Rankin rec director ready for first Canada Day
Rankin Inlet recreation director A.J. Curley says when it comes to something like Canada Day festivities, the recreation department takes care of celebrations and games for the community to participate in.
Curley said his department usually gets together with the local Legion, which hosts a barbecue for everyone who comes out on Canada Day.
He said the Legion’s involvement with the community barbecue really takes a load off of the recreation department during the holiday festivities.
“The Legion’s participation really helps out a lot,” said Curley. “Besides taking care of the celebration itself and lining up the games, there’s also ordering in supplies that the community likes to have on Canada Day, like ice cream, pop, water, that kind of stuff. So we get all of that supplied out for the community.
“So, when you get right down to it, it’s pretty much doing everything we can to make sure the community has as much fun as possible with things like doing a parade with the fire department, games for kids and games for adults.”
Curley said he figures out how many people to plan for by going off of orders and schedules from recent years.
This year, he said they’re hoping to host the festivities outside of the AEM Arena, which would also help make things easier on the rec department.
“We’re looking at, probably, a minimum of 1,200 people coming out, with a chance of that figure rising, maybe, to 1,500 or so during exceptional years.
“This will be my first time ordering for Canada Day. I started here maybe a month after Canada Day this past year, so I didn’t have any part of the planning or ordering for the event.
“Technically, this is my first one. I’ve always helped out with things when I worked with recreation as a summer student, but I didn’t get into the logistics of everything. I was just a manual labourer.
“It was always fun to help out with games and everything in that role, working at the dunk tank and making sure everybody was having fun.”
Curley said he’s mainly going to order barbecue food and various supplies for the community.
The recreation department has an overall budget for the event, from which it also gives out cash prizes during the day.
“I’m not really too sure of the budget just yet, and, as far as the games themselves go, we’ll just go with what were run during past events and, maybe, some other things that they’ve done. I’m sure everyone will have a lot of fun.
“As a kid, I always enjoyed the Canada Day festivities. With the amount of stuff recreation does for the community, I, as a kid, liked to join in on as many of the things that they provided just to, hopefully, win some kind of prize. That kind of gave me the momentum to say, have fun with everybody else and enjoy a good day.
“Things are shaping up well for my first one. I’ve got a whole, big summer crew to help out with things, so I feel that things are going to run smoothly.”
Darrell Greer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kivalliq News
