Equipment by Henderson, Little Tikes.
Surfaces: wood chips, sand.
There are some older-generation wooden playgrounds around the city that maintain a sense of dignity and charm despite their age. Unfortunately, the playground at Diefenbaker PS in the heart of East York isn’t one of them.
Well, maybe that’s harsh.
There are some positives here: the school offers two separate play areas (one for bigs and one for littles) and there’s a sandbox in the junior playground, which is unusual, since most schools don’t want their kindergarten teachers to spend most of their time cleaning sand out of kids’ hair. The old truck-type structure in the junior playground is another quaint feature.
The senior playground has a wooden structure which, judging by the different shades of wood, has obviously seen many band-aid type repairs over the years. A few decades ago it would have been impressive, but these days it’s looking rough and worn out, like a kindergarten teacher who’s spent their whole day cleaning sand out of multiple heads of hair.
There’s a bit of green space, including an artificial turf field that’s good for soccer, but you’ve got to bring your own nets if you want to use the turf, as no permanent goals have been installed as of this writing.
In short, just about everything hear feels like faded glory: the equipment, the school, the way the letters on the school’s “Diefenbaker” sign – a name which itself conjures up images of the past – are peeling off as if the place has been abandoned for years. There’s even a bench in the junior playground that’s 25 years out of date, proclaiming East York schools as “great places to be,” a motto the now-amalgamated East York Board of Education went to its grave clutching to desperately.
So unless they find money for a rejuvenation, or unless you need some establishing shots for a documentary about the cold war, don’t feel bad about giving this one a miss.