It’s exciting for me to be able to rise and speak about something that was quite a lot of fun. Last Saturday I had the privilege and the pleasure of participating, as we always do as elected officials, in our annual Santa Claus parade. The Rotary Club in Sault Ste. Marie hosts the Santa Claus parade; it’s a yearly tradition in our community. Unfortunately, for a couple of years, we weren’t able to participate in our parade as usual.

But I was very, very proud that, during the period of the last couple of years, I’ve been stockpiling these little mini sticks and pucks that we had my office staff put together. I really want to thank my staff in the office—Kathy Beattie, Jen Bellerose and Edie Suriano—who worked tirelessly, putting together all these pucks and sticks. We had 5,000 of them on a trailer and went down Queen Street in Sault Ste. Marie. The look on the kids’ faces was absolutely out of this world. They were so excited.

I really want to thank my wife, Heather; my mom, Lina Romano; and my three boys, Jayden, Jackson and Jarrett, who helped in distributing the sticks; and, of course, all of my staff, again, Edie, Jen and Kathy, as well as Carrie Suriano and Steve Shaw, Jaelyn and Paige, and also Mike—special thank you to you all for helping me out.

It was a huge success, although I had to run up and down the street quite a bit. We had a blast. The kids had a blast. It was absolutely outstanding, and so good to have them all back out again.