Friends-Giving During the State of Emergency
FREDERICTON, NB – Thanksgiving has again been affected by the pandemic. Just two weeks before the holiday, New Brunswick Premier, Blaine Higgs announced that the province would once again be in an state of emergency. This regulation is means that single-households may only be in contact with a steady twenty other individuals. Many families are not in direct contact with one another consistently, living in different cities and other issues has caused the cancellation Thanksgiving.
“Not all of our friends are going home for Thanksgiving this year so we thought it’d be a great idea to throw a thanksgiving dinner for them” said Hannah King, the host of Friends-giving.
King had decided to throw the celebratory supper for her friends only two days before. First she asked her guests what dishes they would like most for her to prepare. King then requested her friends contribute 10 dollars each to the supper, she made a grocery list of all the ingredients she would need. After her quick trip to Costco, King decided against cooking a full turkey as it would be too time-consuming for the mechanical engineering student and the difficulty was beyond her qualifications as a chef. Sobeys rotisserie chickens bought the day of and pre-made turkey stuffing were the best substitute that no one even noticed.
Supper time was at 5:30 sharp. Guests honored King’s schedule and started to show up around 5 o’clock. Hungry and with their backpacks still on, having come straight from class or the library, everyone was excited to try-out the Kings first attempt at feeding 15 people.The supper was a great opportunity to eat and drink with university friends safely during the pandemic.
“My grandfather lives with my parents and is very vulnerable. Still after being vaccinated, my mom worries about him catching it and me being at school, I’m around a lot of people being back on campus. Also, bars are open again so it’s feel almost normal again. So, I won’t be at Thanksgiving and it’s awesome we could have this with our friends”, said Emily Russell.
“Because of the state of emergency, I wasn’t able to go home. My mom didn’t think it was safe and the single-house bubble, it was better just to stay in Fredericton, so she cancelled Thanksgiving. So I was really happy that Hannah put on the Friendsgiving, because it was a great taste of Thanksgiving”, said Maggie Hartley-Brown, a fourth-year student at St. Thomas. Hartley-Brown’s family are in vulnerable situations during the Pandemic due to their jobs. Hartley-Brown’s father is police officer for the Kennebecasis Regional Police Force, and believes that he must set a good example to the community during the pandemic by keeping their Thanksgiving supper to just their household. Unfortunately, that means that Maggie Hartley-Brown was not able to come home because she is based in Fredericton during the school year.
Everyone enjoyed their meals prepared by King while they toasted to being thankful for good friends. After hours at the dinner party, all the guests helped clean up the mess. King thought ahead by getting paper plates and disposable cutlery so clean up would be as easy as possible. Guests were welcome to take a plate of left-overs home with them.