Canyon Country festival starts today

Canyon Country is the place to be as the SCV Chamber of Commerce hosts the Canyon Country Family Jubilee, a full four-day weekend of sidewalk sales, carnival rides and entertainment designed to attract kids and shoppers to five different centers on the east side of town.

The fun begins today in the Canyon Country Village center at the corner of Soledad and Whites Canyon Road, where parents can partake in a sidewalk sale while the kids are busy riding carnival rides or ponies and getting their faces painted or trying their luck in a treasure hunt, with a live band on stage. Hours are 3-9 p.m.

It starts again at 3 p.m. Friday across the street at the Canyon Center (the Rattler's shopping center), with more carnival rides, ponies, sidewalk sales, face painting and a treasure hunt.

Saturday will see a 5K walk and other events at the Canyon Country (Food-4-Less) and Sand Canyon (Vons) shopping centers. Activities at the Canyon Country center will last from morning to night (8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.), starting with the 5K walk and ending with a live band, with the requisite carnival rides, sidewalk sales and treasure hunt in between.

And there's plenty on tap for kids Saturday at the Sand Canyon center from 9 to 2. You can start with the pancake breakfast while the kids get down-and-dirty building sand castles, jumping around in one of those air bounce things and picking out a cute puppy or kitten for you to take home and feed ... then take in another sidewalk sale and more live music.

Finally, on Sunday, the Albertson's shopping center at Sierra Highway and Via Princessa will offer more carnival rides and sidewalk sales, with a car show from noon to 6.

Headed by local CPA R.J. Kelly and recently appointed city Planning Commissioner Bob Kellar, who doubles as the chamber's Canyon Country committee chairman, the four-day event was cooked up by the chamber folks after last winter's successful "Noël to Newhall" street fair as a way of focusing attention on small businesses that depend on the community for support.

The chamber plans to hold Noël to Newhall and Canyon Country Family Jubilee every year, and they're talking about organizing a similar effort for businesses along Bouquet Canyon Road in Saugus next spring.

WELCOME to Santa Clarita: The Signal's annual Welcome edition is scheduled for publication in August, and if your non-profit organization, church, service club or other group is new to the valley or has changed location or officers in the last year, please forward your organization's name, address, phone, president's name, e-mail address, web site, etc., to Signal LifeStyle Editor Janet Gossom by FAX (255-9689) or e-mail (jgossom@the-signal.com) right away.

THE-SIGNAL.COM: Besides a new and hopefully even more user-friendly look this week, several exciting additions have come to The Signal's web site (www.the-signal.com) in the last few days.

Now you can dial up The Signal whenever you catch wind of a developing story around the nation or the world and find everything there is to know about it. A click on "Breaking News" will get you all the latest news, sports, business headlines and more, updated every 15 minutes.

And thanks to Signal programmer Paul Sisson, your friendly local paper now has searchable online archives. Sure, they only go back to June 6, when we started all this, but we had to start somewhere. Now you can click on "Archives," type in a few keywords, and actually expect to find the news story (or op-ed piece, sports story and yes, even Buck Naked) you're looking for.

If you missed the listing of parade winners in Tuesday's Signal and want to know where to go to collect your trophy, it's all there in the LifeStyle section this week. Be sure to check out the little parade slide show when you visit.