Easter egg dash has children out for good cause

The first official day of spring brought many things to Sackville: clear skies, a visit from the Easter Bunny, and more than 3,500 plastic Easter eggs spread across a field.

Sunday was the Kinette Club of Sackville’s fourth annual Easter Eggstravaganza, an Easter egg dash that serves as a fundraiser and awareness campaign for cystic fibrosis research.

About 100 children took part.

“I love the dash,” said Brenda Dooley, who founded the event. She says dashes are better than hunts when many children attend.

An Easter egg dash is not an Easter egg hunt. There are no clues or hidden eggs. Instead, it’s an egg gathering free-for-all, in which children collect as many eggs as can fit in a basket, dump them in front of their parents to keep safe, and run back into the field for more. Children under age five participated in a separate run from those ages five to 10.

Before the event, volunteers hand-filled all but six plastic eggs.

In the six remaining eggs, which were gold, they put tickets that corresponded with first, second and third place prizes for each of the age categories.

Some children concentrated on finding them, while others just gathered as many eggs of any colour as possible.

Three-year-old Adam found two golden eggs. His strategy was to use his father, David LeLacheur.

“My daddy picked the basket up and I got them,” he said.

Adam’s favourite part of the day was collecting the Easter eggs, although taking a picture with the Easter Bunny was “Good!”

Dooley learned about Easter egg dashes when she brought her kids to one in Florida, where 600 children attended.

“The kids, they remember that. They’re 18 to 22 now and they remember that time frame. So I wanted to build memories for the children of Sackville,” she said.

This year, they are donating $450 from the event to Cystic Fibrosis Canada, the national non-profit charity Kinette clubs support. They made $700 from the dash, but used $250 of that to cover the price of chocolate, decorations and some new plastic eggs.