After a decade of advocacy by the GCA, and again with thanks to Councillor Menard and his predecessors, the City has created this park with a senior citizen-focus. Stay tuned for adult exercise equipment in this and other parks to promote physical and mental well-being.
Since 2020, the Parks Committee has pressed the City to go further with this and other new parks. Greenspaces in Canada’s cities can be small but meaningful stepping stones towards meeting other significant goals for our country: Reconciliation, remediating climate change, and habitat stewardship.
The committee has encountered some stumbling blocks on this one. “Fire Station Park” for example features City design elements inconsistent with those we recommended – a park name that is the product of a consultative process consistent with the City of Ottawa Reconciliation Action Plan; a more “organic” looking pergola, to name a few. The loss of the site’s existing Norway Maple apparently due to ill health was terribly sad as well.
Still, we invite the community to join us as we continue to pursue a vision for this and other urban greenspaces: park creation and care as a collaboration with our community’s Algonquin Anishinaabe Host Nation, the National Healing Forests initiative, and the Ottawa Horticultural Society’s Community Planting programme; ecologically rich and sustainable healing and rain gardens featuring local and sacred tree and pollinator plant species that attract butterflies, birds and other wildlife; materials and methodologies sourced using a Carbon Neutral 2050 lens.