Family Day furnishes fun

Children and adults alike enjoyed the activities, installations, and treats on offer at this year’s edition of Family Day, organized by the Kanesatake Health Center (KHC).

KHC’s child and youth program coordinator Jadyn Lauder and her team put together a full day of programming, including a traditional social, informational booths, local vendors, face painting, balloon making, and a free lunch.

Meanwhile, Reviving Kanehsatà:ke Radio 101.7 FM provided the music and conducted interviews with participants.

“It’s a day of fun and family and getting everyone together,” said Lauder. “And we’re super grateful for the weather. This morning, it was looking a little bit rainy, but then it turned out to be a beautiful day. It’s windy, sunny, it’s everything we needed.”

While last year’s event had to be skipped due to scheduling issues, over 200 people came to the Powwow Grounds on Friday to reunite for the seventh annual edition of Family Day.

“We have a lot of amazing and local booths here, too, in addition to health centre booths,” said Lauder. “There’s recreation, there’s the nursing department, there’s social services. There are all sorts of different things going on, to spread the word, spread more information about what we’re doing.”

KHC also set up a field for soccer and lacrosse as part of the day.

“Lacrosse is really big right now in our community,” said Lauder, noting that the Kanehsatake Warriors put together teams in several age brackets. “That’s a lot of kids to have in the community to be a part of lacrosse.”

Children also had access to three fun bounces, and other games were set up near the booths.

Booth spaces were free of charge at Family Day. “For them to be here to advertise either their baked goods or their traditional crafts, it’s a way to give back to the community and to encourage local entrepreneurs,” said Lauder.

Karyn Wahsontiiostha Murray, the founder of Gardens of Hope, was able to share her message that “healing starts from our roots” as well as give away free plants and seeds to attendees during the event.

“People know about the garden and what we’re doing more this year. As they’re coming, they’re interacting more, so hopefully they’ll start wanting to show up at the garden and take part in the activities that we do,” Murray said. “It’s just nice to be able to start doing what we want to do, which is giving back.”

KHC community birth keepers Taionthahine Nicholas and Patricia Gabriel offered information at their booth about their services. They also gave out feminine hygiene products such as reusable pads and diva cups.

“We’re birth keepers, so we assist women that are pregnant during labour and postpartum,” said Nicholas. “And we do a lot of educational work, prenatal classes, moon teaching classes where they learn about menstruation, so we work with the youth and women and babies.”

Their booth also served as a space for comfortable breastfeeding in the shade and a baby changing station.

“It’s not something that you see often, the work that we do,” said Gabriel. “It’s very relational work, so we just wanted to generate some awareness that we’re wanting to bring that back to our community.”

Community members were invited once again this year to submit a dish for the strawberry bake-off in the hopes of winning first place. This year, adults were competing for an ice cream maker, and participants 15 and under could win a baking tool bundle.

Two-time winner of the strawberry bake-off Isabelle Nicholas participated once again with a fruity creation.

“I called it a strawberry surprise. It consists of honey graham crackers, strawberries obviously, Cool Whip and Jell-O pudding mix, so I put it all together, and throw it in the fridge overnight,” she said.

This year’s winners were Emily White in the adult category and Greyson Gabriel in the 15 and under group.

Community members can look forward to the same winning formula for next year’s Family Day, with activities for all to enjoy. Lauder said that as new small businesses start, that will be reflected in the next editions of the event.

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