I Triple Dog-Dare You!

It's the first of December! And now that the late November hiatus is over, Thursday will now be the regular day for DE/VL Design's weekly blog. So without further ado, let's get started with something sure to get everyone into the holiday spirit!

A few weeks ago, Niki shared a bit of information with me that she had picked up from a longtime St. Catharines resident about how a few exterior scenes from the classic holiday movie A Christmas Story had been filmed outside of a school not very far from where we now live.

FUDGE! (Only I didn't say "Fudge" . . .)

How awesome is that? Pretty awesome. We looked into it and discovered that the school in question, Victoria Public School (though now no longer operating as a school, but as a women's shelter) is just around the corner from the end of our street! We grabbed the camera and set out on one of our shortest, but most fulfilling movie location adventures yet.

While the building that had doubled as Warren G. Harding Elementary School is actually located on Niagara Street, most of the playground scenes were filmed around behind the school, in an area that has now been converted into the shelter's parking area and a recent townhouse complex known as Victoria Estates.

Because of the new housing development, many of the original landmarks are now gone, but it was still easy to find the famous spot where poor Flick was triple dog-dared into sticking his tongue to the frozen flagpole by Schwartz and Ralphie.

The pole at the corner of Gibson Place and Fitzgerald St. is long gone (though sharp-eyed Niki was quick to point out the new flagpole in the backyard of the house that now stands where the infamous dare went down), but a nearby telephone pole substitutes nicely for recreating the iconic scene.

Incredibly, the houses directly across the intersection look exactly as they did in the background of the shots where Flick is trapped by his own tongue as the rest of the kids run back to the school after the recess bell rings.

Of course, if you want to learn more about all the shoot locations from A Christmas Story, there's really only one place to go: A Christmas Story House.

Want to see the Triple Dog-Dare in it's entirety? You can watch it on Youtube.

Happy Holidays everyone!

-DE