by Brent Eades
The Town recently announced that as part of the current cleaning and restoration of the water tower on Paterson Street, “the tower will also be refinished with a new white and blue colour scheme along with a rebranded logo,” approved by Town Council at a meeting on April 16 2013.
A rendering of this logo is available on the Mississippi Mills website. It shows that the decades-old slogan “Almonte The Friendly Town” will be replaced with simply “Friendly Almonte.”
I can see this, I suppose. Strictly speaking we are no longer a “town” — in the purely legalistic sense of the word — but rather a ward of the amalgamated municipality of Mississippi Mills.
But it does seem a pity to lose the slogan that has been welcoming people to our community for generations. We may not be a town as far as the provincial government is concerned, but we surely are in every other sense.
Out of interest I decided to search the online Almonte Gazette archive to find out how long we’ve been “The Friendly Town.” It appears the slogan was chosen sometime prior to March 1953 by the Chamber of Commerce for use in a promotional booklet. Link (story at top-left)
I also found a reference on Google Books, from a 1952 issue of Civic Administration magazine: “As you near the town, the first thing you see is a big steel standpipe jutting skyward above the leafy trees. On it in six-foot letters are the words, WELCOME TO ALMONTE The Friendly Town.”
I would be curious to hear what others think.
