Secord Park

Equipment by Jambette.

Surface: rubber.

It’s common to see a Toronto playground get an upgrade – the City rejuvenates about 20 every year – but it’s rare to see a brand new playground where there wasn’t one before. And when new playgrounds do appear, it’s almost always as part of a complete neighbourhood overhaul; a previously industrial area being wiped clean, for example.

Secord Park is an exception. The neighbourhood has been around for well over a century. Go back a few years in Street View and you’ll see that the park didn’t replace anything industrial, but was built on the site of some gloomy 1970s townhouses. It’s the only new playground I can think of that has been built in an already established neighbourhood.

Judging by how busy the playground was when we visited, the neighbourhood needed it. The place was so busy that I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures, so I had to come back a few weeks later early in the morning to get some good shots without seeming like a creep taking photos of other people's children.

To understand why the neighbourhood needed a playground so badly, all you have to do is look at Secord Avenue Public School, just down the street. There are so many portables that you can barely see the actual school from the road. The internet tells me the school is about 125% over capacity.

And while this isn’t a problem that a new park can fix, I’m happy that kids in the neighbourhood have somewhere new to play.

The equipment is varied enough, with some nice climbers by Canadian company Jambette, and a small but welcome splash pad. There are plenty of tactile panels for curious little hands: rain sticks, musical elements, turning gears, and so on. There’s a decent amount of seating spread around the park as well, and one of those frustrating covering structures that almost-but-not-quite shades you from the sun.

The rubber surfacing is maybe the sproing-iest around. It puts such a surprising spring in your step that it’s almost like playing in low gravity.

The location isn’t great – street parking only, a bit far from Main Street subway station – but then again, this playground wasn’t built for people coming from far away. It was built for the kids in the immediate area, and that’s fantastic. It’s the kind of thing that would be well-used at the recently-reviewed and heartbreakingly sad Craigton Court Tot Lot.