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Stoney Creek’s Canada Flag Day Festival takes place along King Street in Olde Towne Stoney Creek in late spring every year. A volunteer committee of festival organizers work for months to bring together a number of community events to make this a worthwhile event for celebrating Canada, our flag, and our community. Bobby Gimby, creator of the "CA-NA-DA" tune, led the first parade. BACKGROUND The national flag of Canada came into being due to the effort of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, who wanted a distinctive national flag as a vehicle to promote national unity; John Matheson, who established the conceptual framework for a suitable flag, then sought out and combined the appropriate components to create it; and Dr. George Stanley, who provided the seminal concept - the central concepts of red-white-red stripes with a central maple leaf. It flew for the first time from the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in February 1965. The following year Canada entertained the world with Expo ‘67 in Montreal, and the whole country celebrated our centennial with a variety of community events. Following the highly successful events carried on in the
Stoney Creek community to mark the centennial of Canada, a group of local
politicians and citizens expressed a desire to keep alive the community
activities that had been part of the 1967 Canada Centennial
celebrations. One of the projects was
a festival held in Winona Park that has carried on and grown into the highly
successful Winona Peach Festival that attracts approximately 250,000 people
each year. To provide a focus for other
activities, the idea arose to celebrate the Canadian Flag by holding an
annual parade and festival. It was
also considered reasonable to promote this idea across Canada and that
perhaps it could become nationally recognized. Thus was born the Stoney Creek Canada Flag
Day. FLAG
DAY PARADE The first parade in 1969 featured
Dr. George Stanley. Twenty years
later, he returned to help the community celebrate what was then a
well-established annual Canadian flag festival. As a tribute to Dr. Stanley,
the community commissioned Elizabeth Holbrook to sculpt his bust, and a
bronze casting of her fine piece was formally installed in the foyer of the
splendid new city hall on that occasion.
Along with George Stanley in the first parade, was Bobby Gimby leading
local children in the singing of CA-NA-DA. (The Centennial song came about following a
suggestion by John Fisher who was known as Mr. Canada and who had been
appointed Centennial Year commissioner. Following John Fisher's suggestion
that he write a song for the occasion, Bobby was inspired by children
marching in a St. Jean Baptiste Day parade in Quebec. He soon became famous
as the media followed him across Canada dressed in a cape and using a jeweled
but battered trumpet, tracked by singing children wherever he went. He was called
Canada's Pied Piper. Towards the end of Centennial year, Bobby turned over
future royalties from the song to the Boy Scouts of Canada). A week of community
festivities and activities took place, culminating on the second weekend of
June with street dances, sales, bed races, a soapbox derby and finally a
giant parade celebrating the community, Canada and our national flag. The
event proved so successful that it became an annual tradition in Stoney Creek. Some of the activities during the week have included the involvement of the local Legion with a $1.99 beauty contest, a steak dinner, and street dances. The Church of the Redeemer held a strawberry social on the lawn of the church in the downtown area and in recent years, Pancake breakfasts. Stoney Creek Dairy sponsored a car show in the 1980s, an event that has now been taken up by the Stoney Creek BIA. Other community organizations and groups planned similar events at various locations. A lobster dinner was held at the Saltfleet arena in the 1980s. “Blupper Baseball” was held for several years in Community Park and in the 1990's the Corporate Challenge played a prominent part in uniting other parts of Stoney Creek with the Olde Towne core. Bed races, dances, and team events were held in Mount Albion (Satellite City) and Fruitland. In the 2000s, a musical stage was erected and activities took place at the Olde Towne Square, beside the fountain and statue of Augustus Jones. In recent years, the focus has returned to the core event: the parade, as well as some street activities like musical performances, food vendors, crafters, and community events (BBQs, teas, garage sales, etc.) .
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