Treats through tubes, careful routes and scavenger hunts: COVID-19 meant new tricks in the hunt for treats

Being chased through a skull-adorned hay-bale maze by a dinosaur as eerie piano music plays is not unusual for Halloween, but a candy chute at the end is.

“If kids are going to come out I wanted to make sure there was something for them. I think especially we go into the darkness everybody could use just a little delight,” said Candace who, along with Cecilia (playing the dinosaur) spent four hours constructing the haunted front yard. Rather than handing treats out personally to any visiting kids —— and thereby getting in closer contact than COVID-19 guidelines suggest — the duo had arranged to send the candy and chocolate down some plastic tubing to a waiting ghoul, goblin or superhero several feet away.

On any other crisp but clear Halloween evening, especially one that happened to fall on a Saturday, the leaf-strewn streets of Cabbagetown would be filled with hundreds of trick-or-treating children — the neighbourhood is known to go all out.

But, in Toronto and other hotspots, public heath officials recommended against traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating.

“The name of the game right now is to avoid contact with people you don’t live with so I hope people will make their own judgment because in the end that’s what they have to do,” Tory told reporters on Saturday afternoon.

“The big gatherings are the things that are most worrisome and hopefully those won’t occur.”

In lieu of the usual routine, families with young children organized small outdoor Halloween games and scavenger hunts in parks and backyards, walks through decorated neighbourhoods, or preplanned trick-or-treat routes stopping at the homes of just a few friends and neighbours.

“We are just visiting a few people’s backyards so we can be outside,” said Megan Tully, as she was being pulled along the sidewalk by her three-year-old son Struan, dressed as Batman. “This is his first year that he’s into it so he doesn’t have much to compare it to luckily.”

(Struan’s assessment of the evening thus far was: “Good.”)

The consensus among those out making the best of it was that there would be a lot less candy this year, though it was too early to say if quality would win out over quantity.

Cecilia, who executed a masterful change from dinosaur to scary clown in under 10 seconds while speaking with a Star reporter, said they checked with neighbours before setting up the maze.

She came up with the idea for a maze because it would be safe, she said: “It’s about being smart and being part of the community with things like this.”

“It’s been really nice. People have said thank you,” said Candace, who said the turnout was maybe tenth of the usual “crammed like a mall at Christmas” crowd, with some people only walking or driving by. Wielding tongs for the candy packages in place of a witch’s broom, she said there has been an appreciation for the precautions they’ve taken.

“We looked at the guidelines,” she said. “And we had a conversation where we said if it gets to a point where there are too many people and we can’t handle it, we’ll shut it down and close the gate.”

Alyshah Hasham is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and court for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: