Culture
Port Colborne hosts the annual Canal Days festival in recognition of the important role played by the Welland Canal in the history of the city. Originating as a small fair held at the Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum, it has grown to feature live music, an antique car show, fireworks, tall ships, a kite festival, and food from around the globe. The festival also highlights the presence of Lock 8, which at 1,380 ft (420 m), is one of the world's longest canal locks. The lock is intended as a guard to keep the water level on the Welland Canal constant independent of weather on the lake. Hence the ships are only raised or lowered one to four feet depending on the current water level in Lake Erie. Much of the festival centres around West St., which runs along the side of the canal, and has an excellent view of the Clarence St. Bridge, one of very few remaining lift bridges on the canal.
The Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum, located near the centre of town, is a resource for local history and archival research. In addition to a collection of historic buildings and artifacts, it opened up the "Marie Semley Research Wing" to foster research into local history, named to commemorate the long-standing efforts of a local resident who devoted hours to the museum.
The community features theatre venues with the professional Showboat Festival Theatre and the amateur Port Colborne Operatic Society. The company has been presenting annual productions since its inception in 1945.
Kinnear House is a local heritage property associated with the jurist Helen Alice Kinnear, the first woman in Canada to be appointed judge by the federal government, or to appear as counsel before the Supreme Court.
A curiosity in town is the "incredible shrinking mill" which is an optical illusion produced when viewing the federal grain elevator. When travelling east on Lakeshore road, the mill appears to move farther away as one drives closer.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“To assault the total culture totally is to be free to use all the fruits of mankind’s wisdom and experience without the rotten structure in which these glories are encased and encrusted.”
—Judith Malina (b. 1926)