Equipment by KSL Design, PlayTronic.
Surface: woodchips.
This cute little North York playground has two features that I haven’t seen anywhere else in Toronto. The first is a bowl swing.
We’ve seen plenty of “saucer” swings, and perhaps you have too: big, round, slightly concave swings that can easily fit a pair of siblings. But this is the first “bowl” swing we’ve found. The one at Conacher Park is shockingly deep; the photos don’t do it justice. I helped my younger one to climb in, and she rolled around in there as if she was at the bottom of a well. I laughed, and my voiced echoed back at me. Despite the novelty factor of the bowl swing, it wasn’t the most popular item at this playground for my two. In fact, it was so deep that they couldn’t really see the word around them while swinging, which is at least part of the appeal of a swing.
The second unusual element here was an electronic reflex game. Powered by a hand crank, the game flashes five different lights at random intervals. Kids thwack the lights, and after half a minute or so a robotic British voice tells you your score. There was a similar hand-cranked keyboard on the opposite side of the structure.
I’m always a bit wary of electronic elements at playgrounds because a) who needs electronics at the playground? And b) they don’t tend to age well. The equipment at Conacher was installed in 2019 (I think) and is holding up okay, but the reflex game was already showing signs of losing its sensitivity, as would I if I had endured two straight years of being thwacked by excited 5-year-olds. Give it a couple more years of thwacking and bad winters, and it’s hard to see the reflex game lasting much longer.
The rest of the equipment is solid: lots of slides, some nice spinners, good climbing options for bigs and littles. There’s a half-basketball court, but my kids are at the age where they preferred exploring a mini-ravine just next to the park, which provided some welcome shade at the opportunity to build a nice fort.
I wouldn’t make a special trip of it, but if you’re in the area, this is a nice one to drop by.
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