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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-06-19, Page 7THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2008. PAGE 7. And so it begins The next phase of the Elizabeth Street construction in Brussels got underway last week. The project addresses storm water issues located in a 1992 report. The plan is to upsize the system and replace some watermains. (Bonnie Gropp photo) Doors Open 2008 is uniting all of Huron County in what its organizers hope to be its most successful Doors Open event ever. While Doors Open, with Huron County’s love of heritage and history, has always been a popular event throughout the municipalities, this will mark the first time all nine have joined forces for one big event. Doors Open Haunted Huron, as it’s being called, marks a provincial first as well. Rick Sickinger, a co- ordinator with the local heritage and culture partnership, says this is the first time in the province a community has united all of its municipalities in a theme. Sickinger says the idea came out of a brainstorming session where the objective was attracting tourism and keeping people in Huron County overnight. “The challenge of an event like this has always been the traditional Huron County challenge: big geographically, small population. It’s the geographic distance between the communities that’s the challenge. We felt we could make this work for us in having this Haunted Huron event and creating a weekend with lots of programming,” Sickinger said. “We thought we could keep visitors here this way. With that distance, there’s no way someone could visit Exeter and Wingham in the same day, for example. Using the distance to our advantage is to help keep people here overnight so they can do half the county on Saturday and the other half on Sunday. If we keep them entertained Saturday night and Sunday morning, it’ll work because of the auxiliary programming.” The organizers were looking to hold a county-wide event in October and it was as easy as looking at a calendar. Before they got too far, Sickinger says, they began to realize that so many locations they were including anyway had ghost stories attached to them. After they had decided to hold the event in October, it all just seemed to fall into place. “Whether it’s true or not, if it’s over 100 years old, there’s usually a ghost story attached to it,” he said. Sickinger says that he finds the stories interesting because of the personalities attached to them. So much of Doors Open is focused on architecture, he says, but it’s the people that visitors and residents will relate to. “I found the ghost stories interesting as local folklore. It’s more than just talking about the building, you’re talking about the people who lived there and I think that’s more interesting because there’s more of a narrative,” he said. About 10 of the sites throughout the county are going to have costumed interpreters. “So we will have people in costume playing the occupant of that building or a historical person of note from the area. We thought this would be a good way to show more of a human side of the building,” he said. For this Doors Open event, residents will notice many of the usual suspects on the list, like the Van Egmond House, the Huron Historic Gaol, The Albion Hotel, etc. Many of these sites will be open usual Doors Open hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but after the sun goes down, the auxiliary programming takes over.“We have all kinds of thingshappening all over the place with the auxiliary part of the program, the Haunted Huron portion,” Sickinger said. One of the cornerstones of the Haunted Huron program will be classic horror movie screenings. Each night will feature a classic German horror movie from the 1920s, 1930s at Bayfield Town Hall. The featured films will be Vampyr and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There will also be a Saturday night, midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Livery in Goderich where “participants” are encouraged to dress up. The Blyth Festival will be featuring community theatre as well as a dinner on Saturday night. Eight communities (at this time) will be hosting ghost walks on those evenings. Sickinger says the tours will go through neighbourhoods led by someone who knows the area and all of its spooky details. Kelly Elson of Bayfield is a psychic medium and she will be conducting a workshop on how to channel your own inner psychic. In addition to the workshop, Elson will be touring several of the Doors Open sites that are reportedly haunted and relaying to the group along for the tour what she is feeling as she goes through the sites. There is a Dawn of the Dead breakfast planned by the firefighters in Bayfield for Sunday morning and there will be several events for children over the course of the weekend as well. One in particular will be a Halloween costume workshop. Because Doors Open Haunted Huron is planned for Oct. 17-19, there will still be just under two weeks until Halloween. There will be a free clinic on make-up and costumes for kids, Sickinger says. “They can show up and tell us what kind of costume they want to have and we’ll give them some expert advice.” Several self-guided cemetery tours will also be organized. The hope of the guide is to be more than a pamphlet map, Sickinger says. The guide is planned to be between 50 and 60 pages and they hope to print between 30,000 and 40,000 copies to be distributed among the local newspapers as well as on-site that weekend. “There will be a picture and description of every site and event that weekend. There will be a history of the building, what it was used for, and of course, maps to guide you through it all,” he said. “There will be self-guided tours around cemeteries in the county. There will be maps to the cemeteries themselves and then maps of the cemeteries to point out graves of interest. There are some really great stories there.” In addition to basic information like maps, descriptions and costs (while most of the weekend will be free, some of the night events will have a minimal cost attached), Sickinger hopes to have detailed descriptions and instructions for events so no one is ever lost. All of the programming will be listed, in addition to the sites and the tours. “The guide is a way of creating a publication that celebrates our history and our heritage. We figured if we were going to do all this work, it might as well be a resource material for the heritage committee,something you can keep.”Doors Open Haunted Huron was approved for a grant from the federal government, although an exact amount is not yet known, and they have been asking the municipalities to contribute $500 each to assist in the costs involved. However, there is little worry with the organizers, Sickinger said, as fundraising has been going quite well considering how early it is. “To reach every household and use the guides to give out to visitors over the weekend, we’ll need at least 35,000 copies, which is going to get pretty expensive,” he said. “We have had several local businesses who are very interested in becoming corporate sponsors, so the funding is going quite well so far.” In the end, while Doors Open is often closely-tied with tourism, Sickinger says he hopes to enlighten residents and encourage them to learn more about where they live. “I hope that local residents come out for the events. My hope is less tourism-driven and more for local residents to learn about the heritage and history of the community they live in,” he said. “I hope the haunted, spooky theme is the lure to get people out and learning about their history.” The Avon Maitland District School Board will lose a superintendent with a wealth of experience and respect in the field of special education. But the Huron- Perth Children’s Aid Society is breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not also losing its president. Marie Parsons of Gowanstown, a lifelong educator who attended school in Huron County and then rose through the teaching and administrative ranks, will begin a new job Aug. 18 with the Toronto- based Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). “It’s definitely a good news/bad news item for us because, although we are delighted that (Parsons’) skills and expertise are being recognized at this very high level . . . it is a significant loss and I think trustees around this table are trying not to be in a state of panic,” said Avon Maitland chair Meg Westley, announcing Parsons’ acceptance of the position at a regular meeting Tuesday, June 10. As chief assessment officer, Parsons will assume the “number two” role at the EQAO, an arm’s- length government agency that administers and assesses the results from provincially-standardized tests in Grades 3, 6, 9 and 10. Her position takes the form of a “secondment” from the board, meaning she hasn’t officially resigned as a superintendent. “Not that this makes it any easier to leave a board that I’m very deeply committed to,” Parsons told reporters after the June 10 meeting. She has been an employee of the Huron and Avon Maitland boards for 36 years, eventually coming to the administrative offices in 1996 and being named a superintendent in 2001. Parsons’ husband, Phil, is set to retire as principal of Elma Township Public school in Atwood effective Dec. 31, 2008. But there are no plans for a complete relocation to Toronto. Indeed, Marie Parsons expects to spend weekends in this area and pledges to continue her service with the local Children’s Aid Society – an agency she currently heads in her third separate term as president. The EQAO secondment is expected to last between three to five years. Pick Your Own in your containers as we charge by the lb. Ready Picked...orders taken. Picking Hours...Mon - Fri 8 - 7 & Sat - Sun 9 - 5 Call for Crop Update. Come for the Berries and Stay for the Flowers! Check Out the Colours & Hundreds of Varieties in the Greenhouses! Also Perennials, Nursery Stock, Beautiful Potted Containers and Ted’s Tasty Tomatoes. 77688 Orchard Line, R.R.1 Bayfield 482-3020 www.te-em.com By Shawn LoughlinThe Citizen AMDSB superintendent takes secondment to Toronto’s EQAO By Stew Slater Special to The Citizen Classified advertisements published in The Citizen are now available on our website at www.northhuron.on.ca Walton’s Little School presents 2007 Canadian Children’s Music Group of the Year June 28 at 10:00am BRUSSELS MENNONITE FELLOWSHIP CHURCH $10 adult, $5 child, $15 CDs (519) 887-8440 for tickets SPLASHH N’ BOOTS,, LIVE!SPLASHH N’ BOOTS,, LIVE! Planning underway ascounty unites for event