A former Burnaby school trustee has taken to Twitter to celebrate Canada’s big 1-5-0.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Mondee Redman spotted a tweet about the 100-day countdown until 2017 and the country’s birthday.
The following day, she announced on the social media platform that she’d tweet “a Canadian thing” every day until July 1, using the hashtag #Canada150. Those things would be collectables Redman had lying around the house.
“I have a Canada 1967 mug in a china cabinet. I just thought, hey I’m going to post this, and just kind of went from there,” she said of her first tweet. “I have a lot of neat stuff, and I don’t get to show it off to enough people. I love Twitter for this.”
Redman is a fourth-generation Canadian. Her great-grandparents homesteaded in the prairies.
“We always had stuff around the house, and I come from people who valued and collected certain things, so I grew up with items,” she told the NOW, adding she describes her style as “eclectic” and “cheery Canadian.”
Redman’s also been to a lot of church and garage sales, buying things here and there.
Her #Canada150 thread lists a host of items, including: Carlings beer bottles, salt and pepper shakers from Swift Current, Sask., Expo ’67 plaques, a coin bank from Dawson Creek, a B.C. centennial glass, a Confederation Train brochure, a Canadian Forces Snowbirds bumper sticker, a stamp commemorating the 10th anniversary of NATO, a Kim Campbell autograph from the 1993 Progressive Conservative leadership race and a 1986 thank you letter from CBC’s The House, for participating in Parliamentary Pursuits.
“I was a geeky kid, what can I say?” said Redman with a laugh. “I listened to The House.”
The longtime Burnaby resident added the response to her social media posts has been “very positive.”
“I get comments from all parts of Canada. I just put up something, and I wasn’t sure what year it was from, and I had a Twitter friend from Norway find out the year, and tweeted it back.”
Asked if she has plans to continue posting past July 1, Redman responded with a maybe.
“It depends on what I find,” she said.
The ultimate goal of her social media endeavour is to show “that Canada’s a cool place to be.”
“There’s a lot of neat things, just look around,” she said.
And don’t be surprised if Redman starts tweeting 125 items for Burnaby’s 125th birthday this year.
“I’m pretty sure I have 125 I can do."
To follow Redman’s #Canada150 thread, find her on Twitter @MondeeRedman.
