The ThunderBlogs

Team Leader and mom Helen Spaxman had the best view of the action Saturday as over 200 volunteers gathered to build a new playground at Britannia Elementary Community School. Her station overlooked a sea of volunteers in red, and U2’s Beautiful Day blasted from speakers out over the crowd.

On top of a mountain of mulch, a small girl whose T-shirt fell to her ankles used a rake twice her size to move the wood chips at her feet onto a tarp so they could be hauled to the playground site. A blond boy handed screws, one by one, to a man who drilled them into the wood planks of an outdoor stage as two smaller children hovered over the action. The brightly painted play structure reflected the colours of the day: red shirts, yellow sun, blue sky.

Spaxman wore a red sequin visor and a purple jersey as she prepared wooden cut-outs of flowers, bees, butterflies and leaves to be painted by the children. The art was to be mounted on a fence overlooking the playground. The mural will tie into a larger conversation about the importance of bees and pollination. This lesson could be taught in the school’s new outdoor classroom, complete with blackboard, also erected yesterday. Students might also get the chance to care for a colony of live, kid-friendly mason bees in outdoor bee boxes.

In the planning stage, students were invited to draw their perfect playground. Many of their drawings included tire swings, so a tire swing was added to the design. As Spaxman explained, “we are literally building the playground of the students’ dreams.”

The view at Britannia Elementary has not always been so bright. Because of the proportion of students coming from poor families, the school has “inner city” designation. 60% of the students at the school are aboriginal. Parent Advisory Council  Chair Roxanne Gray, who is part aboriginal, said, “some aboriginal parents don’t even want to come in the building.”

But Gray is hopeful. She sees herself as a bridge between aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities at the school. For her, the new playground represents a turning point towards a brighter future. Gray’s eyes lit up as she spoke. “Come back and talk to me at the end of the school year. You are going to see big changes. You are going to see more parent participation, and happy, healthy, enthusiastic children. I’m really positive about this. I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen.”