The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Bringing Colliery Lands Park back to life
NEW WATERFORD — “It’s been neglected.”
That’s how Darlene Darroch and her volunteer group of New Waterford residents had largely viewed Colliery Lands Park, located on the former sites of the No. 12 and No. 16 coal mines, for many, many years.
“In 2018, me and my daughter came up here … and the place was an utter mess,” said Darroch, chair of the Friends of Colliery Lands Park committee.
“I took it to the board, and the board agreed with us. We took them on a tour of the park, and they saw how messy things were.”
Darroch formerly served as a member of the New Waterford Action Committee, which ran the New Waterford Employment Resource Centre until the YMCA took it over in 2016.
“It took us four years to get this (Colliery Lands) initiative going. We had a lot of red tape to go through,” Darroch said. “Nobody wanted to hear what we had to say.”
‘NOT MUCH NEW INFRASTRUCTURE’
Although the park’s centrepiece, the Miners Fatality Monument, appeared to be well-maintained, other than the park’s main building near Ellsworth Avenue, “there hasn’t been any new infrastructure built since the park opened,” said park board member Raymond (Chico) Timmons.
Timmons noted that other Cape Breton Regional Municipality parks appeared to have received significant upgrades, citing Glace Bay’s Renwick Brook Park, Sydney’s Wentworth Park and “a North Sydney” park as examples.
So the group — Darroch, Timmons, board co-chair Joey Lever and board member Gwen Gouthro — decided to take beautification matters into their own hands and set about giving Colliery Lands Park some much-needed
TLC.
While the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic halted work on the park, “things began to turn around last year,” Darroch said.
FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES
Much of the community group’s restoration and revitalization of the park has largely relied on fundraising activities. For instance, as part of New Waterford’s Coal Dust Days festivities, the group is organizing a beer bash on Friday night at the New Waterford & District Community Centre, in support of the park’s restoration.
But Darroch noted that they have also been fortunate enough to garner some government funding support.
“To date, we’ve received a $45,000 grant from ACOA (Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency) with assistance from Sydney-victoria MP Jaime Battiste. This money was used to repair the main building, replace the deck by the duck pond and do some landscaping,” Darroch said.
The volunteer group is hesitant to take CBRM to task for why there hasn’t been much upkeep for the New Waterford park, as the municipality of late has made some recent contributions.
‘PICK AND CHOOSE’
“They just have to pick and choose what they do with the resources they have now,” Lever said. “The Parks and
Grounds department recently installed a nine-hole disc-golf setup here not all that long ago.
“Plus, there wasn’t someone really vocal enough here to say the park needed fixing,” added Timmons.
The long-term vision, Darroch said, is to connect one part of the park near Ellsworth Avenue with the recreation area off Heelan Street and Wood Avenue and, ultimately, create a path to hook up with The Summit Recreation Park in New Victoria.
Colliery Lands Park first opened in July 1985. At the time, according to a 2013 Materia Culture Review article, the federal government of the day had “pledged $1.9 million to the (former) town of New Waterford for the creation of a green space.” A Cape Breton Post story reporting on the park’s opening said that the resulting sentiment in the town “was one of pride, aggressively looking toward the future and co-operating to move ahead.”
Lever said the group’s revitalization plans want to elicit a similar sentiment this time around.
“There’s so much good that’s happening in New Waterford right now,” he said. “And what a great complement this would be to go with all that.”