There’s an old saying that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Tired as it may be, well-used and well-loved, the tiny playground on Bowness Road should indeed be saved.
My late husband, Dale, and I had the privilege of living in Bowness for more than 40 years. Dale had the honour of living and serving the community as an alderman for 10 consecutive terms, holding the distinction of longest serving alderman in Calgary’s history.
He achieved this feat by listening to our neighbours and his constituents, and a deep mutual respect and trust ensued.
Dale loved parks, almost as much as he loved books. In fact, the greatest honour of his life was when the city chose to name a park after him. That park exists because Dale stood up for the community with passion and dedication, steadfastly refusing to allow it to be developed.
Parks and playgrounds serve as community gathering places for families young and old. They are intergenerational, and provide opportunities for young children to engage in essential physical activity, and provide a catalyst to the development of critical social skills through their interaction with others without financial cost or burden of transportation, an important consideration especially to low income community members.
Mental health is measurably improved by increased interaction with both nature and community — a double win when in combination.
Dale understood that.
A caring community provides opportunities for all of its members. Cultivating a healthy society requires infrastructure that enables all members to thrive. When you remove — even temporarily — community assets such as parks and playgrounds, you impoverish the community not only through a physical deprivation, but from a health and wellness standpoint as well.
This existing park is an investment in community. While I am informed that the developer has encouraging plans to develop more affordable housing — a laudable goal — and plans to reintroduce a new park, one wonders if it will be viewed in the same manner by the community as a whole. A park or playground that is inexorably linked to the housing project has a tendency to be seen as private, regardless of how welcoming it is intended.
I would be remiss if I failed to recognize that even the best laid plans can be torn asunder. One doesn’t need to look very far to find examples of projects that were “planned,” but have been changed or cancelled altogether. Even the once vaunted Green Line LRT project, thought to be “too big to fail,” has succumbed. Sometimes, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush.
Dale understood that, too.
As the world turns increasingly faster, it is the small things we must look to. The joy of finding a quiet place to be with our thoughts, to see children playing, meet with neighbours and have a genuine human connection rather than a “virtual” one.
These are the moments that truly matter. I understand that, Dale understood that and the community understands that.
If we lose another park, another playground, even for a cause so worthy as the one being contemplated, it is lost forever.
Thanks to Dale and an initiative he helped put forth while on council, we now have a complete inventory of sites and lands owned by the city; we now know that the city has many, many other sites available.
Surely, with all that Bowness has endured — including flood recovery, the incredible challenges it faces with the water line, boil-water advisory and greater pressure that increased density has brought and will continue to bring — perhaps this one tiny sliver of community can remain.
Yvonne Hodges is a longtime resident of Bowness whose late husband, Dale, was Calgary’s longest serving alderman.