Becca Shron – Change in Orillia

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

I think I would change how tourists see it. A lot of tourists who come here see it as just a cottage community. They come here and stay at a cottage, or go camping and then leave. They just went to the beach and leave, they don’t actually explore the town itself.

And the town itself is so rich, and so thriving with the art community. Again with the downtown core of all the local businesses and all the young entrepreneurs starting businesses out. I wish that tourists who came here wouldn’t just see it as cottagers, they would see it as, here’s this thriving art community that we can explore and come see
and meet new people.

The flip side of that is, if there were one thing that you would never want to change about Orillia, what would that be?

I think the arts again. I really enjoy that part of Orillia and it’s always been important to me. As a kid, I used to go like every art festival, every art class I could find at the museum, every little street fair we had downtown. It’s so important to support local businesses, and small businesses, and our community is a lot of small businesses.

I love that our community reaches out to each other and helps each other, especially in times when it’s not going so well for everybody, like in the winter when there’s no cottagers and there’s no tourism, our community still sticks together and the arts comes together.