THUNDER BAY – Eva Walter is stoked that the city’s newest splash pad is up and running.
The nine-year-old spent much of the afternoon running through the sprinklers and water features, exploring the Northwood Playfield Splash Pad with her cousin.
What a great way to spend the day, she said.
“You can get really wet and there’s a lot of things to play with. I’m speechless,” Eva said.
“It’s really cool.”
Her nine-year-old cousin, Nicholas, was equally excited.
I really like that you can get wet and that there’s a bunch of (water) dumps that you can run through and have races with your friends,” he said.
“I really like the dump because it makes you really wet. Every time everyone is so excited and it just dumps.”
Caden Poulin, 9, was in full agreement.
“I like the dunking part,” he said.
“I like being wet. It’s nice to have somewhere close to go. We walked here.”
Located on James Street, the splash pad incorporated Indigenous teachings into its design, utilizing the Water is Life theme suggested through stakeholder meetings in 2019, when the new summer play structure was first proposed.
It’s an important Anishinaabe teaching, indicating that without water, there is no life, so water needs to be both protected and respected.
Indigenous plants and animals were also included in the design, and boulders from Animikii-wajiw (Mount McKay), used around the splash pad to represent the seven grandfather stones and teachings.
Runoff from the splash pad is reused in a waterfall feature and then flows into an infiltration basin where native plants are housed.
Werner Schwar, the supervisor of parks and open spaces planning, said it’s great to see the splash pad open and children of all ages enjoying it.
“We wanted to create a place where kids and families to gather. This is a great park, in that respect. We have soccer fields, we have the youth centre, there’s basketball and there’s already a playground. There really are a lot of things for families to do,” Schwar said.
“The second thing was to look at how we could incorporate Indigenous culture into our parks and open spaces. This was really one of the first efforts we’ve ever had in integrating that into our splash pads.”
The splash pad, which is not supervised, is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
