What a Community!

Not only did we open a fire station in Waterloo - there were many other fantastic events happening all in one day!

I started Saturday (Sept 11th) bright and early - it was the Second Annual Mayor's Movie Morning - a fundraiser I hold in partnership with the generous Galaxy Cinema. They provide six different, current movies to choose from, as well as donating a free popcorn and pop to each person who bought a ticket. This year we worked with the Alzheimer's Society and they received all the proceeds of the movie morning. We had a good turnout, gave away a bunch of door prizes and everyone had a great time. Thank you to everyone who helped organize and who attended.






The next event was the India Canada Association MELA 2010 festival at City Hall in Kitchener. A wonderful celebration of Indian culture and heritage in this communty-dancers, singing, food - another special event.



Back in the car and off to the Laurelwood Community Fair - what a fantastic day - there were all types of games, food booths, rides of all descriptions and hundreds of happy families sharing a beautiful Saturday afternoon together. I spoke with many people and it was so apparent that this was a proud neighbourhood of families - my thanks to the organizers - this was such a successful day!








Next stop - WLU to participate in Shinerama! Every year the students of WLU spend a day washing cars and collecting change in support of CF-this has been an event that is held each year and I am so proud of the students who spend a day raising money for Cystic Fibrosis. I was in desperate need for a car wash and it looked terrific. Thank you WLU students!






Then the next big event - the Open House at the new Fire Station - I must admit, after cutting and handing out hundreds of pieces of cake, I decided I couldn't eat cake for at least a day! Just a wonderful community celebration.

And my last stop was the Norman Street Party - now that is one fun group of people! They made me feel right at home. And what a great neighbourhood - they had the street blocked off, childrens's jumping castle and games, food, barbecue's going, kids playing and running around having fun and parents relaxing and visiting.



This is what my Waterloo is about - families, children, people helping each other out, celebrating our community and the great city that we live in!

Open House at Waterloo's Newest Fire Station!

On Saturday, September 11, 2010, an Open House was held at the City of Waterloo's new Fire Station # 4. What a day it was! There were hundreds of people exploring the fire station, looking at the fire fighting equipment and meeting members of the fire fighting crew. We even had a special guest - Sparky the Fire Dog! There were numerous activities from face painting to wooden toy building and demonstrations on kitchen fire safety. We also had the cake cutting ceremony and I had a great time serving cake to over 500 hundred attendees! It was such a wonderful experience - the best fun was seeing the looks on the children's faces as they got to sit in the trucks and see all the equipment - every child I met had decided to become a fire fighter!

This was a very exciting open house for the Eastbridge community, who had been waiting for their fire station. Special thanks go to the Eastbridge Neighbourhood Association for their extremely generous donation of a beautiful evergreen tree, proudly planted in the front of the fire station. And a special thank you to the Chair of the ENA-Ms. Cindy Watkin, who spent many hours working with city staff and within her neighbourhood, sharing information and answering questions for us all.

This 6,000 sq. ft. fire station is the first City of Waterloo building that will be recognized as a silver level, LEEDS ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building. It will be 25% more efficient in energy conservation, than another building of similar size. Completion of this fire station will improve our response times for the families living in this area.

I had the great privilege of cutting the ribbon on the official opening on September 6th - while listening to the speeches, I felt extremely proud of the work done by the city staff, the design team, Council and the community and for the tremendous amount of collaboration that went into creating this fire station for our community.

An exciting, historical moment for the City of Waterloo.