Kelowna Parks Challenge Trip #5
I’ve gone on another adventure and explored more parks as part of the Kelowna Parks Challenge. This time I travelled north from Downtown to the foothills of Knox Mountain, over to Gordon Drive and back along Bernard. I visited three whole parks, plus another sliver of Knox Mountain Park.
Read on for my impressions and reflections
The Trip
Before I got to the first park, I went past the corner of St. Paul and Cawston. The lot on the southeast corner of that intersection is marked as a future park on the city’s official map. Currently, there is a parking lot there. My assumption is that development is waiting for the neighbourhood population to grow. I wonder if the location was reserved when the Cawston Active Transportation Corridor was developed.
Walrod Park
This park is next to a Justice Institute of BC facility. Given the lack of signage, you would be forgiven for not knowing it is a city park if you walked past it. There are a couple of picnic tables and chairs in the northwest corner, but most of this park is taken up by a grassy soccer field.
Though I visited the park on a Saturday afternoon, both the park and the surrounding neighbourhood were eerily quiet. This does not appear to be a popular park for playing in.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There are no drinking fountains in this park, but there is one washroom. It is a portable toilet located along the fence on the east side of the field.
Dog Rules: Because this park is a playing field, no dogs are allowed in this park.
Knox Mountain Park
Though I have still not visited the main parts of Knox Mountain Park as part of the challenge, I have once again visited a peripheral section of the park. (Long-time readers will remember how I visited the disc golf course during Trip #3.) This time I started at the Apex Trailhead by the tennis courts and hiked past the dog park and along the Mount Royal Trail.
Google Maps calls this the ‘Mount Royal Open Space,’ but the signs by the parking lot clearly show it as part of Knox Mountain. Either way, the view from this trail is great. Obviously, it is not as high as the Knox Mountain lookouts, but it is still higher than most buildings, so I was able to see across the entire city, all the way to South Kelowna and Okanagan Mission.
Currently, there is a detour on this trail, around a section of bluff that has recently eroded. I assume the danger is that the trail is too close to the unstable edge. Amusingly, later, where the trail descends to the foot of Gordon Drive, it passes within a metre of a similarly eroded edge. No fence. I guess that erosion is not recent and its stability has been established.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: I haven’t spotted any drinking fountains in this park yet, but I haven’t seen most of the park. There is a portable washroom near the Ellis Street entrance, between the tennis courts, the disc golf course, and the parking lot. I have read there is also a washroom at the top of the park, near the Pioneer Pavilion.
Dog Rules: For the most part, dogs must be leashed in this park, and must stay on trails, since the ecosystem here is so rare and precious; however, there is a dog off-leash park running the length of the trail connecting the parking lot to Mount Royal Drive.
Martin Park
Like Walrod Park, this park is mostly comprised of playing fields, in this case two. Also like Walrod Park, this park is adjacent to an institute of civic interest, in this case the Martin Avenue Community Centre, home of the Okanagan Boys and Girls Clubs.
The line between the two lots is invisible, and on that border you will find two portable washrooms and a young children’s playground. The playground is surrounded by a short fence, which is great for preventing toddlers from toddling off.
I thought the tall trees on the south edge of the park provided a pleasant visual border, and was happy to find a couple of gaps in the tall chain-link fence that surrounds the playing fields.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There are no drinking fountains in this park, but there are two portable toilets. They are located between the playing field and the community centre, on the east side of the park.
Dog Rules: Because this park is playing fields, no dogs are allowed in this park.
Knowles Heritage Park
This oasis of lawns and gardens occupies half a block at the corner of Bernard Avenue and Ethel Street. Formerly the yard of John Knowles, whose preserved house still stands on the western side of the park, its two halves were made whole just over ten years ago, when the laneway that divided them was eliminated. Garden beds and improved seating have been added, as well, creating a wonderful space to have a walk or a rest.
The rest of the block of Bernard between Ethel and Richter also makes for a nice walk. Though it was just outside the city limits for most of the twentieth century, a lot of prominent residents built beautiful houses there, and many are preserved as heritage properties. Combined with the tall and shady street trees, they make for a lovely place to stroll.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There are no drinking fountains in this park, and there are no washrooms.
Dog Rules: Dogs are only allowed on-leash in this park.
Reflections
Future Park Sites
One of the things I love, almost more than exploring places to walk, is to watch the planning and developing of new places to explore and walk. Though it warns visitors against taking its descriptions as legally binding, the Kelowna Official Map is fascinatingly useful in this regard. One of the layers you can apply there is called ‘Future Land Use’ and it shows some interesting things.
Nothing about the parking lot on the corner of Cawston and St. Paul suggested to me that it might be a future park, but as I wrote above, it doesn’t surprise me that it is, since it is along a prominent Active Transportation Corridor.
Heritage Homes
In addition to the Knowles House and other heritage houses along Bernard Avenue, this walk took me past the Lindon House on Ethel Street. It reminded me that visiting heritage homes is a great way to organize a walk.
When I lived in Vancouver, I would sometimes visit that city’s heritage register to find out the addresses of heritage buildings in a certain neighbourhood, plot them on a map, and decide on a walking route that would take me past them.
Without a guide or guidebook, it can be fun to observe their features on your own. What do they have in common? What other buildings do they remind you of? Later, you can check if any experts have shared your conclusions.
Dogs on Playing Fields
Two parks on this trip: Walrod Park and Martin Park, were comprised nearly wholly of playing fields and were therefore forbidden to dogs. This makes sense because some owners do not prevent their dogs from tearing up turf and some owners do not pick up their dogs’ waste. Those owners ruin it for the rest.
Nevertheless, in both parks, the only other visitors I saw were dog owners who not only brought dogs to the parks but let their dogs off their leashes to run around. This makes sense because their dogs need to run around and there is a big field in their neighbourhood with no one else using it. It is fenced in, so the dog won’t run into traffic.
I am not sure there is a better resolution to the problem of dogs in ‘no dog’ parks than to build more dog off-leash parks.
No Drinking Fountains
This is the first trip on which I did not discover any drinking fountains. I’m sure it will not be the last. My adventure lasted three hours and my water bottle ran dry.
I am glad that I am finding more washrooms than the city website told of, but the extra washrooms are of the portable variety and do not have taps of running drinking water. Portable washrooms are easier to add than drinking fountains, I suppose, but more drinking fountains would certainly be welcome. I will take the fountain I discovered in the newly-developed Rowcliffe Park as an optimistic sign of things to come.
Conclusions
I walked this trip in a long solo loop. I walked for three hours without stop, which was a good length for me. The park density was low, but that merely transmuted the pleasure of the walk. It did not reduce it.
I have now visited fourteen percent of the parks on the Official List in nine percent of the year, so I am still ahead of the pace, but not as far.
Thanks for reading about my adventure, and let me know below what you thought! Are you familiar with the history of any of the parks I visited? Do you love them or visit them often? Comment below!
