Family Day celebration was a rollicking success

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Wet and cold weather wasn't enough to detract carnival organizers from staging the water balloon toss at the Gitxsan First Nation's inaugural Family Fun Night.

Held in conjunction with the declared International Family Day on May 15, hundreds of community members poured into the Gitanmaax Hall for frivolities.

The hall was large enough to accommodate the event, yet small enough to offer a constant swarm of activity for more than two hours.

Twenty-one booths with food and games meant there was plenty to do at the festival.

Co-ordinating this party was Lisa Mowatt, a family facilitator with the Gitxsan Child & Family Services Society (GCFS), the night's primary sponsor. Family Fun Night came out of the society's decision to celebrate the global family day.

"This is to bring families together, and the theme this year is Connect with Kindness," Mowatt said.

Most of the prizes and food were paid for by GCFS, with some sponsorship by local businesses as 50 volunteers manned the booths and prepared the event. Mowatt herself spent the majority of the evening at the fishing table handing out fishing poles and giving away toys to players of all ages.

"There are no age restrictions," she said about a 28-year-old that wanted in on the fun. "The whole family gets involved here."

While children were scurrying about among the Jello eating contests, hockey shoot, sack races and the outdoor water balloon and egg tosses, driving the affair was Murphy Greene. If this had been a circus, he'd have been the pitchman. Giving his vocal cords a workout during the entire affair, Greene, a First Nations access co-ordinator at nearby Northwest College, was never seen without his cordless microphone filling in any noise vacuum with his constant chatter.

One of the hotly contested challenges was the Fear Factor, a spectacle consistently promoted by Greene, requiring its participants to swallow a combination of sauerkraut, pickled onions and a raw egg. Consuming this concoction in a stomach-churning time of 13.5 seconds was the winner Mark Louis, saying the trick was to think about other food.

"Just pretend it's candy, that's all I did. Gulping down the egg was what I was doing when I was in shape (weight training)," Louis said. For his victory, he won a pizza.

All of the events were free, but to prevent line-ups, coupons were issued to make sure that everyone was involved early. Once the evening progressed, the coupon system was relaxed and the original two hours allocated for the festival grew to three.

The immediate success of Family Fun Night was observed by the president of GCFS, Nikat'een Frances Sampson. Already envisioning next year's event to be held in another community within the territory, Sampson believes that aside from the immediate gratification of the food and the games, the objectives of why the event was staged were met.

"To enhance families by being together and to enjoy and encourage children to participate," Sampson said, herself a volunteer during the evening's festivities. "A lot of the children tend to be shy and this way everybody gets to try."