Trevor Zahara always has time for play

Trevor Zahara likes to play. He climbs mountains, he cross-country skis, he goes for midnight canyon walks and he runs in extreme competitions such as the Grande Cache Death Race. For his 50th birthday he and 13 like-minded friends climbed up to 9,500-foot-high Abbot Pass Hut between Lake Louise and Lake O'Hara. Every year he takes part in at least one marathon or ultra marathon.

Zahara, who owns Riel Park-based Peak Play Environments, has found a way to make that love for play the central focus of his business and he builds playgrounds in parks and businesses all over the world. He is so passionate about play and a life-long pursuit of fitness, that he is currently designing adult-fitness play centres for seniors' residences.

"I like to play and I like to live life outside. You have to keep mobile whether as a child or as a senior. If you don't challenge yourself your world gets smaller and smaller," said Zahara.

Zahara always lived life on the run. He laughed when asked if he thought he would grow up to be a playground builder but instead he credited his farm-upbringing and his father for teaching him how to build things and for fostering the love for exercise.

"I used to run across the fields on the farm to check the cattle. I remember sending away for Sears Sonic shoes so I could go jogging and I've been running ever since. I paid for them by doing chores. My dad set one field aside for my brother and me and every year we sold the grain from that field. One year we raised a calf and sold the calf," Zahara said.

By age 10 he had learned how to use the tools in his father's shop, including the welder, and he rebuilt toys for himself. He and his brother made an ordinary bike into a chopper bike. He got a book from his school about cross-country skiing and transformed an old pair of skis for himself.

"That taught us resourcefulness and confidence in our abilities and it's that way for most farm kids," Zahara said.

While he could figure out that his body worked better the more he pushed it and learned about the mechanics of how things were made, figuring out the mind, especially his own, didn't always follow suit. Zahara was fascinated with the psyche and began a lifelong study of religion, psychology and philosophy.

"I grew up in a unique place because, though my parents were not Catholic, I went to a Catholic school and I grew up in a French-speaking community. I was different because I was the only non-Catholic and non-French-speaking person. I struggled with the concept of religion and I studied it all through university."

Just before his 18th birthday he got a job on an oil rig near his Grande Prairie home but after one week realized he needed to go to college.

"I took general arts and introductory psychology courses," Zahara said, adding that those psych courses led to full-time evening work at the Youth Assessment Centre.

"The kids slept and I did homework. I found out I had a knack for working with the kids," he said.

Working full time and attending college soon wore him down so Zahara quit for a time to work on the rigs again and then went back to the farm. But there was a riot at the High Prairie Youth Centre and he was asked to go back to work there. He was just 19 but he was given an amazing opportunity to head up a team that was at the facility.

"I was 19, with one year of college and I was in charge of a team with guys who were 40 years old," he said.

Dealing with troubled youths was an ongoing challenge. With permission, he took the kids on canoe trips and hiking adventures but he also learned he could not befriend them when he was in charge.

"It was tough. There were situations when we had to ban the aboriginal youths from speaking Cree because the staff couldn't understand them when they were speaking in the halls," he said.

Zahara went on to get a degree in psychology in Ontario and eventually to a job in the Yellowhead Youth Centre.

Nonetheless, he gave up this job, in which he had realized success, to build toys.

"My hobby took over my day job," he said, as he explained that in the early '90s he built rocking horses for his friends' new babies.

Soon people were buying his rocking horses. Next he got a commission to build a backyard playground. Then he built one for a day-care centre.

The going wasn't always as easy as sliding down some of his play equipment. His first attempts at self-employment were hit and miss, but Zahara refocused and strengthened his company. He focused on how challenges, dangers and extreme adventures have made him stronger.

"Everyone faces challenges in life. I learned a lot from those early playground builds and as for mountain climbing, I know there is risk but we are always prepared and we are skilled. We're always capable of more than we think we are and there is an incredible sense of exhilaration when we experience the outdoors and when we achieve," he said.

That drive and the resolve to push forward despite the crags and pitfalls is something his friend and climbing/jogging partner George Mentz knows well.

"Trevor is one of the most positive people you could meet. Yet he pushes himself. He is relentless. He doesn't put limits on himself. It's as if he believes if he leaps, a net will appear," said Mentz.

Mentz, an outdoor education teacher at W.D. Cuts School, said that Zahara is busy with his business and he is often travelling to build playgrounds in other communities. He is always training or competing or climbing. Yet Zahara also makes time for his community.

"He donates his time whenever he is asked and at a school level he is always asking, "What can I do to help?" Mentz said.

That community spirit is something else that Zahara learned as a farm kid.

"We worked hard at home but we also worked hard to build our community. For me it means as a member of the community and as a business person you should hire the kids that want to work. You should develop places for them, or clubs, such as volleyball clubs, where no matter what their skills, they can come to play," Zahara said.

He believes the fountain of youth is obtainable as long as people keep remembering the joy of play.

"We all build playgrounds. We all built a fort by a chair or a ramp for a bike. As kids, we can't help but make over our space for play. And some adults do that too. The ones who keep their youth," Zahara said.