but I should be back online with things now.
I will be looking around for some interesting topics and things.
I was made aware of a blog called the Rainbow Park Ratepayers written by Mike Laplante - the blog is looking at issues for the Rainbow Park area of Saanich. Rainbow park is the hollow that has been left when the Mckenzie Ave was lengthened back some 20 odd years ago. The neighbourhood is bounded by Carey/Glanford, Mckenzie and the Pat Bay Highway.
I feel for this neighbourhood as it has been disconnected from most of the places around. I also realize I have never been in this neighbourhood. The closest I come is the Glanford Greenhouses on Glanford across from Ralph Street - a source for great tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and scarlet runner beans.
This neighbourhood is home to that large set of allotment garden spaces you can see when you come into town on the Pat Bay highway.
It sometimes amazes me there are neighbourhoods in this city that I do not know.
View Larger Map
I have a 1981 Davenport map that shows this area before the major changes.
ReplyDeleteInteresting - the Rainbow Park that I’m referring to is on the opposite side of Douglas St. Maybe the location shown on the map is the old Rainbow Park, or a "sibling" Rainbow Park.
ReplyDeleteFrom 1993 to 2005, I lived in the 600-block of Ralph St to the west of what is now the Pat Bay Hwy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first moved there, the interchange was just being built. Ralph and Canterbury Road were continuous but separated once the interchange was put in.
There WAS a park at the location indicated in the photo, but it was removed by Saanich at the time with a plan to replace it. In the 13 years I lived on Ralph St. though, they never followed through on that plan.
Meanwhile, on the OTHER side of the highway, there was also a large park. That park was cut down drastically in size following the highway configuration. It probably would also have disappeared altogether if not for the efforts of the hastily organized ratepayers association that fought hard to preserve it, albeit in a much smaller form.
I now live on Canterbury to the east of the highway. My blog -- the one referred to -- is about our efforts to defend THIS park against Saanich city hall.
Saanich city hall, particularly under Frank Leonard, has developed a reputation for closing parks, denying them to neighbourhoods (Royal Oak) or only grudgingly providing them. (Cloverdale).
Our park is well known and well used by people from all over Victoria (fitness groups use it often for boot camps). We don't want to see any of it paved over for a bike path that duplicates what local roads and an overpass just 1/2 BLOCK AWAY already do.
Cheers...
It is amazing how little I can know some of the neighbourhoods in this city.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the location error Mike, though the orphaned neighbourhood on the west side is also one of those locations within the city that needs help.