– by George Dyke….
There are some events where everything comes together just right. Such was the case for our Citroën Autoclub Canada spring outing on Saturday May 2, 2015.
After cold and damp April we monitored the weather forecast carefully for the first weekend in May. Things looked promising, and the weather for the day was perfect! 20 degrees Celsius and sunny!!
We gathered at John McCulloch and Chis Deja’s home in Oakville and from there took a lovely back road route through the Niagara Escarpment and over the rolling hills to the Paris/Brantford area.
Club member Pierre Cambillard suggested this year’s destination; a drive to Paris Ontario with a visit to the Bell Homestead in Brantford. The Bell Homestead is where Alexander Graham Bell was inspired to create the telephone. In fact he made the first long distance tests there, on his parent’s farm, calling Paris 8 km away.
Since we were visiting Paris in the springtime, Pierre who lives in Paris, took the initiative to contact the town council can local businesses in Paris to announce that Citroëns would be heading their way.
A section of the main downtown street was reserved, the Paris town cryer, Larry Davis, was decked out in full costume to announce our arrival, and the Mayor, Ron Eddy, drove his 1954 Packard to greet us and make an official welcome speech.
Pierre Cambillard, George Dyke, Paris Mayor Ron Eddy and Larry Davis
As we parked and explained the cars to the interested town’s folk the Paris Bakery Shop provided us with Citroën chevron cookies and a beautiful cake!
We spent 2 hours in Paris having lunch and checking out the local merchants.
About 4 pm we left Paris and ventured along a scenic road just east of the Grand River to the Southworks Antique Mall in Cambridge. And from there some of us took another back road route back to Milton where we had delicious dinner at a local pub.
After a long cold winter, there is a strong urge to get our Citroëns on the road again and it was nice to see so many people out for our first driving event of the year.
View the full photo gallery of the day’s events here.
