Equipment by Henderson, Berliner Seilfabrik, Kompan.
Surface: wood chips.
Wexford Park is an odd and unexpected green space: sitting at the intersection of two hydro corridors and across from the ominous mound of the Ashtonbee Reservoir, it’s an enormous, windswept place that feels decidedly unnatural.
Yes, there are baseball diamonds and soccer fields, but you get the feeling that they were placed there because…well, what else were they going to do with the space under the hydro wires?
However, if you enter at the parking lot off Singleton Road, you’re treated to a lovely sight: a colourful little playground nestled at the edge of a forest – the only forest for miles around that’s not connected to a valley or ravine. It’s as if, when the land was cleared for the Scarborough suburbs in the mid-20th Century, the equipment just ran out of gas and the powers that be decided to just leave the forest alone.
There are some nice, challenging monkey bars here, and a close-to-the-ground spiderweb climber that makes for low-risk rope climbing for younger ones. There’s even *gasp* a bathroom.
Our kids probably spent equal time in the playground and the forest, where they contented themselves by hitting dead trees with sticks and filling my backpack with acorns that I’ll probably forget about until an oak tree starts sprouting one day.
This isn’t one of Scarborough’s best playgrounds, but it’s certainly one of its coziest-feeling.