After a lengthy delay, the Mont St. Joseph Home annual Grandparent’s Day Stroll-a-Thon is back on the calendar.
The Prince Albert care home had to temporarily suspend the Stroll-a-thon in 2020 due to COVID, but organizers have brought it back in 2023.
“Coming out of the COVID season, we really want to push that message out there, that we’re open, (and) things are actually more ‘normal’,” Resource Development Coordinator Jessica Gale said. “It’s vastly important for our spiritual health and emotional health as our residents and our elders here, to have that family contentedness that we did miss … horribly throughout those COVID years.”
This year’s event will mark the 24th time Mont St. Joseph has hosted Grandparents Day festivities. The event includes a Ball Drop fundraiser, where an estimated 3,000 golf balls will be dropped from the top of a Prince Albert Fire Department ladder truck for three cash prizes, along with live entertainment, a family barbeque, and the walk itself.
Gale said they’re it’s important to provide opportunities for families to get out into the community with their grandparents, and this event gives them that chance.
“It’s a great way to bring those family roots back to the truck of our family trees, which of course are our grandparents,” she explained. “The Catholic Church is pushing very strongly to reinvigorate that family connectedness with the generations, where we look at our grandchildren being the branches and coming back to our grandparents as the truck.”
The Ball Drop begins at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 10. Tickets can be purchased up until 2 p.m. For more information, visit montstjoseph.org or the Mont St. Joseph Facebook page.
Gale said they’re looking forward to a big crowd.
“We’d really love to see our community rally behind us and support us in providing the emotional support we offer as part of our mission and values here at the Mont St. Joseph Care Home,” she said.
