OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor. Send your letters to [email protected]. This letter is in response to the possibility of an aerial park coming to Couchiching Beach Park.
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Should I ever be launched into outer space (and after reading this letter I’m sure many would be happy to oblige), and should I meet some alien life form there, I don’t think I’d admit to being a human from planet Earth. Too embarrassing a species to belong to, so perennially stupid and violent and destructive. And not just on a large scale (world wars and racism and whales choking on plastic bottles, etc.) but right in our own backyards.
Right in Couchiching Beach Park, constantly poked at and dumbed down in the last few years, buried under buildings and hard surfaces and benches and signage and unexceptional monuments to local clubs and leftover “art” from street displays. Not to mention a mini playground recently stuck smack on the beach, an insult to the loveliness of any lake. And now the suggestion of an aerial tower.
I have never felt the attraction of clambering up and down an artificial structure or spinning around on contraptions in the air. What is the difference between these human entertainments and a parakeet being given a plastic ladder or a hamster a wheel?
I don’t want to be reminded that humans are caged like animals by time and necessity and boredom and their own nature. I don’t like these symbols of the human comedy.
But if others want to amuse themselves thusly, and others want to profit from it, let them do so in another place altogether. There is a difference between Central Park and Coney Island. One is classy and one is not, and New Yorkers are smart enough not to combine them.
I’m not denying the seedy charm of travelling fairs, or the grotesque allure of downtown Niagara Falls, or the nostalgia of the Ex. They reflect a desire for escape and distraction and excitement, a brush with danger, a dance with the shadows. Build a Coney Island if you must. But don’t meddle with a park as naturally beautiful and elegant and historic as the one at the bottom of Mississaga Street.
There must be some place to go that feeds the soul and puts humans in their place. Restore Couchiching Beach Park to a purer form of beauty and find a separate home for the ladders and wheels.
You’ll never find your heart’s desire on an aerial tower.
Kate Grigg
Orillia
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