City park is shredded by cyclists

By Dan Hilborn
Published Apr. 29, 2006


When Marie Knight went for her daily walk through Beecher Park on Earth Day, April 22, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the Northview Scouts had just completed an ambitious cleanup campaign in the small, forested park.

But that smile turned to horrified shock when Knight wandered behind the children's playground to find a makeshift BMX bike track, complete with ramps and banked corners, apparently built by a group of local young people.

"The area resembles a minefield," Knight told the Burnaby NOW in an e-mail. "Trees have been pushed over. Large craters, some three to four feet deep (one to 1.2 metres), have been dug, and mounds of dirt and piles of logs and concrete now litter what I can only assume is a pseudo-BMX dirt bike track that has been systematically carved into the landscape of a pretty neighbourhood park."

Knight, a mother of four boys who has lived in the neighbourhood near Springer and Parker streets for more than 20 years, says she has nothing against letting kids have fun, but she thinks the deep holes and debris are just plain dangerous.

"It's destructive and it's unsightly," she said during a walk through the park on Thursday afternoon. "This is a public park, and it's a safety issue. I just think the kids don't understand. It's fun for them, and that's all they see."

The makeshift BMX track clearly required an effort to build, Knight said. A shovel was used to dig the holes, and the resulting dirt was piled up to make the ramps. Several logs were also laid over top a portion of Beecher Creek, which runs through the centre of the park, to create an unstable bridge where a bike rider could easily suffer a serious injury if they were to fall.

While senior officials in the city parks department were unavailable for formal comment on Friday morning, support staff did confirm that the public is not allowed to build their own structures inside city parks.

Knight said she intends to pursue the matter with city hall to ensure action is taken to fill in the deep holes and remove the logs from the creek.

She also said that the lack of respect for city parks appears to be a growing problem that reaches beyond the neighbourhood kids.

On the same day she discovered the BMX track, she witnessed an older man in a red station wagon illegally dump several large buckets of garbage into the salal and blackberry bushes on the north side of the park.

"Why is this destructive and selfish behaviour OK to do in a public park that is for the enjoyment of everyone?" she asked. "Are you really so self-absorbed, narcissistic and so totally devoid of social responsibility that these acts are just a normal activity to you? I certainly hope not."

Knight believes some of her neighbours have lost their sense of community, and she clearly blames the parents and adults for not teaching their children to respect public property.

"Yes, kids need to have fun and enjoy themselves, but they also need to enjoy themselves responsibly because every kid in the neighbourhood plays in this park," she said. "It is incumbent on us as parents to let them know, yes, you can play, but you have to be responsible."

She also called on area parents to keep an eye on their kids - she suspects the culprits are teenaged boys - to see if they are taking shovels or other tools on their bike ride adventures through the city.

Beecher Park has enough natural slopes, ramps and trails that bike riders should still be able to have a fun time without building any more unauthorized structures, she said.