Babies born tonight and tomorrow at the Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton will be getting festive Canada Day knitted hats thanks to a mother-daughter duo in Beaumont, south of Edmonton.
Andrea Scales and her mother Therese Levesque, 88, have personally knitted 35 hats for babies born at the hospital between the night of June 30 and the morning of July 2, to celebrate the country’s sesquicentennial anniversary.
“Canada’s 150th only happens once,” Levesque said Friday while she finished knitting the last of the hats.
When children are born, they are usually given tuque-like hats by hospital staff to keep their heads warm. Scales had the idea to knit the Canada 150 hats for newborns a month ago, and her mom and her roommate quickly got interested in the project.
Levesque finishing up one of the final hats, each of which take about four hours to complete. (CBC )
‘A real milestone’
“[My mom] came up to me and said, ‘You know, you really should be knitting them with four needles, not two,’ ” Scales said. “So I let her help with the project from there.”
“They’ll be able to say, ‘I was born on Canada Day and I share my birthday with the best country in the world,’ ” Scales said. “That’s something they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.”
Each hat takes about four hours to finish.
“It’s a labour of love,” Levesque said.
Levesque’s father moved to Canada from France in 1905 to raise his children in a country “with true freedom,” she said.
Levesque witnessed Canada’s centennial celebrations in 196, but said the 150th anniversary is even more important to celebrate.
“To be able to have had Canada for 150 years without having a war on our soil … it’s a real milestone,” she said.
Scales and Levesque sit in their backyard to knit the baby hats. (CBC)