Carla Brown's wedding invitation will be among the memorabilia contained in a time capsule at Queensborough Community Centre.
Brown was searching for a place to have her wedding when she saw the community centre in a park setting and noticed its big deck.
"It was beautiful," she said of her July 18, 1992 wedding at the community centre.
Brown and her husband were so smitten with Queensborough that they moved to the community within two years of their wedding. Since then, they've celebrated many events at the centre, including most of their kids' birthdays, baby showers and Carla's 40th birthday.
"Anything you can think of that is normal, community bonding is done here at the centre," she said. "Family dinners, family gatherings."
Last summer, work got underway on a $7.67-million expansion and improvement project to the Queensborough Community Centre. Since the centre opened in 1978, the community has grown - creating a need for more community amenities in Queensborough.
Renee Chadwick, manager of the Queensborough Community Centre, said construction is going well and is on schedule. The project is aiming to be complete by December.
Because the Queensborough Day celebrations that are normally held in May have had to be cancelled this year because of construction, planning is underway for a May Memories event.
Community members are encouraged to attend the free tea that's being held on Sunday, May 27 from 1 to 3 p.m. and bring items for a time capsule being compiled in honour of the centre's history.
"We are asking families, neighbours and friends to share their stories about the centre, bring any memorabilia, whether it is black-and-white photos, receipts," Chadwick said.
In addition, memories are also being collected on a memory card where people will write the date of their first visit to the centre and what it meant to them.
"That will go into a memory box," Chadwick said about the card. "We are collecting them and will be putting some of them into the capsule."
Chadwick said the vision of the time capsule and the memory card is to capture the importance of the community centre in Queensborough.
"It's a very sacred place for people," she said. "With our new centre, the spirit of this community will go through it without a doubt."
Brown, chair of the Queensborough Special Programs Committee, said it's "beyond brilliant" that the centre is being expanded.
She's looking forward to May Memories and encourages community members to attend the event that's being sponsored by the Queensborough Community Centre and Queensborough Special Programs Committee.
The new 13,180-square-foot expansion the Queensborough Community Centre will include space for a licensed daycare, an expanded fitness centre, a public library branch, police offices and multi-use activity spaces.
"The construction is going well," Chadwick said. "We are actually going to be closing part of our building starting mid-June."
When the closure takes effect, the office will be relocated to the community centre's lobby. People will still be able to pay their water and sewer bills at the centre.
"We will still have washroom facilities," Chadwick said. "We still have our community library and places to sit."
The importance of the facility to the Queensborough community was evident when it was closed for several months following a fire in November 2007.
"People of this community were lost," Chadwick said. "They had a place to connect with people."
This September, the majority of activities taking place in the centre will be put on hold to allow the final stages of construction to take place.
"We will continue to offer programs through the elementary school and the middle school," Chadwick said. "We will also create a space in a multi-purpose room where people can still bump into each other and pay their bills."
The Queensborough Community Centre is located at 920 Ewen Ave. For more information about May Memories, call 604-525-7388.
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