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Roseau evacuees need toys

By: Carol Sanders

Posted: 04/1/2009 8:33 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Roseau River residents John Standingrock and his family Stryder, 5, wife Alissia, and infant daughter Sophie, 13 months, are waiting out the flood in their hotel room at the Delta downtown. (BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

What do you do with a couple hundred country kids cooped up in city hotel rooms with nothing to do, nowhere to go and no money to spend?

That’s what some parents from evacuated Roseau River First Nation are asking.

"At home they’d be playing around in the yard making up games," said Debra Govereau, mother of Avys, 9, and Avriel, 4, who are staying at Winnipeg’s Delta hotel. "We’re trying to keep them busy."

The displaced families are getting a new insight on the old saying "there’s no place like home."

John Standingrock would like to take his son, five-year-old Stryder, to the Children’s Museum, but the family on social assistance has limited resources. They’ve been at the hotel since Thursday, when he and his pregnant wife, 13-month-old daughter Sophia, and Stryder were among more than 700 parents, children and seniors who left the flood-threatened community. They brought clothes, toys and Sophia’s playpen.

"We could only take so much," Standingrock said in their cramped room where Stryder played on the bed and Sophia sat in her playpen. They need to go to the laundromat because they’re running out of clean clothes, the father said. It took five days and a call to the front desk to get clean towels, he said.

There is no fresh fruit in the buffet offered to the evacuees, and his son has been eating cereal for two days because the little boy doesn’t like the limited buffet choices. Elders accustomed to more simple foods like plain meat and potatoes and aren’t used to the dishes like lasagna, said Standingrock.

Some Roseau River members living in the city have been making bannock and soup and "smuggling" it to the evacuees, he said.

The supervisor at the Delta hotel Tuesday night declined to comment.

The Manitoba Association of Native Firefighters, which is responsible for the evacuation, hasn’t kept in touch with the evacuees, Standingrock complained. The association did not respond to a request for comment about complaints.

Some of the evacuees were treated to a Moose game at the MTS Centre, but more needs to be done, Standingrock said. The evacuees do not expect to be able to go home for a couple of weeks once the crest of the Red River has passed through their community. Some single and able-bodied community members have gone back in the meantime, he said.

Govereau is taking her daughters to the hotel pool twice a day and tries to find other diversions.

"We’re running out of colouring books," she said.

The Salvation Army is rallying help for the restless Roseau kids.

"We’ve been hearing all kinds of distress calls," Capt. Les Marshall said. "We’ve got to get these kids something to do."

The organization is collecting toys and board games for roughly 200 children staying at five Winnipeg hotels, and it’s no joke. "It’s a pretty stressful thing to be moved out of your home," Marshall said. "We want to provide comfort to the kids and comfort to the parent by giving the kids something to do."

Donations may be dropped off at the Salvation Army at 324 Logan Ave.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

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