Recently, my daughter took her children to the park area just west of the arena in our town. Enjoying the last days of my summer holidays, I joined them. The kids seemed pretty excited, but that’s what being a kid is all about – looking forward to the next adventure. Anyway, when they arrived at the hillside beyond the arena, they saw the animated figures and waterworks flowing. My grandson’s remark kind of summed it up.
“Wow!” was all he said. And he just repeated, “Wow!”
Over the next hour or so, my grandson and his sister, five, and his brother, one, dashed through the water spouting from the giant moose’s mouth, tipped the buckets full of water suspended overhead or tried stepping on the mini-geysers shooting up from the bowl of the splash pad. Just watching them reminded me how much fun being a kid in the summer can be and should be.
The “wow” factor was magnified last Sunday afternoon when our grandkids joined hundreds of other youngsters from all over the region at the same location, as the Bonner Boys officially opened their much heralded and highly sophisticated Splash Park on the arena property.
I arrived after my grandchildren had, but when I spoke to several of the Bonner Boys, they confirmed that there were about 700 or 800 people attending as the community-minded Boys officially turned on the water at the public Splash Park and acknowledged many of the businesses, individuals and civic officials who’d all participated in this several-year-long adventure in fund-raising and community construction.
I remember when Brent Bonner died in a car crash nearly a decade ago. In the years immediately following, one of Brent’s hockey buddies, Bob Ferguson, used to gather teammates in his garage or backyard nearby to reflect on their pal and grow a team in his memory. They very quickly talked about memorializing their teammate in a unique way – raising money for his son Benjamin’s future. Fortunately, their generosity expanded into a full team of oldtimers hockey players – The Bonner Boys – and a slough of community-oriented fund-raising projects: an annual hockey tournament, golf and baseball tourneys, and the always popular dunk tank at the Uxbridge Fall Fair. But a couple of years ago, the team’s philanthropy invented a Bonner mega-project, a several-hundred-thousand-dollar splash pad, natural amphitheatre seating area and roofed pavilion.
I didn’t know Brent Bonner that well. But if he was like me as a boy, living in a small community and out to explore the world, life was probably full of “wow” moments. And I don’t just mean graduating from school, landing that first job and finding a mate in life. I mean the “wow” moments associated with playing. Moments such as a first ride on a swing… making that first successful head-first leap off the town pool diving board… or scoring that first end-to-end goal in a game of pond hockey. Whether it was in a playground, at a pool or on the ice, most often the “wow” came from playing and remembering the pure pleasure of it.
My playground in Scarborough turned out to be all of the Guild Inn property. In the early 1950s, my parents bought a house above the Scarborough bluffs. And since it was long before the Guildwood Village development, we kids could hike, explore and toboggan all across those open fields between Kingston Road and the Guild Inn. We used to call it “tobogganing into tomorrow,” we could slide so far. And one summer we built a secret tree fort down on the property and enjoyed secret passwords, secret meetings and a hideout away from everybody.
A few years later, during the summer my folks enjoyed two weeks at the Globe and Mail corporate cottages on Lake Erie, the family swam, played horseshoes and roasted corn over a bonfire. But head and shoulders above all that were the visits my father and I made to the Port Dover amusement park and our rides on the bumping cars.
The thrill of steering, racing and, of course, bumping other drivers was a “wow” moment worth waiting for. I’ve never forgotten it.
Last Sunday, I watched the 30 or so Bonner Boys in their orange commemorative “Number 26” sweaters, rush about making sure all elements of their official opening went according to plan. I saw lots of youngsters enjoying free ice cream, bouncing through the inflatable play areas and chasing each other around the Splash Park. I’m sure all the kids present – including three of my grandchildren – experienced plenty of wow thanks to a community-minded team and their generous sponsors.
It was a fitting tribute to the memory of an Uxbridge kid and his family (blood relatives and hockey mates) ensuring that youngsters in our community can have “wow” moments to remember for a lifetime.