Joan Webster Chair intro.

The Ocean Park Community Association is not letting the new millennium pass by without a celebration; and they have an exciting event planned for you! The event is called ‘Celebration 2000’ and will officially mark the occasion of the neighbourhood’s millennium and the 75th anniversary of the Ocean Park Community Hall. The Celebration will take place on Saturday, September 30th at the Community Hall in Ocean Park from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. In 1925, early residents of our neighbourhood recognized the need to create a focus for the community and volunteered to build a new Hall. Our Hall has been the centre of Ocean Park ever since, with businesses emerging all around it. Thus was the beginning of ‘downtown Ocean Park’. The Hall has been the site of hundreds of social gatherings and special events for thousands of community residents for the last three generations. If those walls could talk! ‘Celebration 2000’ is an event commemorating the past, present and future of our very special neighbourhood. We are hosting a country fair for the children, a showcase of our performing and visual artists, an exhibit of photos taken of Ocean Park (when you weren’t looking), a noontime barbecue, the debut of a new map featuring all the secrets of our neighbourhood, the unveiling of an old fashioned community quilt and the placement of a time chest into the attic of the Hall with a collection of your letters and photos to be opened in 50 years. The O.P.C.A. has also included the youth of Ocean Park. Ocean Cliff, Laronde and Ray Shepherd Elementary Schools and Elgin Park High School will showcase their promising talent in the performing and visual arts throughout the day. Rick Cluff, host of the Early Edition on CBC Radio and a resident of Ocean Park will be our Master of Ceremonies all day. Mayor McCallum will be in attendance from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the ‘Dignitaries Festival’ in the Hall where the legacy gifts (the quilt and the time chest) will be dedicated to the community. Everyone is welcomed to attend. For over a year now, volunteers from the O.P.C.A have been dedicated to producing this event. They have recognized that Ocean Park is a very special place to live and raise a family. Amid the unique flora and fauna, beautiful gardens and green space, preserved heritage sites, trees and structures live our fascinating pioneer families and generous business people committed to Ocean Park. The planning committee of ‘Celebration 2000’ are eight of hundreds of volunteers who enrich our lives with community activities at the Hall and beyond. And they are excited about this celebration and leaving the community with legacy gifts for the new millennium. They hope to see all of you there! We encourage you to ride your bicycle to the event as parking is limited. Bike racks will be provided. – Joan Webster, Chair of the Event Chairs message from page 2
This Heritage Edition of the Ocean Parker is written and compiled to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the building of the Ocean Park Hall. A group of volunteer writers have spent some delightful hours interviewing residents who have been in the Ocean Park area for many decades. Together, we have put together those memories in a form that we hope the readers will find interesting. There naturally were overlaps of information in the interview materials and other information that required checking to ensure accuracy of the accounts. We can only present this information as it was presented to us by longtime residents. It is their stories that you are to read. While we have tried to verify the information given to us, this unique, living history, is written from their memories and we cannot make judgments as to the correctness of all statements, because of the time span of our project. The Ocean Parker volunteers hope that we have, to the best of our abilities, faithfully portrayed life in Ocean Park over the past 75 years.