The Variety Heritage Adventure Park at the Forks National Historic Site is a one of a kind Canadian play-place that supports cultural integration, historic awareness, active living, and environmental stewardship.
Public institutions, non-profit organizations, educators, designers, manufacturers, builders and future patrons of all ages and backgrounds, participated in an intense collaborative process to achieve many firsts in playground design, funding, implementation, programming and ongoing operations.
This is the first Parks Canada site to be developed as a play park, an outdoor education centre and an interpretive site in one; the first Parks site to feature more than one hundred custom designed and hand sculpted play elements nestled into the natural context; the first facility of it’s kind within Parks to be funded via a public private partnership; and the first Parks Canada destination to be actively co-programmed by Parks in collaboration with educational, cultural and philanthropic organizations via a web interface.
HTFC Planning and Design championed many new play park planning and construction ideas during the design process, leading the design-build team in the translation of these ideas from concepts to one of a kind real life adventures that engage all the senses and challenge all the faculties while achieving an extremely high standard of historical accuracy, safety, accessibility and durability.
Within the first two years of operation the Adventure Park has received more than 300,000 visitors to rave reviews and has been recognized with three awards; The City of Winnipeg Accessibility Excellence Award 2012, The Parks Canada CEO’s Award of Excellence 2013, and the Interpretation Canada Gold Award 2013.
