Thursday, August 21, 2008

Getting to Ireland Park



 
 

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Ireland Park

Ireland Park is a lovely, moving park recently created at the foot of Bathurst Street, at the south base of the Malting Silo buildings near the ferry to the island airport. Statues, monuments and an interpretive station commemorate the landing of thousands of desperate Irish immigrants, many of them sick, escaping the Irish famine in 1847. Spacing has written about the park both in our print magazine, before the park was opened, and online.

The weird thing, though, is there is no officially permitted way to actually get to the park.

Entrance to Ireland Park

The obvious entrance is along the quay from the foot of Bathurst Street. But there's a prominent sign at this entrance saying "DANGER: KEEP OFF", presumably because the quay is crumbling and considered unsafe. So to get to the park this way, you have to disobey a municipal sign and engage in behaviour officially deemed risky (although, really, the quay is in decent enough shape and doesn't seem to offer any real danger).

Entrance to Ireland Park

There's another entrance through a driveway, but this one is through a municipal urban forestry site and is even more forbidden, with a sign saying "Private Property: No Trespassing".

The Malting Silo site, meanwhile, is thoroughly fenced off, so there is no access there.

It seems pretty bizarre to build a park but not provide any permitted way to actually get to it. In practical terms it's easy to get there, of course — you just walk along the quay — but citizens shouldn't have to break regulations in order to access their parkland.


 
 

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