Where is the best playground in Toronto? Depends who you ask

When my daughter spots the No Frills on Brimley Road, I wince.

“Yellow grocery store!” she yells, asking if we have a quarter for the cart. For her, grocery stores are the absolute best place in the world, and she wants to go, right now. Luckily, I can offer this toddler something better: A playground in the middle of Scarborough, bigger than any she’s ever seen. I tell her we’re meeting some new friends, and she’s going to help me work today.

It’s overcast when we arrive at Thomson Memorial Park, and the parking lot is full. We spot Andrew Moore, 43, and his family playing on the bright blue equipment as a photographer takes their photo. Moore is a teacher, a father of two, and a reviewer of playgrounds, and we’re meeting at this spot for a very specific reason. He’s reviewing it for a second time.

Toronto has more than 850 municipally-owned playgrounds, but the city’s descriptions are as dry as fun gets. They don’t answer questions like: How fast is the slide? Will my child vomit on the merry-go-round? Is there a shady place to play house?

But Moore will. This voluntary enterprise started when his son Simon was a toddler. The family wanted to explore as many playgrounds as possible, and Moore decided he’d review them along the way. He’d seen similar efforts in Montreal, and was surprised Toronto parents had no comparable resource. On his blog, Danforth Dad, he rates each playground out of 100: 50 points for the equipment, 40 for the location, and 10 for extras, like bathrooms, splash pads and sandboxes.

They did most of their early playgrounds on a bike, and their range expanded during the pandemic, when the family bought a car. When Moore first visited Thomson Memorial Park in 2020, Simon was a big kid, and his sister Juliet was a toddler. Moore was impressed by the location, splash pad, and the community feel of the park, but the log-cabin style equipment was a “half-hearted echo” of the Scarborough Museum on site. “Old in the wrong way,” he explains as our children play in the sandbox. Moore gave it an 81 out of 100. It was a mediocre score, but it had “the potential to be the most important playground in Scarborough,” he wrote.

Thomson Memorial is just east of Brimley Road, north of the hydro corridor, and its playground is ensconced by a forest of trees and rolling hills, a splash pad, and tennis courts. All around us, families are playing cricket, tying hammocks to the trees, and celebrating birthdays. The air smells of lighter fluid from the barbecues, and the grass is speckled with the colourful remains of spent water balloons. The sandbox includes a left-behind octopus mould, a cracked bucket, and a small rake.

Playgrounds are crucial infrastructure, especially in the summer, and especially in neighbourhoods where a backyard isn’t a given, and neither is a refreshing plunge in a lake. Every year, the city chooses 22 to upgrade. In 2021, it was Thomson’s turn. Wrecking crews tore down the slides, swings, and agricultural-themed climber.

As our children’s pants become hopelessly grimy with damp sand, Moore casts his expert eye on the new playground built in its place. He has reviewed more than 200 playgrounds, and he’s seen some revamps that do not land. Would he deem the upgrade of Thomson Memorial Park a blockbuster or a bust?

Noise, kids and chaos

In the early 1900s, Toronto was a smelly, gritty, industrial powerhouse, and children were seen as a pestilence, driven out of rolling university grounds, cemeteries and farmland with a shake of the fist. South of the border, New York, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco were experimenting with the playground idea, an outgrowth of Boston’s “sand gardens” venture, where piles of sand were purposely left near tenement houses and churches for children to play. If Toronto wanted to be world class, the adults needed to build playgrounds so “the children may have a reasonable chance to enjoy life,” said J.J. Kelso, then superintendent of the Children’s Aid Society.

The Toronto Playground Association assembled quickly, and so did the conservative NIMBY opposition. Homeowners worried about the baggage that came with playgrounds: noise, kids, chaos. “Better have playgrounds than an enlarged police force,” the frustrated president of the playground association countered.

Toronto’s first playground was built in a working class neighbourhood at the corner of Brant and Adelaide Streets in August 1909. The supervised yard at St. Andrew’s Square was fenced off, dividing the “big boys” from everybody else. There were “teeters” and maypoles, swings, basketball nets, a slide, parallel bars, swinging rings, a trapeze, and sand pits.

It was a dusty paradise. The city planning types called it a “requisite of every congested district,” and playgrounds began to sprout like dandelions across the city. The children of each playground had uniforms and battled each other at team sports. They were such a success that even the NIMBYs must have wondered: How did we ever survive without them?

Sad and decrepit: Playground renewal

By 2019, Toronto’s first playground was known for litter, unfriendly dogs, and the occasional bit of vomit on the slide. “I feel bad for any child who has to play in that playground,” one Google reviewer said. “I hope they revamp it soon.”

When Moore visited with his children, he agreed. It was sad and decrepit, with equipment that was too small for big kids, and too big for small kids. He ranked it as one of the worst playgrounds in the city.

Every playground has an expiry date. Safety standards evolve, trends change, and equipment grows old. St. Andrew’s has been rejuvenated many times since 1909, but it was due for another dose of TLC.

In the day-to-day work of maintaining city parks, staff keep an eye on equipment and cast a critical eye over the play value, the site, accessibility, and drainage issues. They assign each playground a score out of 100, and pass that list to the city’s playground enhancement team, who have a budget for 22 playground updates each year. (That list is not publicly available, although the Star has asked.)

The team uses the list to find the playgrounds most in need and also considers other factors, like whether they are in dense areas with little green space, or equity-deserving neighbourhoods. It’s a nimble two-year process, with staff working on 44 playgrounds at once — half in the design and consultation stage, the other half in the building stage.

Some equipment endures longer than others. You can still find 1970s-era steel playgrounds with rocket ship climbers in North Etobicoke, or older wooden climbers in Scarborough and North York, retrofitted for modern standards. Older equipment usually reflects the preamalgamation style of each parks department, says Inna Olchovski-Krupnik, the senior project manager of capital project design and delivery on the playground enhancement team.

After the Canadian Standards Association introduced safety requirements for playgrounds in 1990, many parents lamented the structures that were “basically platforms and rails,” says Dennis Dametto, the city’s manager of parks operations. But playground manufacturers figured out ways to safely incorporate adventure, whimsy and accessibility. One of Andrew Moore’s top-ranked playgrounds is Earl Bales Park in North York, which was built in conjunction with Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart Charity. The fully accessible playground is designed with wide ramps and roller slides that eliminate static electricity for children with cochlear implants. We haven’t visited yet, but it’s on our list. The inclusive playground has been such a success, city staff say, that even seniors have been known to frolic.

When Moore visits a playground, he likes to see what his children are drawn to, and how they play. He compiles lists of hidden gems, the best parks for kids who love trains, and the best school playgrounds. His reviews are insightful, entertaining, and detailed. Does the swing at your local have a chain long enough for an exhilarating “swing arc?” Moore will find out.

His lowest ranked playground is Little Trinity Church. The equipment tucked behind the historic church was simple but old, shaded by an apple tree. “Which sounds nice, but it just means that the grounds are strewn with rotting apples, half-eaten by squirrels, buzzed over by neighbourhood wasps,” he wrote. “Having said that, I have to mention that my son had a perfectly good time here … While I was looking down my nose at this place, he was busy in the sandbox, playing with an old dump truck someone had left behind. There were no shovels though, so to fill it with sand, he was using (and I swear I’m not joking) a discarded coffee cup.”

(He feels a little bad about that. It’s probably maintained by church volunteers.)

I know the park. I visited with my toddler during the worst of the pandemic. We didn’t have a backyard, and it was a relief to come upon a slide and swing just off King Street East, no matter the vintage. She also had fun there, but Moore was right about the apples.

We know the St. Andrew’s playground too. The city rebuilt the historic playground in 2021. We came upon it by accident one winter day. The squishy soft ground, accessible merry-go-round and low-to-the-ground swings were perfect. My daughter was new to walking then, and I could relax a little on that rubber surface. It was far from our condo, but she loved it so much we returned on the streetcar just to play.

Moore hasn’t visited yet, but just from gawking while he drives by, he knows it’s going to rocket up the rankings.

A conference room for kids

Industrial designers think deeply about the user experience of cellphones and cars. Nathan Schleicher analyzes play.

In 2020, the head designer at Earthscape Play was visiting St. James Park for a post-occupancy evaluation, which is a fancy term for a very fun assignment: How are children playing?

Earthscape is renowned for its wood-forward playgrounds, including Grange Park, Downsview Park and Lord Seaton Park in Toronto. But most people know St. James Park, located just north of St. Lawrence market, for its food-themed whimsy.

Schleicher was transfixed by the top platform of the tower, meant to resemble food crates, stacked high above the carrot balance beams, and the asparagus climber. Kids were playing tag, and they kept meeting there, near the entrance to the twisty slide. (One of the top slides in the city, in Moore’s opinion.) Schleicher couldn’t make out what they were saying. That was probably part of the appeal. Or maybe it was the vantage point that made those kids feel powerful.

He realized it was the most important moment in the playground: a conference room for eight-year-olds.

What makes a good playground isn’t a checklist of elements, he says. You have to build in opportunity for exploration, excitement and risk-management.

Earthscape began as a landscaping company. After building a few daycare playgrounds, its reputation spread. From rural Wallenstein, Ont., its playgrounds are all over the world, including Brooklyn’s Slide Hill playground on Governors Island. The playground is built into a hill landscaped to include four slides, the biggest of which always has a line. “Seriously brilliant concept,” reads one review. “My mom went down the slide and became obsessed. We couldn’t get her off of it.”

Earthscape has built climbers shaped like horses in Texas, a mystical Kraken that children can explore in Florida, and a howling coyote climbing sculpture in Edmonton. It’s busier than ever, expanding to Europe and the Middle East.

“There’s no end to the hunger for really cool things in a playground,” Schleicher says.

Dad’s Pick ratings

As we walk around the playground at Thomson Memorial, I ask my daughter what her favourite thing is.

“That thing,” she says with awe, pointing to a rope pyramid where 20 or so children are hanging on like 1940s trolley commuters as it spins like a top.

We’ve seen this “thing” at a sleepier playground near our home, but we’ve never seen more than a few kids on it. This one feels like Mad Max.

“Some kid puked on that last week,” one of the seven boys sitting on a nearby teeter-totter proudly informs us.

The new playground at Thomson Memorial Park opened in 2021. There’s a rope climber that looks like a strand of DNA, another climber with large orbs that look like molecules. There is a wide neon green slide and swings, rings and ropes. Everything is shades of blue and green. The ground is wood chips. There are children everywhere, and my daughter mostly just wants to play on the swings and in the sandbox.

When we begin our long goodbye, my daughter asks for her trademark “three more minutes.”

She becomes entranced with bubbles. She doesn’t want to leave, but we do, with a promise to return some day. We say goodbye to Andrew Moore and his family, and we drive home, past the No Frills.

A few days later, I check out Moore’s updated review. He gives Thomson Memorial a 90 out of 100, which means it’s an automatic recipient of a “Dad’s Pick” gold star. From the middle of the pack, the playground upgrade had launched it to number eight in his rankings, tied with St. James playground and High Park south.

“This is probably the most satisfying playground rejuvenation since the one at the north end of High Park. It can be too easy to get frustrated by the way things work in municipal politics, so if you need a bit of a boost to your civic faith, make time this summer to visit Thomson Memorial,” he wrote.

He has visited 207 so far, and hopes to eventually visit all of the city’s 850-plus playgrounds. Instead of sitting on a bench looking at his phone, or hovering over his children, he’s watching them at a remove, thinking critically about how the city uses its public space, and telling the rest of us about which rope climbers, slides, and sandboxes are worth the trip.

It’s serious fun.

Danforth Dad’s Top Playgrounds (overall score, includes ties)

1. Grange Park (97)

2. June Rowlands Park (95)

3. High Park North; Ramsden Park (93.5)

4. Earl Bales (Jumpstart) (93)

5. Kew Gardens (92)

6. L’Amoreaux Park (91.5)

7. Eglinton Park (91)

8. Playground Paradise; High Park South; Thomson Memorial Park; Trace Manes Park; St. James Park (90)

9. Rosedale Park (89)

10. Mooredale Park; Morse Street Playground; Oriole Park (88.5)

Katie Daubs is a Toronto Star journalist and senior writer based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @kdaubs

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