In Strathcona Park

Cummings Bridge from Strathcona Park

Friday morning, I was the other side of Montreal Road, walking in Strathcona Park with a large group of snowshoers. Strathcona Park has a more urban look to it than some of the other city parks, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was just a field with a bluff at the northern end from which the young men preparing to fight in the Boer War learned how to fire their rifles, Lord Strathcona having offered the army the use of this terrain. The road along the park is called Range Road in memory of this rifle range. Nowadays, it's also familiarly known as Embassy Row.

The park has a riverside path from which there's a good view of Cummings Bridge connecting Sandy Hill to Vanier across the River Rideau. In summer there are outdoor plays in the park: Theatre Under The Stars. Only the squirrels playing in winter, though. We saw a whole family of them leaping around in the tree tops.

Strathcona's Folly with Range Road behind it

In summertime, children can play in and out of a ... structure, not a playground exactly, in the park. This is Strathcona's Folly (1992) created by Stephen Brathwaite from stone and bronze:

Strathcona's Folly is intended to encourage us to consider the cycle of life. It is constructed using real pieces of local architectural history like adult sized toy building blocks. There are pieces of …a convent on Sussex Drive, stone faces from a branch of the Bank of Montreal, balustrades from the Château Laurier Hotel, bits of the Royal Canadian Mint, the Capitol Theatre, the Windsor Duvernay Hotel, the Parliament Buildings, bronze rosettes from the Daly Building, and even one of the old swing seats from the park.