THUNDER BAY – It didn’t take Alexa Dysievick long to forge out a plan of attack for Friday’s annual East End Easter Egg Hunt.
The 10-year-old, taking part in the event for the first time, surveyed the field next to the Slovak Legion – a last minute fill-in when the traditional Frank Charry Park site was deemed unsafe – and decided charging full steam ahead was the best approach to ensure she collected the most number of plastic eggs.
It worked out beautifully, the youngster filling her basket alongside her sister Gianna.
“I was just grabbing them one after another,” she said. “It was kind of a trail, so you just grab one and grab one and go a little further, and sometimes going right to the middle. Everyone goes around the perimeter, so I grabbed them from the middle.”
Her sister, also 10, was thrilled with how things unfolded on Good Friday.
“It was cool, it was fun,” Gianna said. “It was our first year and there were a lot of people here. I loved collecting the eggs because it’s fun collecting them.”
Nine-year-old Envy Atwood joined her cousin Blair Murray at the Easter egg hunt, and said she had a blast, despite the blink-and-it's-over frenzied pace each time a new age group was brought onto the field to begin the hunt.
“You get to run around and pick them up. It’s so fun,” she said.
“Me and my cousin, we saw a whole bunch of eggs and you just have to go for those eggs. But if someone took them, you just have get the other ones. I got about 10 eggs.”
Envy said she had plenty of experience to draw upon.
“I’ve been doing it every year since I was three years old,” she said.
Cousin Blair also had a lot of fun and excitement.
“It was fun because I got to collect so many eggs,” Blair said.
Hunt chair Joe Woodgate of the Hillcity Kinsman Club, who have staged the 25-year-old event for the past decade or so, said they put together about 10,000 eggs which they divided between four age groups, and estimated about 1,000 or so children came out to take part in the free event.
“It looks like a pretty good turnout today,” he said, despite temperatures hovering at -10 C.
“It’s actually the most fun event we do. We get to see the immediate impact, the smiles on the children’s faces. That’s what we want to do. That’s our goal.”
Most of the eggs were stuffed with chocolate, but a few in each category also contained prizes, including bicycles donated by Canadian Tire.
