New Brockville Santa Claus Parade organizers discover silver lining amid negative online trolling
A group of social media naysayers, some of whom are commonly believed to be fake internet trolls, recently attempted to create controversy around Brockville’s upcoming Santa Claus Parade. But their attempts backfired, resulting in an inspiring coming together of the community.
“I hope you stand by your words because your message is going public,” Bill McKinnon stated in a message exchange with Facebook user Barbara Rose earlier this month.
After weeks of combating messages and Facebook comments from this particular Facebook user, McKinnon had enough and decided to publish a series of other screenshots from their conversation.
After years of being run by the Brockville Rotary Club, the former hosts relayed they could no longer take on the Santa Claus Parade in 2024. The City reached out to numerous service clubs and the torch was eventually passed along to co-coordinators Bill and Kate McKinnon. The McKinnons have a history of putting on exciting events in Brockville with their company Social Local (SO|LO). They saw this year’s parade as an opportunity to bring local businesses together to promote philanthropy and community engagement.
However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the new coordinators. The first instance of negative feedback the McKinnons received was when they announced that there would be a charge of $45 for commercial walking groups and $75 for commercial floats. This is common practice in many cities across Ontario, but not one Brockville has previously observed. Seeing as the parade is not funded by the City of Brockville, the McKinnons had to restructure the parade system to account for operating costs.
After seeing community backlash due to this announcement, an anonymous local business reached out to McKinnon and offered a generous donation to help cover expenses. Due to this unexpected donation, they were then able to waive participant fees, making the parade free once again.
The additional funds from parade sponsors will go toward two charities: KidsInclusive and Do It For Aaron (Aaron’s M.I.L.L.). Seeing as they consider local children to be the primary stakeholders of the parade, the McKinnons hope to continue this tradition and donate to two youth-focused charities every year.
Despite the event being free for participants, the McKinnons are still facing negative commentary about this year’s parade, and the loudest voice of all is Barbara Rose. In addition to sharing the conversation screenshots on Facebook, McKinnon wrote, “This negative rhetoric is exactly what we’ve been dealing with for weeks. Well, needless to say, 99.9 per cent sure Barb is a troll profile, if you join us by clicking that report button it sure would be appreciated.”
– Facebook user “Barbara Rose and some of her message exchanges with parade organizer Bill McKinnon
In the comment section of the post, Leslie Temple wrote “We’ve been trying to report this troll for weeks from the Prescott Facebook page with no luck.” Bree Griffin doubled down, writing “This is just a stupid fake profile that someone uses to bash everything and everyone in our community.”
Despite the negative reactions on social media, McKinnon told Brockvilleist, “We wouldn’t have gotten the levels of support that we got, and we wouldn’t have been able to facilitate the parade the same way if it hadn’t been for all those negative people. Those negative comments caught the attention of businesses that care about our community, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, this is important, so let us sponsor this event.’”
McKinnon continued, “Because of the types of negativity that we’ve been getting and those posts, they really just work against us trying to do good. So I’ve got no problem engaging with them and basically calling them out.” He explained that he has offered to meet up and grab a coffee with these Facebook users multiple times to discuss their concerns in person, but they have never taken him up on his offer.
McKinnon is choosing to remain positive and is eagerly awaiting the big event, which takes place this Saturday, Nov. 16 at 4 p.m.