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Fire trucks and dump trucks and school buses, oh my! Touch a Truck event a huge hit

Youngsters of all ages take opportunity to check out heavy vehicles of all sizes and genres during special event at Moose Jaw Events Centre

You could have easily be excused if you were in downtown Moose Jaw on Saturday afternoon, September 10th and thought there was a massive traffic jam with a large emergency vehicle presence in the area of the Moose Jaw Events Centre.

With all the honking of horns, sirens and occasional pronouncement from police public address systems, it would have been easy to think something strange was going on.

But it was all for a good cause, as heavy vehicles of all types gathered on First Avenue outside the west entrance of the arena for the first-of-its-kind Touch A Truck event.

An initiative of the Early Childhood Coalition Committee and a host of like-minded community partners, Touch A Truck featured a wide range of high-tonnage vehicles, ranging from fire trucks to dump trucks, school buses and ambulances, tractors and different kinds of haulers, and yes, a pick-up truck from the Moose Jaw Police Service that was one of the most popular stops of all.

Youngsters were able to clamour around the cabs and interiors of all the vehicles, with operators, officers, firefighters and farmers on hand to offer education about what everything was all about.

“It’s wonderful, really, we have the most incredible operators who have come out and done their best to make it so interactive and fun for the kids,” said Christine Boyczuk, one of the event’s organizers. “It’s about learning about their community and you can see how much fun everyone is having. You have the kids getting in the trucks and pushing around lawnmowers and everything, it’s just so much fun and we’re so happy with it all.”

Touch a Truck took place both on the street outside the arena and inside the curling rink, with the latter including arts and crafts tables, as well as the aforementioned lawnmower course, where little ones could wind their way through a traffic cone course and pretend they were taking care of a weekend chore.
Folks could also pick up a bite to eat, making the whole event an afternoon of family fun.

The whole plan was to give youngsters a chance to familiarize themselves with the heavy vehicles they see every day, learning about what they’re all about.
“One of the operators, AgWest, said the kids who have gone on his bus and seen all the tools that they use for fixing tractors, they were so interested in that kind of mechanical stuff,” Boyczuk said as an example. “That’s the kind of thing we just don’t expose kids to very often in the city, so it was nice to give them that opportunity.”

There was no shortage of interested families either: hundreds of people milled through the area throughout the afternoon, with the event drawing exactly the kind of exposure organizers were hoping for.

“It’s totally awesome, we’re so happy that so many people came out and brought their children and that it all went so well,” Boyczuk said. 

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