By Francis Moran

Okay, this has nothing whatsoever to do with technology or marketing but I just had to write about this joyous new oasis in the heart of our city.

All summer long, as I trundled to and from work, I have been monitoring activity at a small city park on Main Street in Ottawa east. The neighbourhood, badly mauled when the Queensway — what our British readers would call a motorway and our American readers a freeway — split it in two more than 20 years ago, is gradually recovering. New residential developments have gone in, a lively farmers market on the grounds of Saint Paul University draws crowds every Saturday and the highly desirable blocks between Main Street and the Rideau River contain, by my reckoning, some of the most attractive housing to be found in Ottawa.

A couple of weekends ago, there were crowds of children and adults working on the park site so I knew some big changes were pending. Just what they were up to was immediately evident when I biked down Main Street on my way to work the following Monday and was greeted with this joyous burst of colour and life. It was such a happy scene I actually burst out laughing as I pedaled past.

One of the mainstays of Main Street, in operation for more than 100 years, has been Lady Evelyn Alternative School, which my two lads attended, first at the excellent Rainbow Kids’ School, a preschool housed in the same building, and then through eight years of kindergarten and elementary school. A few blocks up from the park, Lady Evelyn is an amazing institution in this city, even if its decided lack of emphasis on academic performance has teachers at other schools rolling their eyes. It is, rather, a warm, community-oriented and nurturing place, where a dozen or more languages can be heard spoken at any school gathering and where my boys thrived in their personal development and did well enough academically to qualify for competitive arts and enriched programs when they moved on to junior and senior high school.

The new kids park, formally known as the Old Ottawa East Children’s Garden, is very much a partnership between students at Lady Evelyn and a group called Sustainable Living Ottawa East. According to a story in the Ottawa Citizen, each student at the school painted one of the 300 pickets that border the park while corporations such as Home Depot, Microsoft Canada and UPS kicked in materials and money. Despite a late start, an organic vegetable garden has yielded some produce this year and other plants, many of them donated by neighbours, abound.

It’s a beautiful thing, and I salute everyone involved.

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