Happy New Year Toronto. Welcome to 2008.
That was the overwhelming sentiment at Nathan Phillips Square Monday night, as more than 40,000 of our closest friends gathered for music and musings in a celebration of the year gone by and one now in its infancy.
Of course long before the stroke of midnight the masses were kept entertained by the extended
Citytv family, starting with
CityNews' Merella Fernandez and
Dwight Drummond, who got the pre-show for the 23rd annual party going in style.
From there it was a veritable festival of sights and sounds, with
Gord Martineau,
Kathryn Humphreys and the
Breakfast Television hosts
Kevin Frankish and
Dina Pugliese throwing to major music talent including local rapper J. Diggz and Roz Bell.
And when everybody was good and in the spirit of things, the microphones were turned over to Grammy-nominated rockers Plain White T's, who led the crowd up to the final strokes of 2007 and into a bold New Year where they were welcomed by the cast of musical smash
We Will Rock You.
And while
the forecast was calling for snow on New Year's Day, the weather hardly seemed to bother the record crowd, which we helped keep warm by dolling out free hot chocolate throughout the night.
"Every year just gets bigger and better," noted Tina Cortese, Director of News Programming for
Citytv and
CP24, in the hours leading up to the big show.
We here at
Citytv are hoping that will apply just as much to the New Year, not just for all of our viewers and readers, but to the city of Toronto and all of its great people.
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