THUNDER BAY -- The annual East End Easter egg hunt was a new experience for 10-year-old Jaydhen Dunn.
On Friday he joined about 2,000 other children at Frank Charry Park, patiently waiting the call to make a mad dash for treasure-filled plastic eggs, scooping up as many as he could in eager anticipation of the chocolate or prize inside.
“Pretty much I’ve never been here before,” he said. “I do like it. But it’s not an Easter Egg hunt. You just grab the eggs.”
The chocolate made it all worthwhile, he added, with a message to his peers.
“Oh, yeah – you get chocolate and you get to eat it. But don’t eat too much, remember that kids. Never eat too much chocolate or you’ll get a tummy ache.”
His buddy Hunter Meunier was equally excited.
“It’s just getting all the eggs and having a chance to get prizes,” the 10-year-old said.
But Easter isn’t all about chocolate, he said.
“It’s about getting to spend time with family,” the youngster said.
Ten-year-old Selena Morneau-Duchesne said it’s all about having fun.
“I don’t really care about all the prizes. I just want to get eggs,” she said.
Her friend Jordyn Sauve-Lambert said she’d never really been to an Easter egg hunt before either.
“So I’m really excited to share it with my cousins,” she said. “It’s exciting to see what you get in the eggs and the prizes too.”
Dozens of volunteers helped prep the park for the festivities, lining the outdoor rink with up to 8,000 prize- and candy-filled eggs four times over the course of the afternoon event, once apiece for each age group.
Egg hunt chairman Adam Schooler said the hunt has been happening for more than 20 years.
“It’s just a tradition,” said Schooler, a member of the Kinsmen Club of Thunder Bay, who have been hosting the event for nearly a decade.
“Everybody knows they can come here on Good Friday and they can see a couple of thousand kids. Everybody gets together and has a good time and gets some prizes and some chocolate.”
Unlike last year’s hunt, which was beset by icy conditions that led organizers to hand out the eggs to children in line, this year it unfolded as planned.
“This year the city did a lot of extra work to make sure the rink was safe for kids to be on. So we’re back to the normal egg hunt and scramble, which is what the energy is all about and all the kids have the most fun at.”
Ten-year-old Carine Picard took home the day’s biggest prize, a brand new bike.
“It’s awesome,” she said, four years after a friend won a similar prize. “It’s cool.”
