Smileys Provincial Park closed for season
Flood damages to vital infrastructure being assessed at popular Brooklyn park
Anyone who planned to camp, hike, or picnic at Smileys Provincial Park this summer or fall will have to find an alternative destination.
Department of Natural Resources and Renewables parks promotion and development officer Sandra Fraser said quite a large area of Smileys Provincial Park in Brooklyn has been damaged. It will remain closed for the remainder of the 2023 season.
“Smileys Provincial Park had considerable damage from that July 22 flooding event,” Fraser said. “It’s impacted quite a bit of infrastructure within the park that’s required for operations.”
Aside from the McKay bridge being washed out on Clayton McKay Road just outside of the park, causing the road to be closed, a vehicle bridge at the entrance of the park has also been “severely damaged.”
Fraser said the park maintenance building, operations yard, a woodshed, and camp sites have been damaged, as have picnic shelters and the playground at the day use park. Some pedestrian bridges, trails, and park roads have also been washed out. She said there is a visible
maintenance water line in the
building quite high up on the wall, meaning that everything below that point was underwater during the flood. The building housed the park’s lawn tractors and mowers, which were all damaged.
Fraser said the vehicle bridge at the park entrance will likely have to be replaced, but they are still assessing the full extent of the damages and working on a
plan to repair the infrastructure.
When asked if the damages could potentially impact the 2024 season as well, Fraser said she couldn’t offer any comment on that at this stage.
Fraser said there would have been camping at the park until Sept. 18 and the day use park would have been open until Oct. 9. Anyone who had booked camping
sites and paid in advance for their reservations has been fully refunded.
She said hopefully those who had planned to stay at Smileys have found another provincial park that offers camping to enjoy. There are 19 other parks that offer camping across Nova Scotia.
Those closest to Smileys include Laurie Provincial Park in Grand Lake, Halifax Regional Municipality;
Dollar Lake Provincial Park in Wyses Corner, Halifax Regional Municipality, and Blomidon Provincial Park in Blomidon, Kings County.
Fraser said the provincial parks are popular, so it can sometimes be challenging to find a camping site at some of them on the weekends.
For more information on Nova Scotia provincial parks, visit https://parks.novascotia.ca.