The Signal Hill School Enhancement Society gave us permission to be onsite at the new playground at Battalion Park School before it is fully opened. It is still an active construction site, and it remains closed until all amenities and inspections are completed.

What that permission got us on Saturday morning was a playground finished enough for four adults to stand in front of it holding an oversized cheque, with some of the junior equipment still being set at the far end and a skid steer parked on the gravel.

They were able to show us the pour in place rubber surfacing, and to point out the areas still under construction. The remaining project components are asphalt, picnic tables, benches, paved pathways and landscaping.

Left to right: Brian McKinnon and Kristi McKinnon of the Signal Hill School Enhancement Society, Ronald Waters, President of the Signal Hill Community Association, and Chen Deng, Vice President.

The cheque is for $100,000, and it is the largest single grant the Signal Hill Community Association has ever made. It went toward the replacement of the Mini playground, the one for the younger grades, which had been in the ground since 2001.

The number behind the number

Battalion Park School has about 500 students, kindergarten through grade six, and two playgrounds to support the large enrolment of students in two buildings. The Mini went in in 2001. The Core, the larger one, went in in 2008.

The Calgary Board of Education inspects and maintains school playgrounds but does not have funding to replace them. That falls to parent societies. So the Signal Hill School Enhancement Society, a registered charity that supports Battalion Park School and operates separately from Parent Council, struck a Playground Committee and took on both rebuilds. Their own estimate for the pair is between $900,000 and $1.5 million, on a timeline of roughly three years of fundraising for the Mini and another three for the Core.

Before any of that could start, the Society had to raise $125,000 of its own money. That was the threshold to order the Mini rebuild and to qualify for the matching grants that pay for most of a project this size. Our $100,000 is against that number.

Brian and Kristi McKinnon did not do this alone. The Society wrote the grant applications, family and community volunteers supported two AGLC casinos, and core SHSES committee members ran successful fundraising campaigns within the school community. It took three years. That is the part of this story with no photographs in it, and Brian is straightforward about how long a stretch it was.

The Society's own account of the project is at shses.ca/playground-rebuilds. SHSES is still accepting donations through the Parks Foundation Calgary to help finish the remaining landscaping, since the scope has grown during construction.

The students picked the colours

The colour theme has a name, Mango Tango, and the students picked it. SHSES ran a survey asking them what they liked about the old playground and what they wanted in the new one.

Their answers are what shaped this: bright colours, height, slides, something more challenging for the older students, and "no more pea gravel!"

So the committee did not buy a catalogue playground and drop it in. They went through it piece by piece with the designer and came back with a long list of modifications.

The one Brian led with on Saturday: you can get from one end of this playground to the other without ever touching the ground. That was deliberate. It is built so that a game of "the floor is lava" actually works, start to finish, which is the sort of thing you only put in if you have listened to children.

A large orange arched rope climbing structure with a net bridge through the centre and a blue rock wall at the entrance

The other request that came back was harder monkey bars. There are several runs of them now, including ones that move under you, which is a different problem from the fixed kind.

A long row of yellow and teal overhead swinging rings running the length of the structure

The whole structure is designed for ages 5 to 12, not just the little ones. There is real equipment for the older kids, with the fall protection that has to come with it. A grade six is not meant to stand around bored at this playground, and neither is a kindergartener.

Designed, supplied and built in Canada

This is the part Brian and Kristi are proudest of, and it does not usually make it into a playground story. The designer is Canadian, the supplier is Canadian, and the materials are Canadian. On a project this size none of that is automatic. They went looking for it.

More inclusive than the one it replaced

The old Mini playground was inaccessible, with its high plastic borders, deep pea gravel surface and little to no grass near it.

The committee's primary goal was to make this one inclusive for everyone, whether that is students or community members with permanent or temporary reduced mobility. The pour in place rubber surfacing running the full footprint is the most visible result.

The new playground seen from the field, with a yellow double slide in the foreground and a teal double slide on the right

What else is up there

Three slides. A wide teal double on one side, a yellow one on the other.

A wide teal double slide beside the main play structure, with a yellow slide visible further along

The ramp to the lower deck is covered in orange daisies.

A blue climbing ramp decorated with large orange and white daisy panels

The spinner and the teeter totter are out on the edge, where the ground drops away and you can see most of the southwest. The red piece beside them is a WeRockEZ-2, and it is on the wish list of the Enhanced Education Support staff at Battalion because it supports sensory regulation for students in the EES program. It is also fun to bounce on.

A red multi-seat rocker, a yellow spinner and a teal teeter totter at the edge of the playground, with rooftops and the city skyline in the distance

There is a marble maze panel built into the tower.

The play tower seen from the school side, with a large yellow marble maze panel mounted on it

It is not open yet

This is the part to actually read.

The equipment is in, but the site is not finished. Still to come: asphalt, picnic tables, benches, paved pathways and landscaping. There are final touches left on the equipment itself.

The Society is aiming to open it at the end of September, if everything holds to schedule.

Until then, in the Society's own words: it is still an active construction site, and it remains closed until all amenities and inspections are completed. However ready it looks from the sidewalk, nobody should be on it yet.

The junior play area mid-installation, equipment standing on unfinished ground with a skid steer parked behind it

Thank you

Signal Hill kids will be on this thing every recess for the next twenty years, and most of them will never hear the words "matching grant." Thank you to Brian and Kristi, the playground committee, the SHSES Board and committee members, and the hundreds of school and community volunteers who helped bring this project to reality in three years.

Kristi put it this way:

"There are so many extraordinary volunteers in our community, and we're proud to be amongst them. This playground has been an enormous undertaking, and we're incredibly proud to have helped create a welcoming space where everyone can play together for years to come."
Brian and Kristi McKinnon standing in front of the new playground with their arms out