Two Wheels To Nowhere

All is quite on New Year’s Day ~ bringing in 2018 with a peaceful, snowy ski around Sunnidale Park. I am thrilled to see the City has started grooming the trails again along the top section of the Park! From the Dorian Parker Community Centre, down along Sunnidale Road to the toboggan hills and back up to the Arboretum, then heading back to the community centre, passing over the water storage site. The groomed trail is a wide swath with cross country ski tracks set on each side and the wide space in the middle accommodating snowshoeing and skate skiing. It’s awesome to be able to go skiing ten minutes from home, in the middle of our beautiful city! I love this park that I have used and enjoyed since I was a young kid. As I looped my way through the bush loop trail, top loop, arboretum, down the toboggan hill, past the off-leash dog park, memories come flooding back to me from days gone by. Helping cubs to race “cub-cars” in the club house when I was a Cub Leader. Dancing to “Rock Lobster” in 1981 in the community centre in grade 9 during the North Athletic Banquet. Walking there with the team from North after school for cross country ski practices. Running the trails for high school cross country races. Playing on the ‘zip line’ at the playground as a preteen. Tobogganing down the old ski hill (yes, there used to be a rope tow there for alpine skiers!).

Remembering the troubled, lost soul of a North classmate who took his life in the park in 1984. Skiing through the Arboretum today made me reflect back on my Grade 10 Science teacher, Wyman Jacques whose love and dedicated care for the Arboretum earned him a posthumous dedication a few months ago. Meeting old high school friends there to toboggan and drink ice-cold beers during our college years when everyone was back home at Christmas. Being there with Chris to have our engagement photos taken in 1989. Taking our young kids there to toboggan on “the big hill” in the late 90s. Visiting the park on my lunch breaks in the early 2000s to see our kids cross country running races; years later walking the same trails with our dogs with teenagers Rachel, Leah and Nicolas. Reading the story of how Councillor Dorian Parker fought tooth-and-nail at city council to preserve Sunnidale Park as a green space while under intense pressure to have it zoned for residential development in the 1960s (she deservedly became Mayor in the 1970s) – what incredible foresight! The park was previously a golf course on the edge of town, owned by the Barrie Country Club. With Dorian Parker’s vision it is now a jewel in the centre of our City! Witnessing the care the City recently took in constructing a greatly needed water storage facility on the park grounds but doing so with careful attention to detail that now leaves the landscape looking natural and the storage tank barely visible, the lawn above it still usable by visitors – I skied right over it today! I will continue to enjoy the park hopefully for decades to come and will remain grateful for living in a City that affords us such wonderful facilities!