Spring Creek Peace Park is located in the south east corner of Alliston along the Boyne River. It is bordered by a farmer’s field to the north and Honda Manufacturing to the south. The park complex is comprised of two areas. The upper plateau area is Peace Park off of Albert Street. The south and west boundries of Peace Park connect to Spring Creek Park, which is the ravine for the Boyne River. This ravine has four distinct landscape environments and abundabt wildlife. The walking trail along the river edge is greatly prized by the local residents.

In 1998, the Rotary Club of Alliston adopted the park. Their mandate was to improve and maintain the walking trail and create a gateway at the upper level in Peace Park to invite the local citizens to use the park.

The design of the gateway was based on three elements. The first was to create a form which could be seen from Albert Street beyond the parking area to visually ‘announce’ that the park was there. The second element was to locate the entrance gateway such that it organized the pathway conection to the Spring Creek nature trail. The third element was to provide an area of refuge for the participants. In response to these elements, the form of the gateway is a pathway leading around a low stone garden wall to a small paved area with a bench seat and canopy. This area then leads to the main path which runs along the side of the grass plain, optimizing views of the Peace Trees (one for each province), which ring the plain on the far side. The path then ties into a stone staircase, which leads to the nature trail along the bottom of the ravine.

Photography by: Sean O’Reilly