It will be up to Turner Valley’s citizens to make Canada’s 150th year one to remember.
The Town formed a Canada 150 ad hoc task force with Mayor Kelly Tuck, Deputy Mayor John Waring and Coun. Barry Crane as members to encourage residents, merchants and service organizations to help plan sesquicentennial celebrations in the community.
“It’s an opportunity for us to all recognize the birthday,” said Tuck. “Let’s come up with good ideas and draw people to our community.”
Tuck said she’s already spoken with some merchants and town residents about some of her own ideas. She hopes people will want to contribute to existing community events or create new ones.
“We talked about a soap-box derby and I met with a local group and threw out the idea that maybe they could host as a fundraiser dinner at the pool,” she said. “I think there is some good avenues that really promotes the area, but also promotes the business and community groups and could lend to it being a fundraiser.”
Tuck said there are no funds to support this initiative so they need volunteers to make it happen.
“We as a community for our size don’t have the manpower to do a lot of our own events so we always look to community leaders, organizations and groups to come forward with ideas,” she said. “They have the capacity to have volunteers behind them.”
Waring said there is always room for more events in Turner Valley and the sesquicentennial is a great excuse.
“The trick is to find people in the community who are willing to get involved and Canada 150 gives us the excuse to book people to get involved,” he said. “We see good potential for existing events and new activities that we haven’t had before and trying to find members of the community that would be involved in organizing and running it.”
Public participation is a huge component to the success of these activities, said Waring.
“We are basically brainstorming things that might happen,” he said. “Sometimes it helps to dream up a couple of things you can talk to people about and they might take that and work around it and come up with something better.”
It’s also the opportunity to attract more tourists to the community and get more people into local shops, said Tuck.
Among the top attractions are the Cowboy Trail, outdoor pool, spray park and the town’s proximity to the Kananaskis.
Anyone with ideas about how to celebrate Canada’s 150th are asked to submit them to the Town office.
“If someone comes up with a great idea for Discovery Days, then they can make that presentation,” she said. “It could spiral off to some really good new things in the community.”
