St. Albert nature lovers can build bee shacks and dance the Red River Jig this Saturday as the city officially opens a new park in its oldest forest.
City residents will be at 16 Hogan Road on June 24 for the grand re-opening of the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park. The park encompasses the White Spruce Forest, which is the oldest tree stand in St. Albert and one of the last white spruce forests in an urban setting in western Canada.
City officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the park last November following a year-long $3.1 million renovation project which added about four kilometres of trails, an outdoor classroom shaped like a bird’s nest, and a viewing platform shaped like a beaver’s tail to the park. This upcoming celebration is meant to give people a chance to see these improvements when they’re not covered in snow, said city parks planning specialist Benjamin Jonah.
“We’ve got a lot more growth happening in the park,” Jonah said, and you can now see the artistic symbols burned into the boardwalks. (The symbols are similar to the ones on the underside of the park’s new shelter, and represent birds, trees, the Grey Nuns, and other park features.)
The celebration starts at 12:30 with a blessing from Métis Elders and traditional Métis jigging and fiddling performances, Jonah said. Guests can plant trees, learn to build bumblebee hotels, and hear stories and poetry from the St. Albert Public Library, all while musician Zach Willier roves about with his fiddle. Environmental groups such as WILDNorth and the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance will be on hand to talk about the forest and its inhabitants.
City environmental co-ordinator Payton Homeak will be giving Weed Warrior tours of the park.
“I’m not going to make people pull too many weeds,” Homeak said, but she will teach guests how to recognize some hard-to-identify species invasive species, such as bird vetch.
An invasive species in the Yukon and Alberta, bird vetch is a vine-like plant that grows bunches of 10 to 30 small purple flowers along its stems, and is very similar to the native purple vetch (which grows just three to nine flowers per bunch), reports the Yukon Invasive Species Council. A perennial, bird vetch spreads rapidly using roots and ballistic seeds shot out of its drying seedpods, and can alter soil composition and crowd out native species.
The celebration runs from noon to 4 p.m. June 24. Jonah asked guests to park at Rotary Park or Larry Olexiuk Field and to walk across the Ray Gibbon Drive bridge to reach the park.
Visit stalbert.ca/events/calendar/recreation/gnwsp-grand-opening for details.
