Westman joins teddy bear hunt

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2020 (2225 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Now that southwestern Manitoba libraries, schools and playgrounds have closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, local parents have to get creative if they want to keep their children safe and active at the same time.

To solve this problem, residents of Souris and Killarney recently decided to hop on the teddy bear hunt trend that has been sweeping across North America in wake of this global health pandemic.

On March 21, pharmacy assistant Cindy Russell posted about this idea on the Souris Manitoba Talks Facebook page, suggesting that her neighbours should put stuffed animals in their window sills to encourage families to get out of the house.

“We have four kids here and two dogs,” she told the Sun on Saturday. “So going on a walk is a lot more fun when there’s something to look for, like a little scavenger hunt.”

Around the same time, Killarney School teacher Kayla Taylor put together a similar Facebook post for the Killarney Mb. Community Chat group, wanting her two young children to take full advantage of the warm spring weather.

“They were looking forward to going to the park, and now even that’s taken away from them,” she said, referencing the recent closure of many public playgrounds across the province. “So by putting things in our windows and our doors and stuff like that, it’s adding a little bit more excitement to just a boring old walk.”

Within the space of a couple days, both women said that the trend has caught on with large swaths of their respective communities.

By Russell’s count, at least 110 Souris businesses and residences have jumped on the teddy bear hunt bandwagon as of Saturday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Taylor told the Sun on Friday that she can now spot at least one teddy bear display on every Killarney street, which gives her two and five-year-old something new to see every time they venture outdoors.

“Plus, they’re finding things in nature that we wouldn’t normally stop and enjoy, like the geese flying overhead,” she said. “So I think it’s slowing us all down and helping us appreciate the small things in life right now.”

Taking inspiration from the 1989 children’s book “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” this trend began popping up in people’s social media feeds last week, since families across both Canada and the United States were craving an outdoor activity that falls within their governments’ social distancing guidelines.

To Russell, coming up with these activities is critical to staving off the kind of boredom that could leave Westman communities vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus.

For example, she has seen plenty of people wander into Souris’ Pharmasave to simply loiter rather than pick up essential supplies.

Moving forward, both women said that the teddy bear hunt format can also be applied to a variety of other activities, especial now that spring has finally arrived.

Russell suggests decorating Easter eggs and placing them in your windows. Bold parents can even be persuaded let their children paint on the glass.

As for Taylor, she said some of her fellow educators have even put their own spin on this concept by pasting inspirational phrases like “Raiders are resilient” and “We’ll get through this together” in the windows of Killarney School.

While each community is dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak in its own way, Taylor believes that little gestures like the teddy bear hunt will go a long way in terms of helping people endure this public health crisis.

“It think it’s going to sort of unite our community, because we’re going to have to work together … from afar.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson