St-Charles Park

Also known as “the park where you smushed your brother’s face into the sand”. The last time we were here resulted in a quick exit and a loooong time out. Sigh.
So we were up for trying again, with a stern warning before heading out. Thankfully we fared better this time.
We stopped at Dagwood’s on Dorval Circle and picked up dinner, then parked in the lot just across from Dorval City Hall on Martin Avenue.
The park was really quiet (but got busier) and the lone lady there offered us the picnic table that was in the shade. So nice!
Problem was…the little one saw the steering wheel on the wobbly bus and wouldn’t get off to come and eat with us. Luckily everything is well spaced so we were able to eat beside him while he “vroom vroomed”
There’s the colourful and fun Home/Rescue climber by Kompan, which is one of our favourite play structures. This particular model has platforms to climb instead of the usual rungs, making it much easier for small kids (and their moms) to climb. There’s a twirly ladder, slide, curved rock wall, dials to turn and openings to crawl through. We usually pretend it’s a garbage truck and one of us drives while the other runs around collecting “trash” before peeling out to the next house. It’s an exhausting game!
And then there are two more easy to climb and fun-to-play-on structures. The Dragon climber by GameTime has wide stairs, triple slides, and a MegaRock wall (with a dinosaur skeleton on the underside!). We broke into a rousing rendition of “They Might Be Giants” I am a paleontologiiiiiiiist…. Wicked Awesome band btw.

And then there’s another climber with stairs, a bridge, tic-tac-toe wall and slides.

There are also six big and four baby swings, a teeter-totter, a stand-alone tube slide, sand shovel, and a ride-on dinosaur.

The bathrooms were open and were super clean and nice. Actually, I thought “This is nicer than MY bathroom!”
We walked past the baseball and tennis fields and through the (supposed to be on a leash) dog park. NOT a good place for a picnic but very pretty. At the south end of this park is what must have been a small boat launch and where  you can now look out over the river.
I doubt there would be much shade during the day on the actual playground but there are trees around the edges. It was lovely while we were there at 6pm-7pm. There’s basically no fencing around most of the playground and it’s open to the street on one side. 
A fun evening as we enjoyed our picnic, all the climbers, watched some baseball and no one got a face full of sand.
I need to explore Dorval Village more but there is a dep right on the corner of Martin Avenue and there’s also a Wild Willy’s for ice cream.