by Bruce Stapley

Multi-Talented Multiverse Owner Takes Over as Strawberry Festival Chair

Catherine McCowan has added another job to add to her extracurricular list. The owner/operator of The Multiverse on Main St. is settling in as chair and president of the Strawberry Festival for 2010.

Having sat on the Festival committee for five years, the 15 year Stouffville resident and mother of three children ranging in age from 6 to 14 headed up children’s entertainment at this year’s festival. She is looking to involve more newcomers and teens in next year’s event. “We want to bring in more people between the ages of 12 and 20,” she said. “We haven’t been that strong in that age group.”

Catherine says the completion of 19 on the Park, along with the revamping of Memorial Park and Civic Square, can only enhance the festival. “We want to work with the town to leverage these additions to make for an even better festival.” She said the hiring of festival event coordinator Kristina Toomey on a full time basis, made possible by the $155,000 Trillium Grant earlier this year, has also made a big difference.

While Kristina was brought in just in time for this year’s festival, Catherine feels her talents will manifest themselves as time goes by. “Her specialty is event planning and coordinating. She’s involved in fund raising and setting up plans, things that were tough to do when it was all being done by volunteers.”

Catherine encourages new and established Stouffville residents to drop by Kristina’s office at the Silver Jubilee Club building to offer their ideas and their time, or to email her at strawberryfestival@rogers.com

_________

Festival Committee VP Once Designed Provincial Parks

Harry French has covered a lot of ground in his time.

The Strawberry Festival Board vice president currently runs his own consulting practice, called Metapraxis, which sees him involved in organizational and leadership development centering around community engagement in areas such as health care and the environment. He also found time to chair the Nineteen on the Park start-up team which organized the theatre’s glorious two week grand opening extravaganza last spring.

But his roots go much deeper into the ground, so to speak. Harry earned an undergraduate degree in forestry from the University of Guelph. He went on to acquire a second degree in resource planning, and would ride his talents all the way to the position of assistant deputy minister of tourism for Ontario back in the mid 1970’s.  He held similar positions in Prince Edward Island and Alberta over the next decade.

While with the Ontario government, Harry designed what is now Sandbanks Provincial Park.  “We came up with a master plan combining Outlet Park with Sandbanks Park, and the province bought the point of land in the middle and tied the two together,” said Harry, who did a thesis on Prince Edward County as part of his resources planning degree.  He also designed Awenda Provincial Park north of Midland, and helped coin the buzzwords used by the province to promote tourism. “We came up with the ‘Ontario - Incredible’ program, and in our ‘biggest and best’ program, we first used phrases like ‘The world’s largest skating rink’ for the Rideau Canal.”

­­­­­

Categories: Features
Tags: