THUNDER BAY – Saturday was a fun filled day for community children at the Vickers Heights Community Centre.
The Lumberjack Jamboree is an annual event held by Vickers Heights Community Centre that encourages kids to get out and have some winter fun while also learning about the area’s rich history in forestry.
"Forestry is a big part of the background of Northern Ontario and Thunder Bay is still involved in forestry. We kind of like to celebrate it and do fun activities with children and some adults too,” said Linda Rydholm, member of the board for Vickers Heights Community Centre.
The Jamboree started off with a pancake breakfast for the community and moved onto a myriad of different games that kids could compete in to be named this year’s Lumber Jack and Lumber Jill.
“We have various things for them to do. There’s a log-toss, what we call a cookie-roll, but it’s just a piece of trunk that’s been cut so it’s a circle and you can roll it along, a log sawing contest, and a number of different events this afternoon,” said Rydholm.
The Jamboree is a long-standing tradition that almost died out due to a lack of available participants at the community centre. Rydholm said she’s glad that local kids can once again enjoy an event she had loved to take her children to.
“My children did this in the eighties and nineties and then we didn’t have very many children for a number of years,” she said.
“But then someone in my daughter’s and son’s generation in their forties decided this would be fun for her family to be doing again. So, she got on the board and started it up again. You need the kids to make it work right?”
The Lakehead Timberwolves volunteered to help host the event and the Kakabeka Tired Iron Club brought out many historical forestry tools and machines for the community to learn about.
