Bid to twin Callander with Canadian namesake
Hopes move will boost the tourism profile of town
Plans to form informal links between Callander and it’s namesake community in Canada are to be explored in a bid to raise the Trossachs town’s profile.
Callander Community Council is to investigate the options open to successfully twin the town with Callander, Ontario.
The issue was discussed at Monday evening’s meeting of the community council after it was revealed that a Canadian holidaymaker, from Callander, Ontario, raised the potential twinning during a visit to the town.
Chairman Chris Corden felt the move would “help to boost the profile” of Callander as a tourist destination and open the way to the forging of links between school pupils from the towns.
Mr Corden this week said: “We get a lot of Canadian visitors and people from all around the world.
“They come for the walking and the natural beauty but also to explore their heritage.”
Mr Corden says that the price of officially twinning the two towns could prove too costly and suggested an `unofficial’ twinning could be the way forward.
A bid to twin Callander with a town in the south of France a number of years ago was dropped over financial constraints.
It was agreed the community council would contact the Canadian tourist who proposed the idea to see what links could be usefully formed.
Trossachs and Teith Tory councillor, Jeremy McDonald, who was in attendance, agreed to investigate the process involved in twinning.
Callander, Ontario, at the southeast end of Lake Nipissing in the Almaguin Highlands region of the District of Parry Sound, and the municipality is located on Callander Bay .
In 1880, George Morrison, a bookkeeper from Oxford County, Southern Ontario, travelled by ox-cart from Muskoka to Lake Nipissing. There he built a raft and floated his family and possessions across the lake to the south east bay.
Logging companies had taken interest in the abundant Eastern White Pine that grew in the area.
He was one of its first pioneers and his wife was the first white woman. On June 1, 1881, he opened a Post Office in his general store and named it after his parents’ Scottish birthplace – Callander.
Callander, Ontario, has a population of almost 4000 and its town motto is `four seasons of reasons’.
In 2003, the municipality was renamed from North Himsworth to Callander, adopting the name of its major community because `nobody knew where North Himsworth was’, according to the thenmayor Bill Brazeau,
Prominent people with links to Callander, Ontario, include Back to the Future actor, Michael J Fox, who briefly lived there.
The Dionne Quintuplets, the world’s first surviving quintuplets, born in May 1934, who rose to international fame at the height of the Great Depression, were also from Callander.