{"id":18754,"date":"2017-10-25T16:14:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T20:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18754"},"modified":"2017-10-25T16:14:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T20:14:33","slug":"holy-spirit-helps-nature-reclaim-their-bit-of-concrete-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/holy-spirit-helps-nature-reclaim-their-bit-of-concrete-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Spirit helps nature reclaim their bit of \u201cconcrete jungle\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paradise may have been paved to put up a parking lot in Joni Mitchell\u2019s world, but in the world of Holy Spirit Catholic Elementary School, paradise was asphalted over for a playground.
\nParadise, however, experienced a bit of resurgence on Thursday afternoon as the school community put on their steel-toed boots, grabbed their crowbars, and reclaimed their space as a natural oasis.
\nStudents, parents and staff were out in force with representatives of Windfall Ecology Centre and the Healthy Kids Community Challenge to transform a portion of their paved kindergarten yard from a swath of tarmac to an oasis of greenery and native trees, the latest in a long line of de-paving projects spearheaded in part by Windfall.
\nNearly 80 individuals made quick work of the asphalt, removing 150 square metres of pavement to make way for Mother Nature to do her work.
\n\u201cWe gather here in a very particular way to reclaim nature and, in reclaiming nature, we reclaim, in a special way our relationship with God too,\u201d said Father Frank McDevitt of the local Our Lady of Grace Catholic Parish before sending a group of students to splash holy water around the perimeter of the play area. \u201c
\nThe Holy Spirit community has been hard at work envisioning exactly what they want their revitalised \u201coasis\u201d to be for several months.
\nIt was a project already in full swing when Principal Marlene Vickers arrived at Holy Spirit for the first time last month. Crediting the school\u2019s Green Team with tackling the project, she said it was all about giving kids a natural place to play.
\n\u201cA lot of school yards have drainage issues and this is one of them,\u201d she said. \u201cWe revamped and revised [the plan] so we could get the area de-paved and still keep our shade structure, still have an area for the kids to play, and incorporate the whole vision of de-paving, mulching and the non-pavement areas for the kids to play. It is about how to give back and turn our world around from the concrete jungle that we have.\u201d
\nThursday\u2019s de-paving event was attended by a number of local dignitaries including Mayor Geoff Dawe, trustee Elizabeth Crowe, and superintendant Opiyo Oloya.
\n\u201cThis is such a wonderful opportunity for the community to come together as well for a project that will serve the needs of the kindergarten students,\u201d said Ms. Crowe. \u201cMaybe in the future you can do some de-paving in the main yard. Many schools are doing this because it is great to bring some shade back to nature and let kids play in the dirt. I look forward to coming back and seeing the final results.\u201d
\nThis was a message driven home by Brent Kopperson, Executive Director of Windfall Ecology Centre.
\nWhen rainwater hits paved areas, it collects pollutants like salt and other detergents along the way before finding its way into the watershed. De-pave projects like this, he said, go a long way in re-setting the balance.
\n\u201cWhen we de-pave areas, we\u2019re naturalizing them, we\u2019re creating a great and healthy play area and, at the same time, we\u2019re letting water absorb naturally into the ground the way nature intended,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is going to be great, and for all the kids [participating] you will be able to come back here when you\u2019ve got your own children and say, \u2018I built this.\u2019 Congratulations to you all. It will be transformed, it will be magnificent, and it will be a great accomplishment for you all.\u201d
\nAccording to Windfall, this de-pave event is the first of two phases in store for Holy Spirit that will transform the school yard.
\nIn addition to increasing the green space in the yard, the new gardens, trees and permeable surfaces will work to benefit local bodies of water.
\n\u201cPrior to the event, Holy Spirit\u2019s kindergarten yard was nearly 100 per cent paved,\u201d said Andrea Fallone, Program Manager at Windfall. \u201cBy [transforming this] we\u2019re allowing rain to absorb into the ground naturally, preventing polluted storm water run-off from reaching our local waterways untreated.\u201d
\nSponsors for Holy Spirit\u2019s de-paving event included the Great Lakes Guardian Fund for funding, with additional collaborative support from the school itself, the York Catholic District School Board, GWF Construction, Gro-Bark, Evergreen, the Town of Aurora, the Aurora Lions Club, Treasure Mills, Rent Source Aurora, Green Communities Canada, and Depave Paradise.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paradise may have been paved to put up a parking lot in Joni Mitchell\u2019s world, but in the world of Holy Spirit Catholic Elementary School, paradise was asphalted over for a playground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2017-10-26-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4Su","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 11:21:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}