2012: Our Volunteer of the Year

JOHN BLOHM

Volunteers come in all shapes and sizes, and all demeanors too. John Blohm, the Creemore Echo’s choice for our 2012 Volunteer of the Year, could be described as gruff, perhaps. On the wrong day, you might even call him grumpy. But get on the right side of his smile, which you’ll easily do if you match his passion for our annual Santa Claus Parade, and you’ll quickly see he has a heart of gold.

John has been almost single-handedly running the Creemore Santa Claus Parade for the past five years, since the Creemore Lions disbanded and handed the event off to the Creemore Legion. We say “almost” because his family – his wife Marie, daughters Katharine and Joanne and others – have lent their hands as well.

For John, parades are a long-standing passion. He organized his first one in Shelburne in the late 70s. A trained pastry chef from Hanover, Germany who had emigrated to Canada on a whim in the late 50s, John had a ten-year career in the bread business before opting for the “simple” life in Terra Nova, where he and Marie purchased the general store in 1967. Ten years later, as a member of the Shelburne Kinsmen Club (he joined the club for its late-night poker games), John volunteered to organize that community’s Fiddle Fest parade when no one else was stepping up to run it.

In his typical style, John immediately set out to make the parade better than ever. After finding out that Premier Bill Davis had never been to the Shelburne Fiddle Contest, John made a wager with a fellow Kinsman that he would get Davis to lead the parade that year. We can only imagine the phone calls that followed, and sure enough, that year’s Fiddle Fest parade featured a convertible at the front with the Premier riding in the back seat. Beside him was none other than John Blohm himself.

“That was a damn good parade,” remembers John now. In addition to the VIP at the front, John had used his connections at Base Borden to have a couple of tanks delivered to Shelburne by train, where they were unloaded and marshalled into the parade. He also had the Golden Helmets, the OPP precision motorcycle team that folks will remember from the golden age of community parades, weaving their way down the main street. And of course, there were bands.

Bands are important, says John. Perhaps most important.

In 1980, the Blohms sold the general store in Terra Nova and moved into Creemore, and John joined the Lions Club. With his experience in Shelburne, it wasn’t long until he was running the Creemore Santa Claus Parade. He was in charge of seven parades during the 1980s, and eventually quit over a budgetary decision that made it impossible for him to hire a band. “Without a band, you have no parade,” he says, recalling that time.

John then joined the Legion, and five years ago, when the Lions disbanded, that organization moved to take over the Santa Claus Parade. Preferring to work alone, it wasn’t long until John was running the show.

Under John’s command, the Santa Claus Parade has had five great years, growing in scale and now featuring two bands, of course – the Beinn Gorm Highlanders and the Collingwood Collegiate Marching Band, a big-time operation that perennially includes a few kids from Creemore.

What people don’t see when they line Mill Street to watch the parade is the countless hours spent raising funds and encouraging participants, a process which John typically starts in June. Last year, when he was sidelined by a surgery, Marie and his daughters and son-in-laws took over, although John was still wheeled into the Simcoe County works yard on County Road 9 on the day of the parade, where he sat in his wheelchair and marshalled the floats into the ideal order.

“I can see the perfect parade in my mind, and I’m always trying to create it in real life,” says John, who takes great pride in the blend of horses, bands, floats and walkers that get viewers excited for the annual visit from Santa himself.

With health concerns growing and the insurance landscape changing in Ontario, John decided this year that the 2012 parade would be his last. Next year, the Creemore BIA will take over the event, and John has already devoted several hours to meeting with Creemore BIA president Corey Finkelstein, hoping to pass on the expertise he’s gathered over the years.

“You never know, I might have a hard time staying away from it next year,” he says with a grin, and its clear that he remains as passionate about parades as ever.

But was that passion alone what drove him to put so many hours into our parade over the past five years and on other occasions in the past? Not quite. John is also a believer in Creemore, and loves the feeling this town gives him when it is gathered in celebration on its main street (or at the Legion on July 1 – we mustn’t forget that John organized two huge Canada Day extravaganzas in 2010 and 2011 as well) .

“There’s a cohesion in this town that you don’t see in other places,” he says. “People are inclined to work together, and help each other. It’s a special place, and that’s why I’ve tried to do my part.”