Paquin Park

I love a park that makes me AND the kids giddy. I almost want to move back to Pierrefonds just for this park!
This playground was almost perfect except for one glaring (to me at least) mistake. I’ll elaborate at the bottom of the post.

The Good: Just about everything!
Paquin is recently renovated and they’ve put the 5-12 year old’s section on a colourful and clean rubber base. There is an immense and challenging spiderweb with ropes, a wall to climb, a spinner, and metal bars which were just beyond me.
There’s a stand alone slide from GameTime’s Xscape line with a creative (but not toddler-friendly) ladder and some pod climbers leading from it to the spiderweb.
In the larger kids’ side are a whack of swings, including one for reduced mobility; there’s the G2 Spin-With-Your-Friends spinner, a hang-on(!) spinner, and a spinning seat. You’ll be spinned out.
And then there are these big hoop things, that are either there to crawl through, or are a really creative bike rack. We crawled.

There is a nice little section with picnic tables (one wheelchair accessible) under a giant red canopy. It’s in a great location for watching kids in both sections of the park.

Then….there’s the toddler section just beside. All of the toddler playthings are on sand and include two older, but still good climbers.
One climber must have previously been the big-kid climber and has been moved over here, and the other is more geared towards the littles, with steps, steering wheel, slides, tunnel, spinning wheels etc.
There are also baby swings, a random Little Tykes picnic table, an inchworm ladder, a large climbing wall and the MOST AMAZING ground level activity centres. TWO OF THEM.
There is the PlayTown Music Store by PlayExplorers. It has drums, bells, chimes and a rain wheel.  The PlayTown School House has clips to attach paper for drawing, letters, numbers, and shapes, a clock and things that turn. It was so. much. fun. We could have touched and banged things all day.
Very creative and I always love activities that aren’t 10 feet in the air.
This park has great views of the river and Laval, and once we crossed the street to get closer, we could even see a mountain in the distance. Sadly, there were no ducks nearby and the little guy was very, very sad. So we went back and played some more to lift his crushed little toddler spirits.

This is a great park to visit if you have kids of different ages as everything is very compact. There are no fences, and although it is not super close to the road, it also isn’t very far. There are some trees, but I don’t believe there will be much shade over the play areas on sunny days.

NOW, the thing that just annoyed me about this park, and it didn’t even affect me, is that despite having a wheelchair accessible table, and a reduced mobility swing, the two toys that would be amazing for wheelchair-bound kids are down in the sand. That doesn’t make sense. They’re amazing and should be accessible.