It’s Wednesday afternoon, school has just ended and in Community Outreach Services’ boardroom a group of teens is gathered at a long table.
A picked-over plate of crackers sits at its centre and, lounging in chairs along the wall, the students, who are pushing to have a new skate park built in town, are chatting.
The teens have a big presentation to municipal council coming up, and with the help of teen outreach worker Anna DeClercq they are planning their pitch to the municipality.
Last year, Ezra Jenkins gathered more than 400 signatures on a petition asking for a new skate park in Jasper. Since then, the group has been meeting every Wednesday after school to try and push the cause forward.
Attendance at the weekly meeting fluctuates (anywhere from three to more than 10 can show up), but a core group of teens (including Ezra and his brother Jonah Jenkins) has kept up the momentum.
The group hasn’t decided on the specific date they will present to council, but when they do they will ask it to help them conduct a land assessment, which they hope will determine the best location for a new park.
According to Trevor Morgan of New Line Skate Parks—the company the group hopes will build and design Jasper’s new park—a professionally designed, concrete park would cost around $500,000.
But the group is clear that they’re not asking council for money. According to Jonah Jenkins, all they want is some space to build, and they will do the rest: if the municipality designates a location for a new park, the group plans to fundraise and apply for grants to raise the dough.
DeClercq explained that there are several government grants available that will match any money that’s already been fundraised.
“So if we can get $100,000, and receive some matching grants, we’re well on our way to a new park,” she said.
In their presentation, the group pointed out that the “size and skill” of Jasper’s skate and BMX community has outgrown the steel-frame modular park that sits beside the high school. That park, they say, has “deteriorated considerably over the last 10 years and is no longer reflective of municipal skatepark design and construction standards.”
“The entrance now is just a hole in the fence,” Ezra Jenkins explained at last Wednesday’s meeting.
“I’ve seen people show up to the skate park, get totally confused and leave,” Jonah chimed in.
Yvonne McNabb, the municipality’s culture and recreation director, admits that Jasper’s 13-year-old park has seen better days, but she explained that it was built with modular, movable pieces for a very specific reason.
“At the time that we built the park we didn’t have enough money to do it. So it was like: OK, what is the best park we can get for the money that we had at that particular point, and how big can we make it, and what can we do to make it happen.”
The modular pieces were the most they could afford, plus the park had to be moveable, because there was still discussion about other possible uses for the land.
But the teens explained that concrete, professionally designed skate parks are the new normal in municipalities, and that modular parks just don’t cut it anymore.
“The limitation of our current facility forces children and youth who desire to participate in these activities (skateboarding, etc.) to seek unsanctioned and often dangerous terrain in public spaces throughout town (i.e. downtown streets, parking lots, business fronts, etc.) or travel to other communities in Alberta who have chosen to create modern concrete skate parks,” their presentation reads.
And that is something they say they have no desire to do.
“I just love to bike—and I love my town, and I want a to be able to [ride in] a good skate park here,” Jonah said.
And, he said, after the work he’s already put into it, if a new skate park did get built in town he would feel an overwhelming sense of pride.
“I would defend that skate park with my life,” he said. “The amount of pride I would put into that—I would spend half an hour every day picking up garbage.
“I’d buy a broom,” he said with a grin.
A skate park could take years to complete, and some have expressed worries that if it doesn’t happen by the time the core group of proponents leave town, fundraising might fizzle out.
But, as of Feb. 18, the group doesn’t seem too worried about that.
Liam Fengler-Wood said that keeping the group going will be a “natural process.”
“Everyone will join in eventually. The more people who are out there, the more people will join,” he said, listing all the kids in town who have bought a BMX in the last few years after seeing them in the park.
“By next year we could have this whole room packed.”
Trevor Nichols
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