Fowl play

In 1981, an artist was snapped prepping Mother Goose for the Santa Claus Parade. Jessica Dee Humphreys tracks her down

He’s usually here on the third Sunday of November, signalling the arrival of the holiday season. But this year, you-know-who is coming to town on Saturday, Dec. 4 for Toronto’s annual Santa Claus Parade in a broadcast-only event.

Lining the streets to watch the parade had been a Toronto tradition as far back as 1905 when Eaton’s department store first hosted Santa on a single float that travelled from Union Station to the Queen Street storefront.

By 1917, the parade had seven floats, each featuring a nursery rhyme character. According to the historical timeline on the Santa Claus Parade website, “the biggest float that year was a giant swan carrying a band of musicians and clowns, with Santa in the centre of it all.” That was when Mother Goose was established as a parade mainstay.

When this photo was taken by the Star’s Dick Loek in 1981, Marlene Yaworski was putting the finishing touches on a freshly refurbished Mother Goose.

She had been working at Eaton’s when she learned Santa needed helpers. “I heard through the grapevine that they were looking for artists to help paint and decorate the floats,” she says. “I left my full-time job and worked that whole year on the parade.”

Yaworski, a retired artist and graphic designer who comes from a family of painters and musicians, says her year spent helping create the floats was a wonderful experience. “I did love that job, for sure,” she says.

In 1982, Eaton’s withdrew its sponsorship of the parade after 77 years. To keep the tradition alive, a group of business executives led by Ron Barbaro and George Cohon formed a non-profit organization and invited companies to underwrite each of the floats.

Until 2020, the Santa Claus Parade wound through the streets of Toronto continuously for 115 years, delighting hundreds of thousands of in-person spectators, and broadcasting live over radio (starting in the 1930s) and then television (since 1952) to millions globally.

This year, like last, people across the country and around the world can enjoy a made-for-TV parade in the comfort of their homes (locally on CTV and CTV2 at 7 p.m.). Hopefully, in 2022, children will be able to join Santa in-person again.

Yaworski remembers watching the floats go by with her family when she was young, as her father filmed home movies. There was one feature of the parade, however, that she did not enjoy. “I was, and still am, terrified of clowns,” she says. “I remember sitting on the sidewalk on University Avenue and one of the upside-down clowns saw me and started to come over.”

Luckily, Yaworski’s mother ran interference and implored the clown to move along, thus preserving happy memories for her daughter.