By Pepper Parr
November 15th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
The guy who was tasked with running the 2020 Terry Fox Run felt he was in great shape at the beginning of the year.
Come the end of March he thought he was looking at a disaster.
But Craig Gardner pulled the rabbit out of the hat and raised more in the year of the pandemic than ever before.
He gave the Gazette a call and said he had an idea.
“Things are going to be slow around Christmas – there won’t be many places we can go and there might not be all that much for people to do?, he suggested
“What do you think of the idea of encouraging people to put up imaginative Christmas decorations outside their homes and then create a map showing where the homes are so that people can drive by with the kids in the car and at least get a sense that there is still a Christmas?”
With the city now in a red zone and the possibility of a lock down facing us, Gardner may have come up with a good idea.
How to make it happen was our question.
“Won’t that result in dozens upon dozens of people showing up in the cars?” I asked.
“I don’t think so” said Craig. “ I think people will be out for a drive and will want to move from location to location.”
We thought the idea had merit – anything Craig Gardner takes on usually works out.
The plan is to create an email address that people can use to say “I’m in” and send us their address.
The Gazette will put the address locations on a map and people can decide where they want to drive around. It was suggested that people who are long term care facilities would love to be driven around to see all the trees and decorations..
The map will be published in the Gazette.
Because we expect a significant number of locations the city broken out by ward. You click on your ward and you get a map with all the locations in that ward.
You can tour as many wards as you like. We felt there might be far too many locations to place on a city wide map.
Gardner will be posting the idea on the Burlington Together Facebook page as well as the Burlington Dad’s Facebook page.
Craig and I are getting ready to visit a large retailer with an idea and an interesting way to promote the event and serve the community as well.
We will let you know how that works out.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested and want to be part of the tours just send us an email to:
lights@bgzt.ca
Provide your street address and the ward you live in (if you happen to know it).
We hope to have the maps in place before the end of the week. Note that “hope” is underlined.
Drove by a house on Hammond on the weekend that was all lite up. Gave me a real nice warm feeling that Christmas was coming. Turned around and drove by it again. Everyone in Burlington should try to do the best they can. Light up the town. John.
Great idea! Will try and make my front yard worthy
It might not be possible to drive residents in long term care around in cars to see the decorations if Covid restrictions are in place.
Perhaps floats could be decorated with Christmas themes and driven past the retirement residences and stop outside for a short period of time so that the residents could look out their windows to see them? There could be a float with carollers that could sing Christmas carols when they stop.
Food for thought.