{"id":24243,"date":"2019-07-11T19:08:04","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24243"},"modified":"2019-07-11T19:08:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:08:13","slug":"time-travellers-diary-ideal-grounds-for-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/time-travellers-diary-ideal-grounds-for-play\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME TRAVELLER’S DIARY: Ideal Grounds for Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Michelle Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few\nfamiliar sights that unofficially announce the arrival of summer \u2013 boats on the\nwater, ice cream in hand and a neighbourhood playground full of kids! Whether\nit is a swing set, slide, monkey bars, merry-go-round, or all of those\nstructures combined, a well-equipped playground can be a lifesaver for parents\nand kids who have energy to burn! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard to imagine\nneighbourhood parks without a playground, but surely, there was a time before\nswinging, sliding and monkeying around was the norm. After some early research,\nI discovered that I needed to travel back over seventy years \u2013 to 1947 \u2013 if I\nwanted to learn more about the origins of Town run playgrounds in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I arrived on a\nbeautiful September day and read in the paper that residents were eagerly\nfundraising to purchase playground equipment for a lot on Tyler Street, just\nopposite the Tannery. The article mentioned that the Bank of Montreal was\naccepting donations, so I made my way over there to offer a contribution. I got\nto chatting with the teller and she informed me that the goal was to keep kids\nfrom playing in the streets because the roads are getting too busy. As I handed\nher a few coins from my pocket, I could not help but think, \u201cIf only she could\nknew how busy Yonge Street would be in 2019!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eager to see how this\nall would unfold, I took a quick trip to the spring of 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the\nfundraising efforts fell short but members of Local 27 and some Collis Leather\nofficials were stepping up to sponsor the playground and build the equipment.\nAurora\u2019s first public playground would be open and ready for the summer of\n1948!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is quite amazing\nhow much conversation revolved around the playgrounds \u2013 one candidate for Town\nCouncil even based his platform around the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The newly created\nAurora Recreation Commission took the issue of proper playgrounds very\nseriously and appointed a Director of Children\u2019s Playgrounds.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While skipping around\nthe early 1950s it became clear that this whole playground thing had really\ntaken off. I was happy to find Town Park, McMahon Park and the Mill Street Park\nwere all equipped, and that was not all: the Aurora Recreation Commission had\nintroduced a supervised Summer Playground Program, which included arts &\ncrafts, singing, baseball and of course \u2013 fun on the playground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summer programs\nwere an instant hit and playground captains were recruited to supervise the\nprogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without the captains,\nthe Summer Playground Program could not run. After speaking directly with a\ncaptain, I learned how extensive the training was \u2013 playground captain\ncandidates trained two nights a week, for five weeks, at North York\nCollegiate.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I returned to\n2019, I discovered that by the late 1970s, the Summer Playground Program\nexpanded to a full day and eventually became known as Day Camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For forty years, the\nprogram was free and fees were not introduced until 1989!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, summer camps have changed over the\nyears, but many continue to visit the neighbourhood parks so kids can swing,\nslide and monkey around on the, much more modern, playground equipment.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Johnston There are a few familiar sights that unofficially announce the arrival of summer \u2013 boats on the water, ice cream in hand and a neighbourhood playground full of kids! Whether it is a swing set, slide, monkey bars, merry-go-round, or all of those structures combined, a well-equipped playground can be a lifesaver […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6j1","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 00:37:06","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\/24243","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=24243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}