Lantern Walk 2014

The 2014 Lantern Walk on December 21 was a great success, with over 100 people in attendance (some counted over 200)!  Community members began showing up around 6pm, just after dark, and by the time the walk started down Hett St., toward Wilhelm, the crowd had grown to fill an entire city block at a time.  After rounding several blocks, the walkers returned to the starting point by about 7:30pm.  

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

The MHBPNA coordinated with the City of Kitchener and Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro to turn off the street lights in the neighbourhood, making the streets extra dark on this already dark and clear night. Refreshments were served (hot apple cider) prior to the walk, and a local carolling group provided an excellent musical performance!  In a speech prior to setting off, participants were reminded that the walk was an opportunity to reflect on the year past and coming, and on the importance of finding peace during the busy holiday season.

Of course, no overview of the Lantern Walk would be complete without mentioning the lanterns themselves!   Of these, a wide variety of shapes, sizes and designs were on display.  From the hollow, ice-globes housing tea-lights along the boulevard to the oversized rectangular paper lantern that served as the central beacon around which revellers gathered, the lanterns lit up the darkened streets and provided a very enchanting experience. 

Many were built around mason jars, which seemed to be the easiest and safest method to creating your own lantern.  But everybody added their own embellishments to make their mason jar lantern truly their own.

One really special lantern looked just like a 'Despicable Me' minion.  Cool!

Last but certainly not least, who could forget the giant white dove that led the walk down the street.  Hoisted on sticks held by three supporters, the dove lantern was a suiting icon for the message of peace the organizers' wished to convey (if a slightly awkward one to carry down the street!).

We at the MHBPNA, and in the community, would like to gratefully thank the organizers of this very enjoyable event, including Sarah Anderson who has been at the helm for the past two years. Several local businesses helped out and the City of Kitchener supported us with funding and organizational help. We are eagerly looking forward to taking part in the 2015 Lantern Walk! Happy New Year!

James G.

Neighbourhood Summit, 2014

The City of Kitchener supports its neighbourhood associations in many different ways. They print our newsletters, pay several support staff to help our associations with planning our events and (hopefully) cutting through red tape and each year they hold a Neighbourhood Summit which brings together many of the associations to meet each other and talk over success stories and plan for the future.

This year's summit was held at the Victoria Park Pavillion on Wed, November 26 and included a nice dinner and dessert. Four members of the MHBPNA executive attended.

The evening began with an address by Michael May, Deputy CAO, Community Services and he discussed the new focus the city would be having on neighbourhood associations. Kitchener will be asking us more questions about what we want and how to provide services.

The Boardwalk NA and Forest Heights CA representatives gave a short presentation on how they were working together and pooling resources since Boardwalk is so new (in fact, it is still not on the City of Kitchener's map of associations). 

After dinner we had two 40 minute "table talk" sessions where we broke into four or five groups to talk about specific issues.

The topics included Event Planning, Inclusion, Social Media, Running Programs and a few others. One thing I found most fascinating was the Cherry Park representative who declared that while Facebook and websites were great, they achieved the best advertising by simply planting signs on the ground a week prior to events. People see them as they are walking or driving and respond! Your MHBPNA representatives discussed our own media strategy, the launch of our new website and some of our past events like six years of Jane's Walks.

The final talk was from Glenn Scheels from the Auditorium NA and the topic was the Knollwood Park Rehabilitation. The City of Kitchener was spending $100,000 for landscaping and planting trees to make it a more vibrant and engaging space. The NA felt that a pavillion would really help with community events like baseball and soccer games and anything else that would benefit from shade and tables. But there was not enough money in the city's budget. So the Auditorium NA set about on a fundraising drive which eventually raised $54,000 ($10,000 was from a Festival of Neighbourhoods grant they won and they received a huge cheque for $25,000 from the Kitchener Rangers). This was an inspiring story of many people working together to create a permanent structure for the community.

We look forward to another Neighbourhood Summit in 2015.


Ted Parkinson

Who are you going to call?

Congratulations to all those people who, on Monday October 27, won the right to represent us at local and regional levels. And thanks to all the people who worked so hard running for office, attending debates, knocking on doors and putting out their ideas into the community. 

The MHBPNA looks forward to working with everyone in these exciting times of development and engagement.

We have several levels of government so here is a list of who now represents you:

Ward 10 Councillor: Sarah Marsh

Mayor of Kitchener: Barry Vrbanovic

Kitchener's Regional Councilors: Karen Redman, Tom Galloway, Wayne Wettlaufer and Geoff Lorentz.