The Great Ceremony of the Burning of Christmas Trees, circa 1970
Before the advent of artificial Christmas Trees, by early January, most families were wondering what to do with their conifer shedding its needles. Then someone had the bright idea: What would be more fun than having one enormous community bonfire?
In 1967, “the Great Ceremony of the Burning of Christmas Trees at Lakeshore Park [Garnet Graham]—on a perfect winter evening about 500 people gathered to watch Rotarians and others feed the flames with untold numbers of trees for an hour or more. The children were given free rides in Ski-doos by generous owners. It was amazing how quickly some kids would be unloaded and back up to the ‘boarding station.’ The shyer youngsters didn’t fare so well.”
By the 1970s, Christmas tree burning was a popular annual event, often hosted in conjunction with the Winter Games. Lloyd Kelly is fondly remembered dragging Christmas Trees from all over town, two at a time, to add to the burn pile. Belinda Wilson remembers, “for him it was a challenge to see if he could get more trees down to the park than the garbage guys could do.… I will never forget him running, dragging two Christmas tree by the butt-ends, behind him…. It was non-stop from the time he got up in the morning until his mom called for him to come home for dinner.” For his efforts to keep the village clean, Lloyd Kelly had the park behind the IGA (now Red Apple) named in his honour.
The Great Ceremony of the Burning of Christmas Trees was one of many events associated with the Winter Games that would never be socially acceptable today. The Rotary Club parked an old junker car out on the ice and held a contest to see who could guess when it would plunge through. There were ice floe races—where teams would paddle sheets of ice to race through the gorge. There was an activity at the Fenelon arena where groups of people would ski together on the ice on 2x4s. At the time, the winter games were much loved. But just imagine how people would react today!
