Future Considerations

On a Saturday afternoon in October, an excited, perhaps slightly nervous group of young people gathered along with their parents and friends at Orangeville’s Town Hall Opera House to receive their 25 Under 25 Awards. Those of us who had organized the event were confident it would be a pleasant affair. But it proved much more than that. The youthful enthusiasm and extraordinary talent, along with the humour, compassion and commitment of these young men and women dazzled us – and brought the audience to its feet with cheers, tears and laughter.

In 1994, before most of the award recipients were born, the feature story in the first 24-page issue of this magazine was about the high hopes of two other new organizations, Theatre Orangeville and Museum of Dufferin (then known as Dufferin County Museum & Archives). Since then, the theatre and museum have become cultural pillars of the community, not the least for their exceptional youth programs.

This year, as the three of us planned our joint 25 anniversaries together, we agreed we didn’t want to look back – we’d been there and done that just five short years earlier for our joint 20th. Instead, we quickly jumped on the idea of our associate editor Tralee Pearce – to look forward by celebrating the young people in our community.

The call went out and nominations poured in. There is clearly no shortage of accomplished young people in the hills, and every one of the nominees would have been a worthy recipient. The creators, innovators and adventurers who ultimately did receive the 25 Under 25 Award came from all corners of Headwaters and represented a broad cross-section of accomplishments from arts and sports to technology and community service.

The mission of the museum, theatre and magazine is to tell and preserve our community’s stories – our history, our drama and our daily lives. It is exciting to realize the representatives of a new generation honoured at the October event, and now in these pages, are already actively shaping our new stories. We hope some of them will continue to do that right here at home, but we know others will take their stories wherever time and the winds, and their work and ambitions, carry them. Wherever they land, we have no doubt they will continue to be citizens and leaders who make the world a better place.

Every one of them is an inspiration, and collectively, in what can sometimes seem like dark days, they are assuredly proof 
the future is in good hands.