Craigton Court Tot Lot

Equipment by: unknown. Too old for any logos to be visible.

Surface: gravel, sadness, the tears of generations gone by.

I pride myself on being able to say that every single playground I review on this site has been tested by my own kids. From the biggest, most eye-popping equipment to the most modest side-street parkettes, I want them to experience it all.

Until now.

For the first time, I’m reviewing a playground that I didn’t bring my kids to. I just couldn’t.

That’s because the Craigton Court Tot Lot just might be Toronto’s saddest playground, and it’s the first one on this site to receive a sub-50 score.

Why does it sit dead last in our rankings? There’s no single reason; it’s a potpourri of playground pathetic-ness, so let’s jump right in:

1.     The equipment is old and sparse. Only three elements: a bare-bones slide (walk up, slide down, repeat) some swings, and a spring-loaded teeter-totter thing that only clears the ground by about four centimetres, which means it can neither teeter nor totter.

2.     Everything is crooked. The slide leans sideways like an old man whose back is about to go out. One of the toddler swings has shorter chains than the other, making them hang unevenly. A park bench slopes forward after decades of use. Even the city-installed park sign is crooked.

3.     It’s on a side street but it’s loud anyway. Craigton Drive has the appearance and scale of a side street – just enough room for two cars to pass with street parking on one side – but because it runs between Victoria Park and Pharmacy, it gives drivers the chance to avoid a particularly busy stretch of Eglinton, so it ends up getting way more (and way faster) traffic than it should.

4.     It backs onto green space but you can’t get in. There’s a hydro corridor just to the north, but the shrubbery is so dense that you can’t really access it.

5.     It’s surrounded by apartments filled with kids who deserve better. Low-rise apartments run all along Craigton Drive. Kids in search of a decent playground can’t find one without crossing major streets, which likely means they’d need to go with a parent. Toronto needs more playgrounds that kids can safely walk to unsupervised.

The cruel irony is that the name makes it seem like such a fun place: Craigton Court Tot Lot. It sounds delightful, and it jumps off the map with its Seuss-like alliteration and rhyme. With a name like that, it should be a fun little toddler-oriented play space, maybe like the one up in Armour Heights. But it’s not, and the let-down is hard.

I know the City does its best to rejuvenate its play spaces, and there have been so many wonderful new ones in recent years, so I’m not exactly complaining…but I am hoping. Hoping that this one can get bumped up on the list of playgrounds that need an overhaul.