Organized playtime at Greenaway Park

When I was a kid my mother used to send me down to Greenaway Park everyday during the summer. Located on 60th Avenue and 179th Street, this was a half mile walk down to the park and a half mile walk back up a good sized hill for a youngster. My parents never drove me anywhere in Cloverdale. I walked to my friend’s houses, to the park, to the store, and to school.

Greenaway Park hosted a free summer program during the summer months for kids, aged about five to ten years. There was a play leader or two, usually high school students hired by the City of Surrey who organized games and activities for the kids. Games were as simple as playing hide and seek or statues and occasionally a more challenging scavenger hunt which meant we had to leave the park to find all the items on our list.

I remember one time there was a watermelon hunt in the bushy area of the park. Three watermelons were hidden amongst the trees and then the kids were sent in to find them. Finders keepers. Unfortunately I never found a watermelon, but hefting a good sized watermelon half a mile uphill was not something a young girl would be good at.

Sometimes we had to pay money for organized events that involved a bus ride and admission somewhere, maybe a quarter or fifty cents. Before Greenaway Pool was built I remember being bussed to an indoor pool when I was about eight years old. I don’t remember where the pool was, but I think it may have been the Canada Games Pool in New Westminster. I was one of these kids who started swimming as a baby so by the time I was eight I’d had lots of swimming lessons and was a pretty decent swimmer. I was also small for my age. I was swimming in the deep end of the pool and a lifeguard spotted me and asked me to swim the width of the pool and back to prove that I was a good enough swimmer to be in the deep end. So no problem. Away I went. I hadn’t been back to the side of the pool I’d started from than a different lifeguard also asked me to swim the width of the pool and back to make sure I could swim. So I did it again. I got back and was starting to get tired by now. And then a third lifeguard asked me to swim the width and back. I swam the width yet again but now I’d had enough and went back to the shallow end of the pool to relax.

By the time kids get to the end of elementary school this type of summer activity is no longer cool. The pool was now open at Greenaway Park and that was more the recreation of choice for older kids. I still remember this type of activity going on in Greenaway Park until the late 70’s but seems to be a thing of the past. Greenaway Park is pretty much deserted except for a few local families bringing their kids over to use the playground. No organized activities for kids. No organized swim times in the pool either. No organized tennis matches. Greenaway Park’s prime time has passed.