Gear up and get ready to have some good old fashioned family fun because the Friends of the Museum won’t let something like a pandemic get in the way of SnOasis.
Celebrating its ninth year, this year’s SnOasis event has made a few tweaks to the nearly decade old formula. Instead of being an in-person event, the Friends have decided to keep it virtual and socially distancing safe, and instead of one event, the Friends have spread the fun out over the entire month of March.
Friends of the Museum members Sarah Marusyk and Sam Manty have long been involved with the annual event. For SnOasis this year, Marusyk has undertaken a lot of planning at the museum, still closed to the public due to COVID-19, but event originator Manty and the rest of the Friends are still making sure the event is as successful and fun as possible.
“I think initially we thought we would probably cancel it,” Marusyk said.
“And actually, SnOasis was one of the last big events in town before COVID happened last year. The reason we thought it was really important to do it [this year] in some capacity was that next year will be ten years, which blows my mind. It was something that started from such a genuine place and it just keeps growing. We decided about a month ago we started saying ‘we should have something.’ We wanted to keep the ‘sno-mentum’ going.”
While the in-person event has been put to the side due to COVID, Marusyk and the Friends have come up with a number of online activities and videos that they hope families will watch and participate in together.
“One of the big things we’re doing is a colouring contest,” Marusyk said.
“We know kids love colouring contests so we’ve got a beautiful whisky jack (Canada jay) that my brother designed a couple of years ago that we’ve adopted as our mascot. The other activity we came up with that we’re really hoping people will engage with is the photo mosaic. People can send us photos of their frontline family members, we call them ‘essential worker warriors.’ The idea is we’re going to put them together as one big mosaic that people can come down to the Rainy Lake Square and see if they can find themselves in the mosaic, and it will be a representative thank you to all those people who helped us get through this crazy year.”
The pages for the colouring contest are available at the Sunset Country Metis website to be printed out, or in person on the bulletin board in front of the museum.
There are also planned videos that Marusyk has and will continue to upload to the museum’s SnOasis Facebook event page that will guide families through some of the traditional aspects of in-person SnOasis events, like auger dogs and bannock on a stick. The videos are scheduled to go up on Friday or Saturday for the rest of the month, leaving two more videos to look forward to, but the same amount to catch up on from earlier in March.
It’s a significant milestone for a volunteer run community event to hit its ninth consecutive year, especially considering Manty, who was a major factor in creating the original event, couldn’t have known it would still be running almost a decade later.
“Nine years ago I was living at Montreal and studying in a program called Community Recreation and Leadership training and part of the final year of that program was to have an internship that was like a full-time job for three months, and then to come up with projects and different things you could implement,” Manty recalled.
“I wanted to be part of Fort Frances and see what I could do here. At the time I wasn’t planning on moving back, but I just wanted to see if I could come back and make some kind of difference here.”
That original event, which set the stage for eight subsequent years with snow painting, smooshboard races and maple syrup taffy, was in part a statement for the museum to help cement its place in the wider community. It helped more people see it as a place that was involved in the community and could offer more than just a look at the history of the region.
All these years later, Marusyk and Manty both feel the annual SnOasis has remained so popular because it brings the community together and offers families in town a day to spend together and have fun without breaking the bank.
“It’s just such a simple family-friendly fun event,” Marusyk said.
“We’ve never tried to overcomplicate it. It’s accessible and we’ve always made sure it’s been free and interesting for young people and older folks. And it just keeps evolving, which is really cool. It’s moved to different locations throughout town and now I think it’s found its home at the Rainy Lake Square. It’s simple but people love it, and we love putting it on.”
Manty agreed that enthusiasm of the Friends of the Museum members also helps to elevate the SnOasis events to such a beloved and anticipated status in town.
“It’s just being part of such a good group,” Manty said.
“The Friends of the Museum really put their hearts into everything they do. For myself, it’s not just another activity that we have to put on or we have to do, every year we’re excited about it again. I think just having a group that’s so excited about what they’re doing really shows, it makes everything a little bit more special, and I think as soon as a family comes out to it and tries it out, they realize ‘this is a good time, this is free family fun.'”
SnOasis 9, the all-virtual event, is running until the end of March, so there is still plenty of time to take part in the contests and activities. For more information, and to keep an eye on upcoming SnOasis activities, follow the Facebook page “SnOasis 9: Outside and Online.”
