Some of the entries in the contest

The response from the students of Deseronto Public School to our Family/Heritage Day competition has been, well, ‘awesome’ as the children themselves would put it. It took the judges three hours to choose the winning entries. The winners will be announced on Monday, February 15th, at the Deseronto Community Centre, as part of a range of events that will be going on there that day.

The judges had a very hard job deciding on the winners: the quality of the entries was excellent. Some focused on the history of our town, while others looked at their family’s history. The range of backgrounds of the people of the town became apparent as we went through the entries: there are descendants of people from Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Great Britain and Italy represented among the children of the school. A number of students mentioned their Mohawk ancestry.

The Grade 2 class that visited the Archives two weeks ago had created haikus on the topic of their family or local heritage. As a recently-landed immigrant from England myself, this entry made me smile (and made me hungry!):

The Smell of England

Many of the entries are now on display in Deseronto Public Library and the winning six will be shown at the Community Centre on Monday, February 15, when the prizes will be awarded at 4.00pm. Please do stop by the library, if you are able to, to admire the tremendous amount of work that has gone into this contest.