Ted Reeve – Change in Orillia

If there was one thing you could change about Orillia, what would it be? 

The thing I would – well the thing that we are evolving and working for change to me is, the relationship with the Indigenous community, so we understand it as a place of history for the last 5,000 years rather than the last two or three hundred years.

Orillia has potential to understand the depth of the cultural relations with the Indigenous people, our settler history, our place geographically. This was a place of first contact and the French and Indigenous relations began here with Champlain and others so it’s a place of getting to know each other as communities.

The dark side of that history is it’s the place of the first industrial school, first reservation, so it needs to be recognized that we have both a positive and a negative history and I think it’s ground zero for attempting to do something differently as Canadians.

If there was one thing that you would never change about Orillia, what would that be?

Well I do appreciate – and we acknowledged this earlier – is the volunteerism and community spirit, and the spirit of people’s concern for each other. It’s a really heartening part about living in Orillia.