The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Mayor George Fontaine is appealing directly to partiers whose broken liquor bottles and vandalism forced the temporary closure of Rotary Park. At last week's city council meeting, Fontaine said he recently had to shut down the popular downtown park for a day because it was unsafe for children. "Disturbing" is a word he used to describe the incident as he asked the unidentified culprits to avoid a repeat performance. Rotary Park was closed Sunday, July 10 so city crews could clean up glass shards found on, and possibly near, the cement spray pad where bare-footed children gather to frolic under the cool water. Mike Dubreuil, the city's recreation manager, said the amount of glass was not massive, but it was unclear whether the shards on the pad had spread to the nearby grass. So to err on the side of caution, city crews conducted an extensive clean-up, which included a shop-vac, while closing the park to the public. If the dangerous glass weren't enough, they noticed damage had been done to electrical outlets on the washroom facility. Quality Fontaine, a long-time Rotarian, said a great deal of work has been put into Rotary Park and other parks to provide the public with quality recreational areas. He surmised that the partiers were young adults who, while generally good people, do regrettable things once they start drinking. This is not the first time concerns about parties and vandalism have surfaced at Rotary Park. In the summer of 2007, neighbourhood residents told city council that the park had become the site of loud parties complete with smashed beer bottles on the rocks overlooking the property. One of them recounted a particularly brutal night during which young people played "war games" and set off firecrackers throughout the neighbourhood. The resident estimated that the youth involved were as young as 10 and as old as 18 and up. Shortly thereafter, the city and Rotary Club responded by installing three light poles to illuminate the park and the adjacent rock ridge. See 'City...' on pg. 6 Continued from pg. 1 Today, Dubreuil said the city is "pretty much at the point where we've done what we can do" to prevent further problems at the park. He said the city has a "very strong support network" with neighbourhood residents who inform the city or RCMP about problematic incidents. Dubreuil encourages all residents to do the same if they see suspicious activity at the park. What may hurt some the most about vandalism at Rotary Park is the site's status as a bona fide Flin Flon landmark. For 76 years now, it has ranked as one of the city's premier family gathering spots, a place where generations have come to enjoy those all-too-brief Flin Flon summers. Rotary Park was born out of necessity. At the height of the Great Depression, Flin Flon's population swelled as families from across Canada and beyond arrived in search of steady work at Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. They came with children. Lots of them. And in an era when recreational options were as scarce as money, they needed somewhere to play. Answer the call Community leaders would soon answer the call. With the need for a park one of their chief motivators, a group of men formed the Rotary Club of Flin Flon in March of 1935. On July 17 of that year, with Mayor George Mainwaring on hand, Jubilee Park, as it was originally known, opened to much public fanfare. The name celebrated the 25th anniversary of King George V's ascension to England's throne. Sadly, the King would die less than six months after the honour was bestowed. The records are a bit murky, but Jubilee Park may have been Flin Flon's very first park. If not, it was certainly one of the first two parks. At some point after the Second World War, possibly 1945, Jubilee Park was renamed Rotary Park in honour of the club that had expended great dollars and labour to bring it to fruition. Last year, Rotarians and a few hundred residents converged on the park to celebrate its rich past and the nearly $250,000 in improvements undertaken in recent years. Meanwhile, the city is still contending with a different sort of damage at its parks, as last week's powerful windstorm snapped several trees. Dubreuil said Monday that the majority of the trees had been cut into logs and would be removed over about the next week.7/27/2011
