Kinsmen Heritage Park Historical Village Playground

Construction of a brand new train-themed playground was on track and chugging along over the weekend.

It was last spring that the Kinsmen Club of Calgary pledged $50,000 for the playground to be built in Heritage Park, and on Saturday and Sunday more than 40 people — including Kinsmen Club volunteers, Heritage Park staff and volunteers and a couple of contractors — began building.

The Kinsmen Playground, which will include four slides, activity and music stations, a clubhouse, a suspension bridge and more, will be located near a green space on the park’s west side, said Glenn Head, president of the Kinsmen Club of Calgary.

“I think it’s going to be a nice little family area,” said Head.

“The family can come and have a picnic, the kids can play on the playground, it overlooks the (Glenmore) Reservoir, you can see the mountains off in the distance.”

Head said the Kinsmen Club looks for ways to help in the community and this seemed like a great opportunity.

“Most of our members have families and we just felt it was a good fit,” he said.

Jeff Hodgson is Heritage Park’s manager of food services, but he spearheaded the proposal to the Kinsmen Club for funding.

“We had an older playground structure here before and we wanted to add a new structure,” he said.

“It is a modern piece of equipment, but we’re going to use it for what we call comparative interpretation, which means you can compare modern times with what some of our older structures look like and you can paint the picture of how far we’ve come in terms of playground design and use.”

The new playground is suitable for toddlers all the way up to pre-teens and much of it is wheelchair accessible, said Hodgson, adding it was designed to be used by as many people as possible.

He said the playground will be ready for Heritage Park’s season opening on May Long weekend, if not sooner.

jenna.mcmurray@sunmedia.ca