Playground bullies

A whole lot of people turned out for the opening of the new Swing N' Slide Playground in Burnt Islands. The community could not have asked for a better weather on the first of May.

I was struck by two things at the opening. The first was the sheer number of youngsters in the community - a great thing to see. You know a community is alive and well when there's another generation waiting in the wings.

The second was all the barbed wire surrounding the playground. It seems the recreation committee had to invest not only in chain link fence, but also in overhanging barbed wire at the top of the fence.

Chain link fencing is not cheap. I bet the committee could have invested in a lot more equipment if they had been spared that expense. But as local resident Meta Keeping told me, they didn't dare build the playground without it. They've lost too much equipment in the past to vandalism.

The recreation committee plans to make expansions and improvements to the soccer and baseball fields, but that work will also require expansions to the fence.

It's sad that a fence is considered a necessity. But perhaps even sadder were the words of one six-year-old who told me she thought the playground would be good for both the little kids and the bigger kids, "as long as the teenagers don't wreck it."

Was that just a child parroting the words of some adult she had heard earlier in the day? Somehow, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure she arrived at that conclusion on her own.

I've been to Grandy's River Collegiate many times. I know the majority of local teens are great kids. If there is a problem here, it is probably with a tiny minority of troublemakers, and I bet they're not necessarily teenagers either.

I'm also willing to bet in a small town like Burnt Islands, everyone already knows who those habitual troublemakers are and what they're up to.

The onus shouldn't be on the majority of residents in town to spend good money on fence to keep a handful of troublemakers from destroying equipment that is meant to benefit the entire community.

If Burnt Islands has a few playground bullies, confronting them might be a better solution than hiding behind a fence.

reporter@gulfnews.ca