Crowd sits down to dinner for Heart Niagara
Heart Niagara celebrated its 40-year anniversary — as well as Canada’s 150 — by hosting a massive picnic event called Picnic on the Q. The event, which took over a section of Queen Street, encouraged groups to bring a lunch and enjoy a “cheerful picnic atmosphere while supporting local businesses, building relationships, encouraging healthy eating and physical activity,” said a media release from Heart Niagara.
Fifty-six tables were set out along Queen Street near Heart Niagara’s new location.
Everyone seated at the tables received a red napkin which they were told to wave during an aerial photo to honour Canada turning 150.
The photo can be found at Heart Niagara’s website.
The event included live entertainment from music students at Saint Paul Catholic High School, a chance to win a 50/50 raffle and play zones and activities for all ages.
“We’re excited to be sharing our gifts of music and our passion with our community and especialy with Heart Niagara,” said Angela Iorio, a music teacher from Saint Paul.
“Picnic on the Q is a thoughtful approach to making our community stronger. Eating together unites and acquaints people of all ages,” said Karen Stearne, Heart Niagara’s executive director.
“Through this event, Heart Niagara will encourage support of local businesses while inspiring community relationships, healthy eating and physical activity. We’re building a movement to help make our community stronger, healthier and more active.”
The 2017 Picnic on the Q also acted as a test-run for Heart Niagara’s goal of achieving Guinness World Records’ status for the longest picnic table in 2018, with funds going towards the cost of an official Guinness application and adjudicator.
“It’s our goal because we’re all about bringing our community together. It would be awesome to break the record, but it’s more so really to get the people together.”
“Hopefully we’ll be more recognized. We’re at our 40th anniversary, which is huge for us. We have so many services and unfortunately not a lot of people know about us. So if we can get our name out from doing the Guinness world record, that’d be great.”
She says Heart Niagara’s ultimate goal is to get the community eating together, eating healthy, doing physical activity and encouraging friends and family enjoying their time together.”
Heart Niagara encourages people to use the hashtag #EatingTogether in social media posts about the event.
Their new location is 4635B Queen St., Niagara Falls.
Tickets were $120 and included table seating for six to eight.