President's Message – May

Exciting updates to our hall are coming soon!

Happy Spring! As you are reading this message, Easter has passed and we should be coming up on the May long weekend. Green buds have been poking up through the ground, through the cover of last years’ fall leaves. I always want to get out and rake early in hopes that it will help generate the green… and then I remember that it will likely snow on the May long weekend.

Please mark your calendars for June 6: our AGM! We will be presenting some updates to the hall including interior and exterior updates. We will be voting on
a new Board I encourage anyone to come join our Board.

We are eagerly awaiting delivery of our playground equipment. The new playground will be re-sited to the northeast corner of the lot and the old playground equipment will be removed. The anticipated delivery date is the 3rd week of June, so keep your fingers crossed that the weather co-operates, and you will all have the opportunity to enjoy a full summer of fun on the new Highland Park Playground. Special thanks to the Preschool families who have been graciously donating and fundraising. Families from NEXT who so kindly responded to our ask, the many, many community members have been contributing their time and corporate matching dollars and everyone who went to the Parks Foundation Page and donated. We are still fundraising so don’t hesitate to go to the Parks Foundation Page and find our name (Highland Park).

Along with this exterior update, we are hoping to do some other updates to the site, pending notice from a provincial grant application we put together this past winter. We will know in mid-July if we were successful. Should it be good news, we will be adding a garbage enclosure, updating the storage shed, and doing some desperately needed landscaping to help prevent water seeping into the basement halls during weather events. If you want to see what’s on the agenda for Hall updates this year, come out on June 6 and we will have architectural drawings and folks on hand to answer any questions. This is just Phase 1 of our planned Hall restoration and I’m looking forward to sharing more on Phase 2 which will be a bigger renovation of the Hall.

I am also super excited to share that registration is open for the Highland Park Preschool and we are offering new classes this fall. Check it out!!

If you are looking for something fun to do this summer, HPCA will be doing Music in the Park again this year, and as always, Neighbour Day (rain or shine!). We will announce the community celebration and grand opening of our playground once the installation is complete.

Kind Regards,

Elise