Students at Fireside School will finally have a playground thanks to the school’s charity group who installed the structure over the weekend with a handful of volunteers. About 60 community members took shifts in groups of 25 to help assemble the Friends of Fireside (FOF) inclusive playground from Thursday night to Monday afternoon. “The build was incredible. Our volunteers were – it was like they were professionals – it was unbelievable,” said Laura McDonald, president of FOF. “Like really grueling hard work. Pick-axes and digging really deep holes through rock, it was intense but it was incredible.” The playground company, Park and Play, sent a father-son duo to supervise the operation. “I was feeling quite intimidated because I don’t really know my way around drill bits and all that stuff but thankfully the team from Park and Play gave everybody all their tasks and it was really well organized,” McDonald said. The final concrete pour for the $400,000 playground, was on Monday afternoon. McDonald said the leftover funds raised by FOF will be spent on landscaping, benches to install, and setting money aside for a contingency fund. FOF said they will be supporting the Centennial Inclusive Playground Group during the Outhouse Races. “A massive thank you to all of our community members,” she said, adding that FOF is grateful for their corporate sponsors. “It was one of those weekends that you are on such a high afterward. It was really the embodiment of community spirit. It was the neatest thing I’ve witnessed in a long time.” The grand opening of the playground will be next weekend.
