It would be held prior to Canada Day, he added.

Ontario Power Generation Winter Festival of Lights chair and Canada 150 committee member Tina Myers said the group also wants to take advantage of social media and have people who immigrated to Canada to tell their stories through what she called the “I Became Canadian in Niagara Falls campaign.

“We want residents to tell us what it means to them to be Canadian. We want to use social media to feature these people in our community,” she said.

Myers added that an art expo would be held as a part of the committee’s signature event and local musicians are being asked to come up with an official theme song.

“Take-away packages” will also be created for schools and will include will work on Chapter House Comics, which publishes the Captain Canuck comic books.

“He’s Canada’s official superhero,” Dabrowski said. “We have an opportunity to work with that publishing company and actually creating our own comic with our own exclusive variant cover. We’d be the first city in Canada to actually have that.”

Coun. Wayne Thomson praised both Dabrowski and Myers for the efforts.

“Chris Dabrowski and Tina Myers are, in my opinion, two of the most important people in our community with respect to the promotion and the development of bringing people to our community,” Thomson said of Dabrowski for his work with Comic Con and Niagara Falls Oktoberfest and Myers’ stewardship of WFOL.

“This is Canada’s 150th birthday. Every community in Canada is celebrating and it is our job to make sure we are doing our part in celebrating this great country.”

Coun. Vic Pietranglo agreed.

“This is our time to make a stand and make an impression,” he said.

Coun. Kim Craitor joined in.

“The problem with Canadians is we don’t shout out enough how special we are in what we have to offer,” he said. “There are some countries that shout out a lot about how special they are and they’re — not in my opinion — that special.”

Council unanimously approved the funding request.

“Get used to saying the word sesquicentennial,” Mayor Jim Diodati quipped after the vote. “That’s a word we’ll all get used to saying.”