Halloween lovers in Dryden can get their candy fix a little earlier this year.
Trunk or Treat, an event where vehicles are parked in a lot with their trunks decorated and filled with candy to give out to trick-or-treaters, is taking place on Saturday and is organized by the Dryden Fall Festival.
Spokesperson Laina Smith said it’s appealing to parents of young children like herself ,“the idea that I don’t have to get the kids in and out of the car or walk them up and down every driveway or porch stairs, it’s pretty convenient.”
"It’s also a lot more accommodating to children with different abilities,” she said. “They could easily go through the parking lot as well.”
Smith said they moved up the event a couple of days earlier than Halloween because they thought parents would appreciate it being on the weekend instead of a weekday, when they may be busier.
“We thought maybe that it would make it a little easier for them and more relaxing right? You can go out with the family and have fun and not worry about bedtime or anything. So it’s this Saturday at The Centre from 4 to 7 p.m.”
“It should be interesting to see what the turn out is like because a lot of people are die hard trick or treaters, so when it was on Halloween, people were still going out in the neighbourhoods too,” she said. “But now that it’s on a weekend and it’s not Halloween, maybe we will get more families from out of town coming in. Maybe from Sioux Lookout, or Ignace or something to enjoy the event as a weekend family excursion. We’re not really sure. We’re going to find out.”
Smith also said the event has “grown so big, that we decided to move it to The Centre parking lot. We could fit more trunks in and it’s definitely a much more central location within neighbourhoods in Dryden, as opposed to the [Laura Howe Marsh]. So that’s why we moved it to the centre this year.”
She said more than 30 trunks will be coming this year including bigger, industrial vehicles like an EMS ambulance and a fire truck. Provincial police are bringing their big command bus, Smith added said.
“Last year we had 1,200 people total.” Smith said. “And every year we’ve run out of candy. So we just keep raising the amounts we tell people to anticipate and then we always exceed it so, we kind of raised it a lot and planned for 1,000 children.”
This is the final event that the Dryden Fall Festival has planned to get the community into the Halloween spirit. They had put on the Laura Howe Haunt in the middle of the October.
Dryden’s is just one of the a few Trunk or Treat events going on in the Northwest.
Sioux Lookout already held theirs on Saturday with about 250 trick or treaters taking part in the fun event put on by the Friends of Cedar Bay.
Organizer Dorothy Broderick said the event was a lot of fun this year.
“We do ours as a drive through and find that it works really well that way,” she said. “We do hope to do it again next year along with our haunted trail.”
And in Fort Frances, the public library and technology centre is hosting its Trunk or Treat event on Monday evening from 5 to 7 p.m.
CEO Joan MacLean, said they are all really excited looking forward to having a return to a normal trunk or treat as the pandemic prevented them from having indoor events.
“We have 17 trunks [outside in the parking lot]. We have a photo/selfie booth,” she said. “And we also have an event in the children’s wing. It’s called Scared Safe. We’ve made some houses out of appliance boxes and the kids are going to go through a little learning maze where they’re going to learn how to safely [trick or treat] outside on the streets.”
MacLean said it’s hard to gauge what turnout will be like, but is expecting and ready for more than 600 kids.
