THUNDER BAY – Waverley Park is throwing a party. On Sunday, June 23, the Coalition for Waverley Park will host a 150th anniversary party for the park, which has been serving the public as green space since just after Port Arthur received its name and some three decades before the city was officially incorporated. These days – ringed by Magnus Theatre on one side, the former Port Arthur Collegiate Institute on the other, and home of the Waverley Park cenotaph – the park is seeing a bit of a revival, which suits David George Noonan just fine.
Noonan, the coalition chair, said it’s wonderful to see the green space, noted as the second oldest public park in Ontario, still a popular spot for residents and visitors to Thunder Bay alike. “It’s wonderful to see this green space here used actively and often. We want to continue to see the development of this park.
We want to see more action in this park and ways for it to be used,” Noonan said. “It’s a wonderful heritage mark in this city. It’s a great way to introduce people to the downtown, where they can see this wonderful old park, with beautiful old trees here.
We’ve got this bandstand, through the hard work of the coalition, to be used on a regular basis in summer. It serves quite an amazing purpose.” Historian Keith Nymark said the park has been a fixture in the community for a century-and-a-half, serving as a marching ground for the military a century or more ago, adding it was created when surveyor Hug.
