Fort William’s Family Fields Day a hit

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Fort William’s Family Fields Day was a hit with a wide range of participants on August 31 at the Youth Centre in Fort William.

“It went awesome — I love my community and we need more of this, more unity, more as a whole community coming together,” says Marnie Greenwald, recreation coordinator at Fort William. “It means a lot for all this to happen with all the kids, all the adults, all the Elders.”

Greenwald says Family Fields Day was organized by staff from the Health Centre and Youth and Social Development for the community to have one last fun event before the students go back to school.

“It’s all ages, all for our community, we have 55-plus bingo, 18-plus cribbage, we have bouncy castles for four different age groups, we have a meltdown so people can go and dodge it,” Greenwald says. “We also have Dotty the Clown and a watermelon eating contest. And we have field races, which has four different age groups. We also have the water-slide.”

Kalem Goodchild, recreation assistant at Fort William, says he enjoyed sitting in the chair and being pitched into the water during the dunk tank event.

“It was good, it was nice and refreshing,” Goodchild says. “You get cooled off easy since it’s an especially hot day out.”

Kael MacLaurin, a Fort William youth, also enjoyed taking some throws including one that pitched Goodchild into the water during the dunk tank event.

“It was really funny,” MacLaurin says, noting that he also sat in the chair and was pitched into the water. “It’s so cold.”

Fort William First Nation Chief Michele Solomon says Family Fields Day is an annual event that used to be held at another location in the community along the shore of Lake Superior.

“All the front-line service staff come together and they put together all these different events and they make food, and it’s not just for the kids, although there’s lots of kids and family,” Solomon says. “It’s changed over the years but it’s still a family fun event. The community loves it, I love it. At a time when there’s so much struggle, it’s really great to bring together the community for some fun.”

Amanda Collins, manager of Youth and Social Development at Fort William, says they try to have activities for all the different age groups at Family Fields Day.

“I’m glad to see the crowd today that’s out from the community,” Collins says. “[It’s] just bringing the community out, having fun together and creating these memories, people getting together especially at this time with the addictions in the community.”

Harley Legarde-Beacham, emcee at Family Fields Day and health and wellbeing secretary at Fort William, recalls when they used to have three-legged races, wheel-barrel races, and foot races, as well as pie-eating contests and watermelon eating contests during Fields Day when he was growing up.

“It was amazing because it brought everybody together,” Legarde-Beacham says. “There’s a drug epidemic happening so we need more events like this to bring everybody together and get them out of their shell, especially after COVID.”

Legarde-Beacham says the COVID-19 pandemic separated everybody and made them feel they could not go out or see anybody.

“I think that played a big part in everybody’s mental health and it wasn’t good for any of us,” Legarde-Beacham says. “Unity is what every community needs and we need to focus on getting everybody back together and making sure our young people are safe and they feel cared about.”