The problem with shooting in high sun

I went to the Canada Day parade on July 1st to take some photos of the parade. The parade started around 10am. The season being summer, shooting at 10am is like shooting at high noon. Not very flattering for people shots.

Check out these photos.

Blown highlights and very dark shadows.

See that? Dark shadows on the faces of children. Not very nice. It's quite hard to compensate for the shot especially since I'm only using my Canon SD880 point and shoot camera.

As you probably know by now, I don't have a DSLR yet so I just use what I have.

This is the worst, blown highlights, the white part of the Canadian flag on her lap is blown out and you can see chromatic abberation because of the failure of the lens to focus all colors to the same point.

So can you take better photos in very high sun? I'm still trying to figure it out. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

And yes, I know "get a better camera" would be one of them. :)