Yesterday I posted about the BMX park near Dupont and Dufferin. The Toronto Sun has an article about a BMX park up in Rexdale:
- It is an unlikely setting for a summer camp -- but in a cordoned-off section of a Toronto Community Housing parking lot at 75 Tandridge, a wonderful pilot project has been set up where kids are soaring up and down plywood ramps decorated in vibrant graffiti, learning bicycle motocross tricks from two 20-year-old instructors hired by the TCHC.
"This is like Jesus is bringing them something better," the superintendent declared when the donated ramps first arrived at his building.
Not exactly Jesus, but it is a holy triumvirate of business, police and Toronto housing visionaries who have made this a reality.
The concept was the brainchild of Toronto Crime Stoppers' Community Youth Officer Scott Mills and retired teacher Mike Heaton, both instrumental in creating Toronto's first BMX bike park behind the Wallace Emmerson Community Centre.
The hugely successful park was a concept they knew could engage disenfranchised youth in other troubled neighbourhoods as well. Barry Thomas, Toronto Housing manager for Weston and Rexdale, enthusiastically signed on and supplied the lot, the BMX bikes and funding for the instructors.
The Sun also has a video about the BMX park.
