Our park experiences could be much better

Parks are the great social equalizer in Saskatoon.

Parks are free. No one has priority, or special privileges at the park. Everyone has to follow the same rules, share the equipment and take turns.

It doesn’t matter where you live, where you work or where you come from. If you have children, you go to the park.

Generally, the City of Saskatoon does an admirable job with park creation. However, as with many projects, the details can stop a good thing from being great.

Like most, our family often checks out a new park in adjacent neighbourhoods to change up our routine and play on some different equipment. Since parks are a mainstay of a Saskatoon summer, one assumes the city has park design down to an exact science.

However, there is a curious repetition of errors that take away from the perfect moments.

Every parent knows where the “purple park” is.

W.W. Ashley Park, is one of the most, if not the most, popular kids park in town. Built as an accessible playground, there is equipment for everyone to use.

As an added bonus, the very toddling young can play independently as easy-to-climb ramps are used to access the slides instead of traditional ladders.

However, given the popularity of the park, garbage cans are often full and spilling over.

Garbage is a consistent problem in many parks, with a constant mess on a near daily basis.

Even worse, garbage cans are located right next to each bench in the park. If anyone wants to sit down, you’re forced to sit next to an overflowing, eye-watering stench of a garbage mess. Making matters more unpleasant, is that the overflowing garbage cans are magnets to bees and wasps. Meaning there is a constant swarm of bees and wasps around these garbage cans, rendering park benches useless almost every day of the summer, unless you want to get stung.

At a minimum, the city should be emptying the garbage on a more regular basis. I know the issue of cost and tax dollars will be raised.

However, if you don’t have enough money to properly service amenities, they shouldn’t be built in the first place. And, in the future, garbage cans should be located far, far away from where people sit. From the mothers sitting to nurse their babies, to seniors looking for a place to sit while they watch their grandchildren, no one should be at risk of a bee sting. Of course, parks aren’t just for kids. Seniors, dog walkers, runners and the like are also avid park users. One of the most wellreceived resolutions by city council, about eight years ago, was the decision to start clearing the snow from park pathways allowing for use year round instead of just in summer. The award-winning Hyde natural wetland park, in the southeast corner of the city, is now one of the most popular running/walking parks these days.

Hyde Park is a paradise for runners and walkers, with long tracks of pathways weaving among the natural ponds, wetlands and neighbouring communities. A brainchild of community leader Barbara Hanbidge and Ducks Unlimited back in the early 2000s, the park is enviable.

In an age of step trackers and technological exercise monitoring, it’s surprising there isn’t an online city map of Hyde Park (and the adjacent parks linked

to it) tracking the paths and marking the distances for runners and walkers alike.

During the past few years, the city has moved away from only placing traditional parks in the middle of neighbourhoods and focused on linear parks crossing through streets and connecting neighbourhoods as well.

In an active community like Saskatoon, it would be helpful for individuals, and walking/running groups alike, for a city-wide mapping of park pathways.

Mapping would be an easy service to provide online, with no major tax dollars needed to invest in hard infrastructure. Similar

to clearing snow from park pathways in the winter, online park mapping is a small thing that would bring great satisfaction

to large numbers of people who are using the 200-plus parks spread across Saskatoon.

People are often busy with work, kids activities, etc., to notice the planning issues that often preoccupy elected officials. But give citizens a peaceful, complete, park experience with their children or their dog and the gratitude will be eternal.