This will be the 10th year that The Expositor is sponsoring Harvest Glory Days, an opportunity to get outside into the fresh fall air with the entire family to showcase your decorating skills and harness your inner community spirit.
Harvest Glory Days was the brainchild of former Manitoulin Publishing owner Rick McCutcheon and was envisioned as an opportunity for friendly competition between Manitoulin communities. Islanders old and new are encouraged to get out there and do their communities proud.
In order to level the playing field between communities there are three separate categories for the friendly competition: large communities like Gore Bay, Mindemoya, M’Chigeeng, Little Current and Wiikwemkoong; mid-sized communities including Sheguiandah, Aundeck Omni Kaning, Kagawong, Providence Bay and Sheshegwaning; and small communities which include Silver Water, Spring Bay, Zhiihbaasing First Nation, South Baymouth and Sandfield.
While creativity and ingenuity are always great, this is one competition where more definitely counts—and just about anything goes including homes, businesses, streetlights, community halls, bridges and churches.
Oh, and did we mention prizes: There are prizes as each year The Expositor awards big, bright signs that attest to the winning communities’ community spirit and there are spaces to recognize a community’s succeeding years of accomplishments. Taking a gander about the Island one will discover that there are signs in Silver Water, Providence Bay, Sheguiandah, Manitowaning, Gore Bay and Spring Bay.
To help out our judges those doing the decorating are asked to register their work on The Expositor website at Manitoulin.com by Friday, September 30. That will allow us to announce the winner by Thanksgiving.
If there ever was a time when we should all be celebrating our resiliency and community spirit it is these days, following the most challenging years we have collectively seen in generations. Manitoulin has plenty of reasons to be proud of its people and communities and if your community has not won Harvest Glory Days in the past, perhaps this is the year to secure top honours.
Harvest Glory Days is also a great time to join with friends and neighbours to decorate community spaces around your neighbourhood. As an outdoor activity, decorating the community for Harvest Glory Days just happens to be among the safest things you can do as a group during these (hopefully) waning days of the pandemic.
So, get up and get moving, channel your inner decorator, and help make your community spirit known to one and all.
