Round metal brackets near playground a hazard
Metal tube a potential tripping block for anyone who isn’t paying attention
Why is a round metal bracket positioned in the middle of a path leading to a playground, where a child is likely to trip over it?
It’s a question that occurs to parents of children who flock to the Fred Hamilton Playground, on the east side of Roxton Road, to beat the heat in the wading pool or clamber over the climbers.
The park, near College Street and Ossington Avenue, is a local oasis, with lots of shade trees, playground equipment for kids and even bocce courts for grownups who compete for local bragging rights.
A lot of them access it via an entrance that leads into the south end of the playground from Roxton, where the metal bracket is perfectly positioned to catch the foot of a child or an unobservant adult.
Erica Simmons sent me a note and photos of the round bracket, including a picture of an adult’s foot right next to it, which lends scale and perspective to the image.
“This park is well used by people of all ages, including children on bikes, and someone could hurt themselves quite badly on this,” Simmons said.
I went there and found a round metal bracket that’s about 12 cm high, right in the middle of the path, where it is likeliest to be a problem.
It looks like a hole for a post, but several people I spoke to, all of whom are regular users of the park, said they’ve never seen anything in it.
I peered down into the hole and saw something in it: A pile of small green crab apples that had yet to ripen. Surely it wasn’t put there as a crab apple container.
While I was there, a dad with a small child in his arms and another dodging around his feet came out of the playground, exactly the kind of situation where someone ends up stumbling over it. STATUS: I asked the city for an explanation of the purpose of the bracket. The reply said it is meant to hold a bollard that prevents motorized vehicles from driving into the park along the path. Another note from the city said the bollard had just been installed on Thursday and will be painted and tattooed with reflective tape, to make it more visible.