Surfaces: wood chips, sand.
This is a nice little playground for 3-and-unders, simple but pretty, and in close proximity to a raft of Bloor Street attractions: the ROM, the Gardiner Museum, Bata Shoe Museum, the Royal Conservatory of Music. It’s a good place to play before or after a visit to any of the above; we first came here once a week after music lessons with our son, and it holds a soft spot in my heart to this day.
The park is cute, reasonably shady, and features a large fountain shaped like a giant water pitcher. It’s as much a sculpture as a fountain, and probably an artistic reference to Taddle Creek – the park’s namesake which, like many streams and creeks in Toronto, has been buried to accommodate the city’s need for flatness. The fountain isn’t surrounded by a pool, so it’s fully approachable, and almost makes it a de facto splash pad element, much to the chagrin of many parents and nannies who don’t like the idea of bringing their little ones home in wet clothes.
Given that there’s a sandbox, and the affluence of the surrounding neighbourhood, it’s surprising that there aren’t more shared toys here. On our last visit, the sandbox was furnished with precisely two items: a dump truck with no wheels and a hand-held plastic gardening fork that was missing a prong. Perhaps the Yorkville nannies are paid extra to bring high-end baby toys of their own, with strict instructions to bring them back without letting the commoners share them.
Sadly, this playground does fall victim to vandals more often than it should. Perhaps the proximity to Bloor Street is to blame, or the lack of fencing. The spray-painted messages were surprisingly mixed the last time we were there, and offered three pieces of unwanted art: a smiley face accompanied by the word “hi,” a crudely spray-painted penis that looked more like a hand mixer than genitalia, and the phrase “God is watching.”
If God is in fact watching, perhaps He could send down some better shared toys for Taddle Creek Park. And maybe some more talented graffiti artists.