Injuries prompt toboggan hill warning
Family Day outing sees 40-year-old suffer torn rotator cuff, fractured tail bone
Mike Gentile was no more than three seconds into his first — and only — slide down the “unofficial” toboggan hill at Centennial Park when he knew he was in trouble.
It was Feb. 18, and the 40-year-old father of two decided to take his 8-yearold daughter, Georgia, out for an afternoon of Family Day fun at the popular central Etobicoke park. After spending much of their time on the city-sanc- tioned toboggan hill at the north end of the park, by the BMX track, the fatherdaughter duo decided to steel their nerves for a quick run down the “much steeper” unofficial hill by Centennial Park Arena.
“As soon as this little sled took off with my daughter sitting on my lap, I could feel everything underneath me — it felt like a rock,” Gentile said of the hill, whose icy surface was hidden by a fresh layer of snow that afternoon. “It all happened so fast.”
After going airborne twice and landing hard both times — “it hurt so much I could feel it in my throat” — Gentile said that the pair were thrown from their sled at the bottom of the hill.
Gentile said Georgia thankfully escaped from the ordeal uninjured, but he did not.
After being taken to Etobicoke General Hospital by paramedics, he was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, a fractured tail bone, and a compression fracture of the T12 vertebrae, and had to lay
on a stretcher for16 hours without moving. “Luckily, they determined I didn’t need surgery — just lots of rest and rehab. But I still spent a week in hospital,” Gentile said.
Now back at home with his family, Gentile has to wear a body brace, move around with the assistance of a walker and receive daily visits from a home nurse; still in pain, he said that it’ll be another couple of weeks until doctors will even consider letting him begin physiotherapy.
Determined not to let an injury like his befall any other unsuspecting sledders, Gentile is now advocating for increased safety measures to be implemented at Centennial Park — to either block off the popular “unofficial” toboggan hill, or to install more visible warning signs to discourage sledders from risking a trip down its slippery slope.
“The issue is, there’s no clear signage. It wasn’t evident to us that this (toboggan hill) might not be safe,” he said.
“There were a ton of people going up and down that day — including young kids … we fig- ured if it wasn’t safe, there wouldn’t be all those people there.”
After hearing Gentile’s story, Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre) said that he quickly sent out inquiries to city parks staff to determine what measures were al- ready in place at Centennial Park. He confirmed that there are, in fact, several signs pertaining to tobogganing posted throughout the park.
According to Holyday, there are two warning signs — including one that reads “Danger: Steep Hill. No sledding, tobogganing or tubing permitted” — at the base of the hill, a couple of others posted at the top of the hill, as well as five signs in the park’s main parking lot, with maps indicating the location of the official toboggan hill.
Gentile, however, didn’t see any of them — nor were they obviously apparent to a Toronto.com photographer who had to go looking for the signs when he visited Centennial Park's unofficial toboggan hill last week.
In terms of closing off the hill to tobogganers in future, Holyday said that he would want to have a “good conversation” with city operations and risk assessment staff to “better understand what we could or should do, and what could potentially open us up to liability.”
“I think it starts out with a conversation about the signage,” Holyday said last week. “I would like to gather more information from (Gentile) and see if he has any suggestions. Then I, as his councillor, would certainly want to talk them over with city staff. We’re here to be constructive and helpful.”
As for Gentile, he said that he’s not looking to cast any blame.
“I just want people to know what happened to me, so they think twice about taking their children tobogganing there,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re going to close the hill down for tobogganing or not, but the injury I sustained there is proof enough that the question needs to be asked — that question is 100 per cent valid.”