Mooney's Bay Playground. Would you please save the children?
 

I am sorry if this issue has been placed somewhere else.

This has got to be one of most laughable issues that I have heard in a long time.

The best quote was from a young boy who asked his father "Why are they protesting a playground?"

But every 'save the children' cliché is coming out the woodwork.

An early one was that the playground was dangerously close to the water and every child was going to fall into river. Do parents not supervise their children? Or at least teach them common sense safety. Don't run and fall into river.

Today, another priceless quote. "It is all about process, I don't care if we lose the playground" . Where have we heard this before?

I would like to know how many people are actually complaining about this project or is it a miniscule bunch of chronic complainers who have nothing else better to do with their time.

It reminds me of the 'Disneyland in the Experimental Farm' Botanical Gardens and (maybe its the same handful of people) who complained the Dutch windmill out of existence at Mooney's Bay because the tiny number of cars that needed to park next to it would kill every child in neighbourhood.

Is there some kind of psychosis that makes people complain against things that are overwhelmingly beneficial to the community?

Agreed. It's ridiculous.

My favourite quote was, "Mooney's Bay Park is like an extended backyard"

This show goes all over Ontario to help build new parks and give kids a chance to get involved in community projects
http://voiceoftoronto.com/wp/2015/04...their-sleeves/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2642134/

Welcome to Ottawa :lynchmob:

Which explains why there is no firm plan. The kids in the neighbourhood will help develop the playground concept. All the more reason to like the proposal, which will improve a poorly used portion of the park.

Well, the news from the weekend would prove otherwise. Parents seem to be unable to keep children out of animal enclosures at the zoo. I can only imagine how many children would fall into the river considering it doesn't even have a fence!

But in all seriousness. I believe that this playground needs to happen, people need to STFU. Being NIMBY about a building or freeway, sure, but a playground? It is beyond outrageous.

We have to realize that we can't protect everybody from their own stupidity. Fencing all our waterways will be a sad day indeed.

Not a fan of what's going to be essentially 13 small and probably boring (what else can you get if you divide 2 Million by 13?) separate playgrounds crammed in one place.

Would rather have either 13 new playgrounds in various parts of the city or ONE great playground. I was in Chicago last September and was blown away by Maggie Daley park. That's really something.

http://varlamov.me/2015/usadetpl/28.jpg

Of all the things in the world to protest about, honestly....

This reminds me of the time that the Netherlands tried to give Ottawa a traditional-style windmill as a gift and city council debated for months about whee to put it and then it never happened.

This I agree with. The ends don't justify the means. If process isn't followed then residents lose their say or have clue about what will be built in their neighbourhoods (any hood, not just specific to this story)

This is clearly not a neighbourhood park, it is a city-wide facility that already hosts large events. There are several neighbourhood parks nearby that would be unaffected by this proposal. I agree that the after-the-fact consultation is not a best practice, although almost any outside partner would expect confidentiality in negotiations.

Too bad the Lebretton negotiations are not far enough along, this might be a good fit there.

Ugh, tell me about it.

Jennifer Keesmatt, the chief planner of the City of Toronto, wrote a opinion piece in the Toronto Star, advocating for the apparently revolutionary idea of getting your kids to walk to school... alone. She made her 9 year old walk to school alone after spending about a year accompanying her and lets her take the TTC alone. The number of people who wrote in accusing her of abusing her child and saying she shouldn't be a mother was faith-in-humanity crushing.

I think that was proposed by a private group, not by the Govt of Netherlands.

Nope, it was proposed by the Gov't of Netherlands. This is going back a few decades, actually. It's possible another group tried something similar since.

The one from The Netherlands was originally intended to be located on the greenspace at Dow's Lake, near the Experimental Farm. It would have been beautiful. But remember, Ottawa is the place where ingenuity and creativity come to die.

Um, maybe my memory is imperfect, but I only remember on one occasion my mother picking me up from school. I didn't have far to walk, but it was routine for kids to walk over 1 km to school when they were quite little. In those days, there were lots of kids and the bigger kids accompanied the little ones. We taught each other how to be safe on the streets. Those were the days when families mostly only had one car so being driven was out of the question. I remember in later years, school buses were picking up more and more kids closer to the school. A time when we were willing to spend more for this and the safety issue was becoming more of an issue. It is now extreme.

I just read that it is considered child abuse to leave a child home alone for a short time even at age 15. Wow! Have times changed.

Wow that must be new. I was born in 1993 and I was allowed to be home alone during the day at 10ish and alone overnight at 13. Most of the kids I knew were the same or similar.

Hogwash, that's certainly not the case in Ontario, as a 2 second Google search plainly shows (check the link from any CAS, who you would have to worry about if you you were running afoul of any childcare rules)
https://www.google.ca/search?q=leavi..._AUIBygA&dpr=1

Youre right, according to this link:http://cwrp.ca/sites/default/files/p...ns/en/144e.pdf

In Ontario, children aren't allowed to be left alone at home until 16.

edit

That is not what the article says. Parental responsibility extends to age 16. If you go to Hawaii for two weeks, leaving your 15 year old at home with no supervisory arrangement, you could in theory have a problem. A 15 year old "latch-key kid" is not a legal or child abuse issue.

exactly.