10/31/2024
Of Stephen Leacock & pickleball. If you happen to be fascinated / perplexed by the great pickleball contretemps in Peterborough - Nogojiwanong, read on. Please note that farcebook & Canada eh can't agree on how media content might be shared on the platform. Fortunately I know how to copy-cut-paste. Thanks to the good folk at Arthur, the student publication at Trent University for recently publishing the following:
SPORTING SKETCHES OF A PICKLEBALL TOWN
Written by
James Cullingham
October 29, 2024
In 1912, Stephen Leacock unleashed Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town. In the slim volume, Leacock lampooned locals including a tavern owner, a mortician, a bank employee and a politician in a biting laugh-a-minute look at an English Canadian village that greatly resembled Leacock’s own hometown of Orillia.
Fast forward more than a century and welcome to Nogojiwanong– Peterborough, an average small Canadian city not too far removed from Orillia. Where is Stephen Leacock when you need him?
Rather than leaky boats, smitten young men or the faux French cuisine among Leacock's targets, today he would no doubt turn his satiric pen to the sport of pickleball and its bizarre hold on the imagination of Mayor Jeff Leal and some councillors—except, of course, those who actually represent folks living in the immediate vicinity of Bonnerworth Park, located on the eastern edge of Monoghan Road between McDonnell and Bonaccord Streets.
Mr. Leal has chosen his Waterloo, his Omaha Beach, the true cause that will distinguish his tenure: making our city safe for more pickleball by converting the very green Bonnerworth Park.
It's late 2024 and our intrepid leader has chosen his defining issue. Could it be homelessness? Perhaps a paucity of family physicians? The opioid crisis? The hollowing out of downtown as businesses relocate to amorphously North American suburbs of car dependency? No. None of the above. Our mayor has planted a flag rhetorically and politically in defense of pickleball and its privileged aficionados.
The mayor even went so far as to mutter that he would carve up one of his municipal critics on the pickleball issue 'like a Thanksgiving turkey.' Mr. Leal offered an apology for his intemperate off-mic remark after it was reported by Arthur. However, Mr. Leal’s zeal for his grand pickleball vision is otherwise unabated. When the administration of a school near Bonnerworth Park that uses the existing site for baseball and other sports protested that it had not been consulted on the great pickleball scheme, Leal dismissed their concerns out of hand.
The protests did not ebb. Well-attended rallies gathered opponents prior to city council meetings. These rallies were not impeccably run and might have warranted a Leacockian turn on their own merit. The audio system was generally atrocious, making musical performers and speakers hard to follow.
When a petition against the proposal with 5,134 signatories was readied for presentation to Mr. Leal, he and other pickleball loving councillors looking all a-puff in ill-fitting suits came out to the front steps of City Hall to accept it. Mr. Leal said the petition would be duly filed.
Following public protests, Mr. Leal tried to further deflect concerns by referencing the hundreds of maple trees that would border his cherished pickleball complex. "Who doesn't like maple syrup?" asked our Mayor. It turns out Mr. Leal vastly overstated the number of maple and failed to note that a maple tree planted in 2025 would not supply syrup for decades. Many of those immediately concerned about Bonnerworth Park and its proposed transition to The Pickleball Mecca of Ontario would be dead by then and never savour Jeff's sweet nectar.
Dear readers, it is full disclosure time.
I live near Bonnerworth Park. I am a senior citizen. I use the park several times a week as I walk, bicycle, cross-country ski or simply enjoy a green commons near the heart of the city. I would welcome more trees which could easily be planted in places so as not to interfere with baseball or other ongoing sports.
I signed the aforementioned petition. I made a modest contribution to the defense fund of the Save Bonnerworth Park group. Call it bias if you will. I'd suggest such gestures are part of a legitimate local outcry against a high-handed and absurd plan.
I am persuaded by evidence of how the pickleball champions failed to consult local residents or faithfully observe city guidelines. These matters may well need to be litigated.
There is space in the existing park for skateboarding, baseball, tennis, kite flying, cross-country skiing and yes—pickleball—which is already played there within reasonable limits.
Mr. Leal and other park 'development' enthusiasts would expand pickleball at the expense of other activities and create yet another of Peterborough's most sacred public spaces—a parking lot.
Aside from the annoying noise generated by pickleball, aside from privileging one sport over the many others currently enjoyed at Bonnerworth Park, this is unwise urban planning in the era of climate change.
Opponents of the proposed plan have raised about $35,000 in hope of enjoining the city from proceeding. As I write an injunction to prevent the city from putting shovels in the ground is about to be filed in the courts.
There is an alternative that would serve a broader swath of the citizenry than Pickleball Nation, a solution in the waiting that would also respond to crying needs in Nogojiwanong–Peterborough rather than pandering to a special interest group.
As opposition to the scheme became increasingly apparent, a property developer who owns land at Aylmer and Simcoe Streets close to downtown and adjacent to basketball courts and the bicycle friendly boulevard along Bethune Street has suggested his vacant property would be a suitable location for pickleball expansion.
That proposal would bring people back into a city centre suffering from social and economic ills. Attracting economic and recreational activity to the city centre is a more important mission than paving over existing green space.
But no, Mayor Leal and his allies on council would prefer more hard surface for pickleball at Bonnerworth Park. These folks are also arguing for more pavement for cars in that same green space.
Proponents of the scheme are vocal, and perhaps influential, including the editorial voice of The Peterborough Examiner. They champion a proposal that will deface a green commons enjoyed for a variety of purposes by a multi-generational client base.
I don’t see that as a winning plank in future elections as climate change and urban decay continue to erode the city. As former mayor Sylvia Sutherland has opined, the politicians behind the pickleball scheme may live to rue their enthusiasm.
Expanded pickleball in Bonnerworth Park? Creative urban planning for the climate crisis in a city bedeviled with an opioid crisis and downtown decay?
Mr. Leal, your Bonnerworth vision hardly sounds like a legacy move.
Stephen Leacock died in 1944. If his spirit could be transported to Nogojiwanong–Peterborough in 2024, he’d have a literary field day.
James Cullingham is a historian, filmmaker and journalist. He is an adjunct graduate faculty member of Trent University and founder of Tamarack Productions.
