The plans went through a few incarnations in this picky—or as
Councillor Adam Vaughan describes it, "extraordinarily democratic"—Annex neighbourhood, but as of this week, Taddle Creek Park is officially open.
"The neighbourhood secured the funding for this park as part of the settlement for the
One Bedford condominium," Vaughan says of the $800,000 the half-acre park's rehabilitation cost. "The Parks Department went off without talking to anyone. The park they came up with was a wonderful and astonishing design, but the community was not comfortable with it. It was a very modern design, very high-end design, and there were 10 different neighbourhoods where you could have dropped it and they would have said 'Wow,' but the neighbourhood is a heritage community."
So they demanded the city go back to the drawing board, which they did, to the neighbourhood's general satisfaction. But in the meantime, a piece of public art was commissioned from Maritime sculptor
Ilan Sandler. He produced something akin to a vase or a jug, woven out of four kilometres of steel rod to mirror the length of the now submerged creek from which the park takes its name. As Vaughan explains it, the sculpture's antique shape disconnected it from the unrealized modern design for the park, and its modern design set it at odds with the park's ultimately more traditional design.
"It's like the
Archer in Nathan Philips Square," Vaughan says. "Most people hated it [when it first went up], but if you tried to move it now, they’d lynch you."
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan
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