Building Unity & Community weekend will be three-day celebration of Caledon

By Rob Paul

To cap off the summer and celebrate Canada coming out of the pandemic, Councillor Tony Rosa has put together a three-day outdoor concert series as part of his Love Local Caledon campaign.

The Building Unity and Community Weekend will run from August 27 to 29 at the CIBC banking centre parking lot located at 12736 Highway 50 and Healey in Bolton.

The three-day event will consist of a thank you concert for Caledon frontline workers on August 27 at 7:30 p.m., an Italian Day concert presented by the Bolton Italian Cultural Centre on August 28 at 7 p.m., and a tribute to the music of ABBA by ABBA Revisited presented by the Stage Academy on August 29 at 2 p.m.

All three days of the concert series will be free for residents and booking for the events can be completed at eventbrite.ca. 

With the concert series acting as a celebration of returning to normal, Rosa wanted to ensure the first night was focused on the heroes of the pandemic in the Caledon community. 

“The opening night we're hosting a special thank you concert for Caledon frontline workers and first responders or anyone that has been demonstrating leadership throughout the pandemic,” he said. “We invited the public to join as we thank these groups for their hard work and dedication to our community throughout these unprecedented times. 

“We have Ramblin' Soul—a local band—an opening act from Angelica DiCastro who has a song for frontline workers that she'll be performing. It's called ‘Unsung Heroes,' and it talks about the commitment of frontline workers and what they have done for us. As a closing act we have a finalist from Star Search and Canadian Idol Paul Fracassi who does a tribute show to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It's going to be a fun evening.”

The second and third days of the concert engage two local Caledon groups to help unite the community with a fun weekend as it builds back from the devastation of the pandemic says Rosa.

“The Italian Day will have a series of headliners from classical Italian music to more modern music with live performances,” said Rosa. “We also have Vinz DeRosa who is an announcer for CHIN Radio International. We have a full program for that evening. On the Sunday with the Stage Academy, they're bringing in a touring company called ABBA Revisited. They're a tribute show to the music of ABBA, and I actually saw them perform in Newmarket a couple years ago before the pandemic and was really impressed with their stage production. They've toured all over North America and Europe and they'll be putting on a 90-minute show. They'll be in full costume and it's a really great show that I think the community will enjoy very much.”

Having not been able to be as involved in the community throughout the pandemic, Rosa saw an opportunity to work with both Stage Academy and the Bolton Italian Cultural Centre to provide an opportunity for the groups to re-integrate into Caledon through art and culture. 

“On an annual basis under regular circumstances Stage Academy—a local community theatre group—would present a theatre production to the community and the Bolton Italian Cultural Centre would run an Italian Day,” he said. “Because theatres are closed, and they haven't been able to put a show together this year and the Italian Centre wasn't able to have their heritage month event in June we decided to all join forces and run a weekend that focuses on building community and unifying all of us together to bring something of a larger scale to the community.”

Without much for people to do in Caledon for the last 16 months, Rosa says he is excited to be a part of bringing the community back together in a celebration that coincides with the end of summer in an effort to focus on the importance of supporting local. 

“I felt like it was a good end-of-summer type thing before people go back to school and work and get back to regular life,” he said. “Here's an opportunity for us to really do something, instead of just talking about building unity and community, this is an opportunity for us to actually walk the talk and bring the community together. We're hoping to make a bit of a difference in people's lives; they've been locked up so long and I think there's a real appetite to do things in their community and not necessarily travel too far. I think people are looking for stuff to do at their doorstep.”

Though the dates were moved, Rosa thinks moving the event back was a blessing in disguise because it now allows them to run a safe outdoor in-person event with more people being able to attend. 

“The original plan was to run this in June,” he said. “He started talking about it early in the fall and we were trying to predict when would be a good time. It was scheduled for the end of June then in April I decided to call a meeting of Peel Public Health and I had (Chief Medical Officer of Health) Dr. (Lawrence) Loh and his team to discuss the project. After that consultation, I took the advice of the team, and they suggested the end of August might be better for engaging more people in the community. They felt the restrictions would be eased by then and there would be a real need to do something of this magnitude, rather than just having a select few cars or doing something small scale. Moving the dates to the end of August has proven to be successful because we're able to move forward and have an in-person event.”

Planning a concert event through a pandemic was no easy task and Rosa says the adjustments have been difficult at times, but he's hopeful the concert series becomes a mainstay in Caledon.

“Originally it was supposed to be a drive-in style event but as things started to progress and protocols were lifted and circumstances changed, we are now able to actually have people seated outdoors. Moving forward if this is successful, which I have no doubt it will be, I think this might be the first building unity and community weekend of many in the future.”

At the end of the day, the event is about supporting local, and Rosa is ecstatic about the local support they've received from Caledon businesses and stakeholders. 

“I greatly appreciate the contributions from our sponsors,” he said. “Our main stage sponsors include Amazon in Bolton, Canadian Tire Corporate, Local 27 the Carpenters Union, and the Town of Caledon through their municipal grant program. I've been very pleased to engage with some of our bigger businesses, this is a way for them to give back to the community. I'm really hoping people will come out and start registering their passes on eventbrite.ca, we've advertised it on billboards, it's all over social media. I've been really overwhelmed with the positive responses from the community.”