Kelowna Parks Challenge – Trip #20
This week, as part of my Kelowna Parks Challenge, I explored two parks in South Pandosy. Both were a few blocks inland from the waterfront parks I saw on my adventure from Pandosy Village to the Eldorado Hotel.
My holiday busy-ness kept me from adventuring or posting last week, but this week I am back to my regular weekly schedule.
Read on for my impressions and reflections.
Windermere Park
This neighbourhood park is found in the suburban area south of KLO Road and north of Casorso Road, just a block or so west of Gordon Road. Both the park and the neighbourhood reminded me strongly of Stillingfleet Park and the neighbourhood around it, which I saw on my Capri-Landmark walk. I would guess both were built around the same time.
This is a medium-sized neighbourhood park. It has enough room for a playground and a picnic table at the north end with plenty of extra space left over. It looks like a perfect place to come out and play on a nice day or evening.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There is no drinking fountain in this park. There is no washroom in this park.
Dog Rules: Because is it taken up by a children’s playground and has no trails, dogs are not allowed in this park.
Fascieux Creek Wetland
This park is a valuable wetland nature preserve located across the street from the commercial heart of the South Pandosy neighbourhood. Surrounded now by retirement condos and strip malls, it is a precious remnant of the marshland that used to cover the land between Kelowna and the Okanagan Mission. Wide and shallow on the east side, the creekbed narrows to the west, heading for its mouth on the lake, just past Watt Park.
The marsh takes up the entire area of the park, but a path allows visitors to walk all around it. Dog walking is encouraged and popular, but they must stay on-leash. During my visit, I saw many ducks and a large heron. I also saw evidence of beavers. The colourful willow branches and various shades of brown made this a nice park to visit in the winter, but I’m sure it will also be glorious in the greener part of the year.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There is no drinking fountain in this park. There is no washroom in this park.
Dog Rules: Dogs are allowed on the trail around this park, but only on a leash.
Reflections
Urban/Agricultural Interface
The land where today’s parks are located is another of those large formerly-agricultural tracts which were subdivided as suburban residential in the 1960s. I saw this before with the land to the north, when I visited Cameron Park, and I’ll see it again when I get to the rest of the old Guisachan ranch.
South of KLO Road, this subdividing did not happen east of Gordon Road. Even now, the west side of the road is suburban residential and the east side is agricultural. South of Mission Creek, Gordon wanders westward, closer to the lake, to become the main street of the old Mission settlement. Even here, though, there are residential zones on the west side of the street and farms on the east. Apparently it was quite a struggle for the city council to get the land for the Capital News Centre and the H2O recreation centre on the east side freed from the Agricultural Land Reserve.
As the city continues to grow, the Agricultural Land Reserve defines its borders more and more. Despite the seemingly-inevitable car-dependency of the hillside developments in Wilden and Crawford, or on Dilworth Mountain, at least they aren’t destroying precious agricultural land.
Creeks and Wetlands
I probably sound like a broken record, but I love a good creek or wetland. How delightful that one of this week’s parks was both!
Fascieux Creek is not a very long creek, but because it travels through an urban centre it has a certain prominence. Starting just west of Mission Creek, in agricultural land, it travels only three kilometres or so to Okanagan Lake. Of course, in the past, when Mission Creek hadn’t been dyked and Okanagan Lake didn’t have an overflow channel at its south end, the land all along Fascieux Creek used to flood every year and was substantially swampy the rest of the time. That made it a real pain to travel between Kelowna and the Mission, I have read, but I’m sure it made for a healthy and thriving wetland ecosystem.
Most of the land has been drained and built up now, which makes the few remaining fragments, like Fascieux Creek Wetland even more precious. I hope the people walking there know it.
Conclusion
I felt nervous about only visiting two parks this week, but I was sure it was better than nothing. The two parks I saw had been missed on my previous South Pandosy walk, and they weren’t really near any others, so I was happy to fill in that spot on my map.
With these two parks I have now seen ninety-two of the two hundred three parks on the Official List in one hundred sixty-one days. In other words I have seen 45% of the parks in 44% of the days. So, despite taking a week off, I am still technically ahead! I am tempted to let myself get behind just to see if I can catch up in the spring, but that sounds like digging a dangerously large hole for myself.
I hope you enjoyed reading about these two Kelowna parks. If you find yourself in South Pandosy, you won’t regret a spin around the Fascieux Creek Wetland. Or, if you’re not in Kelowna, see if you can find a wetland near you to explore. They are always full of life!
