I am writing in response to Karen Paquette's letter in which she claims that the St. Albert farmers’ market is not family friendly. While I understand her concern for her son's wellbeing, I feel the need to point out the inconsistencies in her letter and to counter her suggestions that the market be held indoors and made nut free.
Her first concern is with the “lack of shaded areas” at the market and that this led her son to become sunburned and suffer heat exhaustion. While applying SPF 45 is a good start to ensure that your child does not succumb to the effects of the hot July sun, to blame the organizers for not providing "properly shaded" areas is clearly off the mark. In fact, there are several sources of shade at and around the market: the vendors’ tents as you browse their products, the air conditioned (and shaded) St. Albert Place, the shade of St. Albert Place itself, the shade from the trees that surround St. Albert Place, line the banks of the Sturgeon River and many of the streets, to name a few. I was at the market this past Saturday with my family (including my young children) and it was a clear, sunny, hot day. We utilized all of these sources of shade and kept heat exhaustion at bay by donning hats and keeping well hydrated.
Her second concern is that there are airborne allergens that her child, who is a seasonal allergy sufferer, is exposed to while at the market. While I can also appreciate this concern (as a seasonal allergy sufferer myself), this is simply a fact of life outdoors in the spring and summer and can only be avoided by remaining indoors with a filtered air supply. Remaining indoors is not something that I am prepared to do, nor do I think that this is viable for the market. One of the market's main features, in addition to the diverse and excellent vendors, is that it is held outdoors in our short but marvellous Alberta summer. Moving the market indoors would change its essence and eliminate the true, open-air summer market that we are lucky enough to have in our own backyard.
She ends her letter telling how her “horrific” morning almost ended in tragedy when her son, who has a severe nut allergy, sampled a free baked good that “may” have contained nuts, a manoeuvre that could have proved disastrous. It did not, as she points out, because she did what any parent should do (nut allergy or not); she was vigilant of her son's behaviour and intercepted the offending baked good before he could eat it. While I understand the panic and fear of children with severe allergies (we have friends and children of friends who are nut allergy sufferers), does she really believe that the answer is to remove all nuts from a public market?
Our friends with such allergies go to outdoor markets, grocery stores and restaurants and they do so safely and enjoyably by being vigilant and taking precautions, just as Paquette did. To ban all nuts from the market is an unreasonable suggestion, as is moving it indoors, and blaming the organizers for not making the market family friendly is simply incorrect.
Chris Sturdy, St. Albert
