Seaforth 150: Chair Brenda Campbell takes the reins
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
This Civic Holiday weekend, Seaforth will be celebrating its 150th birthday and hosting a homecoming of epic proportions, all co-ordinated by Brenda Campbell who was not born in Seaforth, but has come to recognize it as her home.
“I love this community,” Campbell said in an interview with The Citizen. She says it’s been her home for the last 25 years and she’s done everything in her power to improve it, prop it up and support the people who live in Seaforth when she’s not busy selling houses, which is her day job and has helped make her one of the most recognizable faces in Huron County.
Taking the reins of this summer’s pre-eminent celebration in Seaforth was not really something Campbell says she was prepared to do right off the bat, but wanted to do her part to ensure that the party is one for the ages. This comes with an interesting historical wrinkle in Campbell’s life, in that she first moved to Seaforth just before the last big homecoming celebration. In fact, she remembers it being one of the first Seaforth experiences she ever had, despite being new to town and not really knowing anyone who lived there yet.
That experience, she says, was an important one that helped to galvanize her love for the community, even so early on in her time there.
It also informed her decisions around volunteerism and putting her efforts and talents into events that have served to bring the community together, especially its young people, through the wildly successful Seaforth Summerfest and the community Easter egg hunt.
Summerfest is the event that is undoubtedly closest to her heart, so it’s a nice turn of events that has Summerfest continuing this year, not in spite of the robust Homecoming event line-up, but as part of it.
That event has grown significantly in recent years, taking over the main street of Seaforth and filling it with inflatables, activities for children and booths populated by local businesses, churches, service clubs and other volunteers, all in the name of a great summer day on the main street of their beloved town.
It’s been through that event that she’s seen the true support and community spirit associated with Seaforth. She says that she’ll frequently get calls out of nowhere from people and businesses in Seaforth just wanting to make donations or be a part of Summerfest, whether it’s the Seaforth Community Trust, the Business Improvement Area or the local dentist, they’re all involved with Summerfest and happy to be a part of it and create a great day for the young families of the area.
From those early days of organizing and running that event alongside a number of dedicated assistants and fellow volunteers, Campbell’s role in the community has only served to grow in the ensueing years, which is why it only made sense to approach her when the Homecoming Committee needed a chair. She began the charge with a co-chair, but has since taken the reins alone.
To that end, in speaking with The Citizen, she acknowledges that it’s a ton of work to pull off an event the size of Seaforth Homecoming and that her success at the head of the table is entirely dependent on the support from her dozens of fellow committee members who are all taking their jobs, making them their own and knocking their tasks out of the park.
However, Campbell says she’s been fortunate over the years that, through her job as a prominent real estate agent throughout the county, she has come to know so many Huron County residents not just in Seaforth, but throughout the entire county. Because of this, she says, she feels as though she has been wholly accepted into the community, despite not being born in Seaforth or growing up there.
To wrap up, Campbell says that easily the event she’s most looking forward to over the course of the weekend is the Seaforth 150th Homecoming edition of Summerfest. The smiles on the children and the memories the event creates for young families in the area, as well as grandparents with their grandchildren, are just the icing on the cake for her when it comes to community events. It’s why she does it.