History

From 1992 to 1995, I set up a computerized Christmas light display at my house in Newmarket. 

1991 – My brother and I moved into the house.

1992 – I just put up lots and lots of lights.

1993 – My brother Mark and I created our very first homemade computerized light show. It was only 16 channels back then.

1994 – Still using 16 channels, I put up more lights and included a new huge 15 foot wide 3 dimensional star made with yellow lights and put it on the roof 30 feet off the ground.

1995 – This is when things got out of control.  Mark built a new 32 channel computerized board and upgraded the homemade software to a faster computer. It was a 386 PC with 4mb of RAM (wow, eh).  This is where I mounted a 25 foot Christmas tree with green lights to the roof with 16 channels dedicated to it. That summer, I upgraded the fuse panel to 200 amps. Since, in 1995 the display had grown considerably larger in size and in complexity, I felt that it could be used as a fundraising event for the Newmarket community.  It was a great success. Cars and buses lined up on the street in an orderly fashion to drive by and watch the show.  Thousands of people from all areas of the Greater Toronto area came to see the display.  I raised $4,022.50 for the Newmarket Hospital (now called Southlake Regional Health Centre). During that year, NOMA helped sponsor the display by donating some lighting materials.  The company (Club 103) also voluntarily matched my largest day’s earnings of  $1,025.83 for a total $5,046.00.  This was all collected by a coin donation drop box. 

1996 – 2006 – This is when I met my wife, got married and had 2 great kids.  Every year I wanted to put up the display, but timing never permitted it. One year I was out of a job. It would have been a hard sell to the family “I wonder if I can spend thousands of dollars on Christmas lights instead of looking for a job” ….I never gave up. Every Boxing Day, garage sale or garbage dumpster I walked by, I always had in the back of my mind, “Can I use this in the Christmas light display one year?”.  I have a chart that adds up the rough estimated cost to buy all this stuff retail and I was amazed that it added up to something like $15,000 without taxes.  Over the years, I've spent around $5,000.