Ye Olde Tyme Christmas in Bolton took the community back to 1821 for the holiday season

December 9, 2021 · 0 Comments

By Rob Paul

On the evening of December 3, if you wandered down the streets of Bolton, you would have felt like you were in a time machine with plenty of folks dressed up in Victorian era threads in celebration of the Ye Olde Tyme Christmas event that was put together by the Bolton Community Crew, Downtown Bolton Task Force, and Downtown Bolton BIA.

The event wasn’t only to kick off the Christmas season, but it was a way to commemorate Bolton’s bicentennial by bringing residents back to 1821.

The Olde Tyme Christmas had everything from the tree lighting to pictures with Santa Claus and a live reindeer, and a vendor’s market.

Most years during Christmas in downtown Bolton, there’s just tree lighting ceremony, but community groups wanted to bring the residents even more this year with 2020 being a challenging holiday season.

“Generally, we do the tree lighting ceremony, and just the tree lighting ceremony at Christmas time,” said Bolton Community Crew Chair Sarah Leslie. “But since we weren’t able to do it last year because of COVID and, on top of that, we wanted to celebrate Bolton’s bicentennial so we thought we should give the community something huge and something to look forward to participating in. We came together (the Bolton Community Crew) with the Downtown Bolton Task Force and Downtown Bolton BIA, and the three of us groups worked closely together to accomplish what everyone saw on Friday.”

In a common year, there would be plenty of preparation and planning time for the Christmas tree lighting, but due to the uncertainty of COVID leaving everything up in the air, the behind-the-scenes work was done in a short period of time.

Leslie credits the teamwork of the three organizations for getting everything ready in time.

“Usually when we do the tree lighting, we like to start planning it a couple of months in advance, just to make sure we have everything covered,” she said. “With this particular event, we did it in under four weeks. When we’re working with different people and organizations, it’s really important that whatever task is given to everyone, that they follow through with it. This was a huge team effort; everyone was given a responsibility, and everyone came through. There was lots of strong communication, tons of Zoom calls and emails to make sure everyone knew where to be and at what time. The team mentality is how we accomplished this one.”

The idea was always to celebrate the bicentennial in some way, but when a local resident stepped forward with the plan and resources to actually take Bolton all the way back to its beginnings, everyone jumped at the opportunity to incorporate the pageantry to have some extra fun.

“We have a local resident named Bruno Vecchio and he came forward with the idea of bringing Bolton back to a Christmas 200 years ago,” Leslie said. “He happens to be in the entertainment industry, so he had access to Victorian wardrobes, and we had different actors there—a blacksmith, old military people, etc.—he was part of helping us bring that to reality. I think we had about 28 volunteers who were dressed in Victorian wear and walking around downtown Bolton, and, of course, we had the old carolers dressed in wardrobe. It was a group effort, and everyone came together to bring this idea to life. I think it was so well received by the community, they loved experiencing Bolton in the Victorian time. Downtown Bolton in itself is quite historical and so I think the whole evening went the exact way we wanted it to.”

Given the success of the night and positive feedback from residents, Leslie is hopeful big events like this will continue throughout the year for Bolton as they try to reenergize the community and economy as the pandemic’s impact wavers.

“The vendors were incredibly successful, and I don’t think anyone walked away unhappy,” she said. “The community definitely was out to support local business and got a lot of holiday shopping done. We heard from quite a few residents asking if it would happen every weekend! Obviously, it won’t, but it just goes to show that the community would love to have events like this more often than they are right now. It’s something we’re looking into for the New Year; we’re going to try and bring even more events to the downtown core. People were so happy, kids were excited to see Santa and his reindeer, it was just so much fun and so nice to see everyone back out and enjoying the company of one another after a long time of not being able to do anything. It was really nice to see.”

With over 60 vendors at the market, not only was the event for the community, but Leslie says it was a great way to help get more local businesses attention during the holiday shopping season.

“When we do these types of things, not only is it to bring the community out, but it’s also to help support our local businesses,” she said. “When there’s new residents coming to Bolton, they don’t necessarily know what businesses we have here, but if we bring them out for an event like this, it allows for them to learn about new businesses. The businesses along Queen Street on Friday night were slammed the entire night, and I love to see that they’re busy and the mission was successful.”

With the Town of Caledon focused on the Downtown Bolton Revitalization Plan, Leslie sees events like this as a good way to spark residents’ interest in what Bolton can be as it trends towards a facelift as the hub of the community.

“The partnership we had working on this event was amazing and it just goes to show that when you work together, good things can happen,” she said. “With the revitalization, it’s baby steps, things are starting to change downtown and there’s a lot of potential for things like this to happen, so this was a great way to get people down there and taking a look around to see what downtown has to offer.”