Celebrating 100 years of Girls Guides in Newfoundland

Girl Guides in Newfoundland are celebrating Thinking Day and 100 years in the province, Girls from all over the city came together to share the Newfoundland culture in games, sing-alongs and mummering

Dylan Sheppard
Kicker

On Monday, Feb. 19, more than 70 Girl Guides gathered at Hazelwood Elementary to celebrate Thinking Day and 100 years of Guiding in Newfoundland.

The sound of sneakers on a basketball court filled all of Hazelwood Elementary and quickly stopped as Girl Guides gathered together to have a sing-along of Newfoundland traditional folk songs played by a duo from Cuslett, St.Mary’s Bay.

Parents waited in the lobby for their daughters, many of them chiming into the sing-along as Grey Foggy Day and Salt Water Joys echoed from the gym. The sing-along showed how deep Newfoundland culture runs in the province – and within its Girl Guides movement.

The Girl Guides from the Waterford Valley District met at Hazelwood Elementary at 6:30 on Monday evening to celebrate Thinking Day, an annual event dating back in 1926 to commemorate the work and lives of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, who were the founding members of the Scout and Guiding movement around the world.

Thinking Day takes place every February 22, the birthdays of both Lord and Lady Baden-Powell. The day was chosen at the 4th World Guiding Conference in 1926, when delegates from all over the world gathered to celebrate Guiding. The day is a time for Girl Guides to come together and raise funds for more than 10 million Guides in more than 150 countries.

Every year the theme of Thinking Day changes, and this year’s theme is Impact. The leaders in Waterford Valley District chose to illustrate the impact that Newfoundland culture has had on the girls’ lives and how it has shaped them and Guiding in general.

This year, the girl guides of Waterford Valley made killicks, dressed up as mummers and played a game in which they had to locate towns with strange names on a map of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Donna Tuck, who has been a member of the Guiding movement for 50 years, was ecstatic about the event.

“Guiding gives girls a place where they can be girls, a place where they can be themselves, ” said Tuck

Tuck loves being a Guide leader and she enjoys getting guides out of the house and into the outdoors, where they can learn what they can really do and also more about themselves.