A very pertinent guest post

submitted by Martin Partridge

All good things must come to an end so I so suppose the demise of First Night Cobourg was inevitable. I'd like to briefly document the history of First Night Cobourg from my perspective as former chair. Others may wish to augment the record.

Former Councillor Pam Jackson fired up the original First Night Cobourg volunteer group in about 1994. The committee created a small-scale version of Toronto's successful New Year's Eve non-alcoholic street festival, which in turn was modeled on major events in Boston and elsewhere. Local entertainers, performance groups and face painters warmed up clusters of Cobourg families, both inside and outside Cobourg's historic downtown municipal properties (notably the Firehall, Market Building, and of course Victoria Hall). There were horse-drawn hay wagons to ride on, and barrels of burning firewood to keep volunteers warm. At midnight, mainly for the benefit of the remaining hardy volunteers, there was a small fireworks display right in front of Victoria Hall. The cost for the whole evening was $5, free for children.

After three modestly profitable years, the committee responsible for the event ratcheted up the entertainment, running carefully timed hour-long music events for three hours in six locations, for a total of 18 highly professional and diverse shows ending at 9:30 p.m. A people's parade was then led by the Town Crier down to the waterfront for a much larger fireworks display, which had been moved to earlier in the evening for the benefit of the children. The evening ended with a two-hour major show in the Concert Hall. The price was kept at $5 with children free, thanks to ever growing sponsor donations.

This new-style First Night Cobourg, with its tightly formatted entertainment program, culminated in a major millennium event on December 31, 1999. More than 7,000 people thronged the downtown buildings and the waterfront for double-decker bus rides, very high quality children's shows, notable entertainment from across Canada, and a huge fireworks display. There was a cultural exchange, which resulted in a musical group called Middle Tickle travelling from Fogo Island in Newfoundland to perform in Victoria Hall with Aengus Finnan simultaneously travelling to Fogo Island to entertain the residents there. A rudimentary internet camera was set up at each end to allow each side to see what the other was doing. Fireworks were set off here at precisely 10:30 p.m. to coincide with the first Canadian arrival of the year 2000 in Newfoundland. A conference call, initiated in Cobourg, was held among federal, provincial, municipal and European politicians and personages to exchange millennium greetings. Hovering over all this were the Y2K fears, which seem quaint now but were genuine at the time and resulted in a broad scramble for backup generators and had all emergency services on standby.

Cobourg citizens, in part through its automotive dealers, industrial plants, lawyers and other groups, came up with about $30,000 in donations and badge purchases to pay for the big Y2K entertainment, and Council contributed $15,000 for the grand fireworks. The event was such a great success, with tourists writing in to say keep up the good work, that the committee asked Council to endorse a similar approach the following year. Instead, major funding was denied and the event ended up being cancelled altogether. December 31, 2000 was the only "dark" New Year's Eve in downtown Cobourg in the last 15 years.

The event was resurrected a year later thanks to new committee chair Gerry Drage and many long-time devoted committee members including Bert McMillan, Sharron McMann and (eventual chair) Brian Edmiston. The event has been held successfully throughout this decade.

I thought the one saving grace of installing the controversial concrete frink in place of parkland in downtown Cobourg was that it would be used to inject new purpose and vigour into First Night Cobourg. Indeed, the new frink was well used at last year's First Night event.

I'm sad but not surprised that this Council could not see the logic, after blowing off about $1.5 million to install a concrete skating pad in the centre of First Night Cobourg operations, to invest a little more to shore up the one established and well loved winter event that could put it to good use. After all, increasing tourism during the winter months was cited by Council as a prime rationale for the frink decision. Perhaps a refreshed and revived future Council will see things differently.