Boundless park to honour Billy Bridges

The park will feature inclusive playground equipment accessible to all kids

Notre Dame Park is getting a new name and will feature boundless playground equipment.

Summerside City Coun. Tyler DesRoches announced Tuesday that the city will partly fund the equipment for the Billy Bridges Park in Summerside. “Two years ago, we began setting aside money for a boundless playground, and this year we set money aside again. The opportunity arose to put it to good use, and we’re going to have the city’s first boundless playground.”

Named after Bridges, a Canadian Paralympic sledge hockey player from Summerside, the revamped park will feature equipment that is inclusive to all children of any ability.

“I never saw it coming to fruition this quick. I thought of it as a long-term plan I might not see finished in my term. But it’s just great that we can see something like this happen.”

JP Desrosiers, director of community services, said the city was approached last week by the province, and through that discussion came the community work to honour Bridges. “We’ve worked with the province and my team in community services to create a good course of action, to rename the park to the Billy Bridges Park. “We’re looking at about a $70,000 boundless play structure for that park, which will be cost-shared with the city and the province.” Desrosiers added, “While working on this we’ve been in contact with (him) and his family about renaming the park, and he is over the moon. He is very honoured, very humbled about the opportunity of the park, not only in name but the addition to the boundless play structure.”

Coun. Gordie Whitlock says this is a huge opportunity for the community.

“As a city, we offer so many things. We have parks, skating, swimming, running, soccer fields, the bowl, but the only thing we don’t have is a place for kids with disabilities.

“This is so important to have for kids of all ages and of all abilities to have. And Billy’s a pretty outstanding person, too,” he said with a smile. DesRoches added that up until this year, Summerside had no boundless equipment in the city.

“We’re making leaps and bounds because in the middle of the summer, we’re actually going to have two parks: the Billy Bridges Park on Notre Dame Street, and the boundless water park we budgeted in earlier this year.”

THE GUARDIAN FILE PHOTO Billy Bridges, Summerside native, and Paralympic Sledge Hockey player for Team Canada will have a park named in his honour this summer, as one of Summerside’s first boundless playgrounds is established in what will formerly be known as Notre Dame Park.