Frosty Friday: Worldwide Connections

It's hard to believe it is already time for Frosty Friday again. 

This week I have a poignant experience to share with our readers. Shortly after launching our Frosty Festival project last week I received an email from South Korea. A former Mount Pearl resident, Lothian Taylor, has been living abroad for over 5 years, but had caught sight of our project online. 

Lothian had a simple request for us. Growing up her family had been close friends with Dawn Cleary, who had been crowned Carnival Queen at a Frosty Festival in the late 1990s. Sadly, Dawn passed away in 2014 after a battle with cancer. Lothian was hoping that we might have images from the year that Dawn was crowned Carnival Queen that she could pass along to Dawn's family. 

Lothian gave us a range of years that Dawn might have been crowned Queen, and after a few false starts, we were able to determine that she had won in 1998 and found a number of wonderful of images of Dawn performing her Carnival Queen duties. 

With the images sent to Lothian, I was left to think about the connection we had just made. The Frosty Festival had facilitated this communication, and it is a testament to the love, community and relationships that the Frosty Festival bring to the community of Mount Pearl. 

We are honoured to have played a small role in sharing these photographs with Dawn's family and friends. From what we heard from Dawn's family and friends, she was a wonderful person and will continue to be dearly loved and cherished in hearts and memories. 

Dawn Cleary

1980-2014

Frosty Festival Carnival Queen 1998

If you have memories of Dawn, the 1998 Frosty Festival or any other Frosty Festival you can share them online at https://bit.ly/2H6vrZb.

Admiralty House Communications Museum will also be collecting photographs from the community to scan for this project. If you have photographs you are willing to share please contact the research team at 709-748-1124 or admiraltyhouse@mountpearl.ca.