It’s George Morano Day This Thursday
By John Swartz
Thursday, September 4 is George Morano’s 90th birthday. It’s also officially George Morano Day in Orillia as recognition of 44 years of service to the community with the Orillia Police Department, the Orillia Fire Department and three terms on City council.
It’s all the fault of his wife of 67 years, Mary Anne.
“I was trying to come up with something. He doesn’t need anything. I thought, he had a lot of years with the City. I called Don McIsaac and he didn’t realize that, so he said leave it with me. He got back to me about four or five days later and said, “I think we can give him a day.” I said, “What do you mean a day?” “George Morano Day,” the mayor replied,” Mary Anne said.
Oddly enough, their son, Colin was facing the same conundrum, what to do for a milestone birthday.
“He said, “mom I called them, I had the same idea,”” Mary Anne said. This generated a second proclamation, but for reaching the age of 90 instead of recognition for years of service to the City.
As a rookie cop with the Orillia Police Department, George Morano gained a level of fame by appearing in a photo in a Toronto newspaper, front page, carrying a case of beer. This was in 1963, beating Gordon Lightfoot for the space during the Mariposa Folk Festival.
“It was becoming just unbelievable,” George said. Attendance at the festival had ballooned from 5,000 in 1961 to more than 20,000 in 1963.
“The thing was, we had officers stopping cars on the main street. We would check the car and if it had booze we’d confiscate it and then we wrote them up. Eventually the chief, (Edward) McIntyre, said we haven’t got any more room for booze, so just take it and dump it out. So I had this case of beer and I was heading over, we had a dump behind the police station, and this guy had money in his hand and was trying to buy the beer.”
The police station was in the Sir Sam Steele Memorial building at the time. They had so many tickets issued and cases of beer on hold there was no more room so they started just taking the beer and dumping it without issuing tickets.
The festival was banned from being held the next year. Interestingly, George was on City council when it was approved to return to Orillia in 2000.
There was another photo featuring George.
“I got a call about this girl tramping on plants in somebody’s garden,” George recalled. It turned out a toddler had escaped her home minus all her clothes, and was running around Colborne Street yards.
George was born in South River and came to Orillia from Magnetewan when his parents moved to Orillia n 1941, George said his parents were drafted to work in, “the war plants. My dad worked in Canada Casting and my mom worked making bombs.”
After graduating from high school George joined the Army 1954 and was a paratrooper. He was stationed in Germany as part of the occupation. After the army he worked at Bell Telephone (with former mayor Clayt French).
In between his modelling career and seven years with the police department and becoming a council member he shifted to the Orillia Fire Department.
“Ed Forman (then a councillor) thought with my experience and they were looking at (starting) a fire prevention department,” George should apply.
“It was very difficult work, long hours for a number of years,” as he began inspecting properties in the City. Fire inspectors have a lot of power to demand property owners make corrections to their buildings, or uses, in order to make them safer. Since the department was new, one can imagine it was a long process going through the City looking for trouble spots which had gone unchecked for decades.
“Lots of places, they weren’t used to having inspections.”
“I also did the investigations of fires.” When asked if there was anything notable about that, he lit up. “John Palmer! John was a school teacher and a reporter (and former mayor). We had a fire on Peter Street. I worked my way up to the top when the fire was out and who do I meet at the top of the stairs? John Palmer.”
“Twenty seven years later I retired. The city manager asked me if I would consider staying on. (during a transition to a new fire chief, deputy chief and fire prevention officer).”
“I stayed on for another nine months and then some of the guys mentioned to me about running for city council,” George said. George had to retire again because you can’t work for the City and be on council. George was elected three times to council.
When it comes to his work on council, George is hard pressed to come up with anything he was responsible for.
“Anything that was done had to be done by the majority.” He does admit to a bit of arm twisting on occasion, but doesn’t recall any specific item or issue he thought he should champion. “Back in those days most of the things used to work pretty good. We had a pretty good group of councils when I was there.”
What does George think about having a day named for himself?
“I’m honoured of course, but I think there’s lots of people that probably did as much as I did.”
There will be a party with family coming in from all over, but George expects to spend part of the day doing what he always does, meet up with friends for his daily, mid-afternoon coffee (2 p.m.) at the Tim Horton’s at West Street and Fittons Road.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia)
