the summer approaches, residents of Fleury Street gather for their annual street party. It\u2019s always a chance to catch up with neighbours and have some fun before summer holidays get underway, but this year\u2019s party was extra-special as it featured the unveiling of a historic plaque marking 48 Fleury Street \u2013 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36488,"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-36487","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\/2025\/06\/2025-06-26-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9uv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 13:47:24","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\/36487","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=36487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36489,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36487\/revisions\/36489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}