‘Daytime Land’ a busy place

    The big tent at the Sorting Gap Marina wasn’t the only busy area of the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship last week.
    Not far away from all the hustle and bustle, children of all ages were having fun participating in an array of “Daytime Land” activities.
    In fact, Helena Guertin, who co-organized the activities along with Marla Hickerson of Thunder Bay, said youngsters were coming and going non-stop for most of the three days it ran.
    “I’m not sure number-wise how many kids we had, but it seemed we were busy all the time,” Guertin noted, adding there was no real way to track the number of children participating in all of the activities last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
    Those activities included parachute games, bubble-gum blowing contests, pizza- and doughnut-eating contests, crafts, a Thomas the Tank Engine play table, a sandbox, mini-putt, face-painting, and train rides—just to name a few.
    The children also celebrated the birthday of FFCBC mascot “Bobber” on Saturday.
    “It’s a really time-consuming job, but it’s great to see the kids happy and that they enjoyed it—it makes it worth it,” Guertin remarked. “And we got some information from the previous directors.”
    Guertin and Hickerson didn’t get on board as the Daytime Land co-ordinators until mid-June, when the resignation of the two previous directors threatened whether any children’s activities would run.
    “It was a lot of work, but all the directors were wonderful and we had a great bunch of volunteers helping out, too,” Guertin added.
    Some of the preparing the pair had to do was to acquire prizes and donations from local businesses. Since the Daytime Land activities were free, they didn’t have much money to spend.
    “The businesses are a great support. We really couldn’t have done it without them,” Guertin stressed, noting they gave away more than 300 gift certificates from restaurants like Subway and A&W as prizes.
    “We made sure we didn’t give two to anyone, so we know for sure we had more than 300 kids there,” she noted.
    Meanwhile, Safeway provided two cakes per day and McDonald’s offered juice for the children to enjoy.
    “It’s all for the kids,” Guertin added. “And when you’re working with them, the time goes by very quickly. . . . Some of the parents also said it was wonderful and that they appreciated it.”
    She deemed Daytime Land a “great success,” and said it’s something she’d possibly consider assisting with in coming years of the bass tournament.
    “I enjoyed it,” she enthused. “I wish we could have done more but we only had a short time to plan.”
    She indicated they went with the flow, changing their activities to suit the ages of the children who were there at the time.
    “I think [Daytime Land] is a good thing to have,” Guertin remarked. “I’m glad I could help out with it.”