ELORA – Elora’s Longest Barbecue took over West Mill Street yesterday, honouring Food Day Canada.
Food Day Canada was founded by Anita Stewart, an Elora resident who was Canada’s first Food Laureate at The University of Guelph.
Stewart pushed for the creation of Food Day Canada in response to the mad cow disease outbreak in 2003.
“Now we’re 20 years plus of doing Food Day Canada and this is Elora’s way of celebrating Anita who was one of our prominent residents and a huge influence on our local culinary scene,” explained Maclean Hann, chair of the Elora BIA.
Last year, Hann explained that they had estimated about 500 people would turn out and they had 3,000 attendees. This year, Hann said they began promoting the event earlier, and expected to see 10,000 visitors.
“This is our second shot at this in Elora so we kinda knew what to expect, a little bit” said Mann. “And it’s just a big team effort. So it’s a lot of planning a lot of discussions with the Township, closing the road, talking to the OPP, health and safety, there’s a lot of things that go into it and we’ve got a great team making it happen.”
This year features celebrity chef Michael Smith. Smith has appeared on the Food Network and is currently the host of FibeTV1’s Chef On Fire.
“We’ve had prominent chefs,” explained Hann. “We haven’t necessarily had someone with Michael’s profile so we’re really excited to see what that does for the event.”
