Winnipeg’s Teddy Bears’ Picnic turns 30

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This article was published 28/05/2016 (2881 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Teddies across the city are resting up today, on doctors’ orders after this year’s Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

The Picnic turned 30 Sunday, almost 70,000 people came out to celebrate and take advantage of a mostly rain-free day at Assiniboine Park. The event is presented by the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba.

For Brittany Surminski, it was her first time attending the event as a mother. She said she remembers going to the Picnic as a kid, but this year she brought her one-year-old daughter, Rylee.

“It’s just great to be out in the park,” Surminski said. “It’s a really good cause, and a nice way to spend the day outside, and a good way to get some energy out.”

Kids had their pick from nearly 40 tents, offering health-related education ranging from sun awareness to fire safety to the Dr. Goodbear Clinic. That’s where stuffed animals go to see the doctor, and are taken through a rigorous medical process including physical exams, genetic testing, X-rays, a CT scan and an MRI machine.

Earnest Shapera and Bernie Martins have both been volunteering at the Picnic since day one, and haven’t missed a single Picnic in 30 years.

Shapera said he still remembers that first Picnic, and being led into the teddy bear medical tent for the first time.

“They had a device in there — it was a big round circle with a little circle above it, couple of ears on the top and some whiskers, and they had in the centre the little Christmas lights that were rotating around,” he recalled. “And of course, you know what that was? That was the ‘cat scan’ machine.”

“That was it,” he said. “They had me forever. Thirty years at it.”

The pair have built up a handful of war stories over the years — the time there was nearly a tornado and the poles of the medical tent were all but lifted from the ground, for instance, or the time Mr. Dressup was mobbed and had to be hurried into a limousine.

Shapera said what keeps him coming back are the kids themselves, as well as the camaraderie among the volunteers.

“We’re family,” he said. “Everybody pitches in.”

Lynne Perrier is the chair of the event. She’s been volunteering at the event for nearly 20 years, and says the secret to the Picnic’s longevity is the intergenerational draw — parents like Surminski, who came to the event as children and now want to give their kids the same experience.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, as young families streamed into the park. “It gets me all teary.”

Perrier said the real goal of the event is to teach kids about health, and that hospitals don’t have to be scary.

“Every kid is going to end up at the hospital emergency, whether it’s for a little bronchitis, a broken arm or a broken leg. Kids do this,” she said. “But it’s not scary if you know what the procedure is … If you know when you go the hospital there’s going to be really nice people there and they’re going to help you and they’re going to make you better.”

aidan.geary@freepress.mb.ca