Nice place for a picnic or just to take a break and relax.
Borden Park, named in honour of Sir Robert Laird Borden (1854-1937), the eighth prime minister of Canada, has been an important Edmonton attraction for almost 100 years. In the early part of the last century, as many as 7,000 people would pour into the park on a Sunday to enjoy picnics, baseball and music. Originally known as East End City Park, it was established in 1906. The 21.99-ha. park was renamed following Prime Minister Borden’s visit to Edmonton in 1914. Borden was elected prime minister in 1911 and held office until his retirement in 1920.
One of the city’s first three swimming pools was situated in Borden Park. As the Edmonton Journal noted in an article published on September 20, 1924: “The whole pool radiates good humor and innocent enjoyment, and is a fitting reply to those prudes who elevate their eyes to high heaven and deplore the ‘wickedness’ embodied in mixed bathing.” The East End swimming pool, the article continued, “will go a long way towards building up a healthy, vigorous, graceful and clean-minded womanhood.” In addition to the pool, the park was for many years home to the Edmonton Zoo. Among its first animals was a bear cub named Louise. As well, there were two buffalo, two elk, monkeys, coyotes and peacocks. Other park attractions were a tea room and rides, including a carousel, a giant roller coaster and a tunnel-of-love. The latter, in a bow to decorum, was known as “the Old Mill.”
By the mid-1930s, however, the Old Mill had been destroyed by fire and the rides were showing their age. The massive roller coaster, built in 1915 at a cost of $15,000, was dismantled in 1935 and its timbers salvaged by a lumber company. Borden Park has continued to be an important outdoor venue for Edmontonians, though the attractions oftered have changed somewhat since its establishment almost a century ago. In the late 1970s, the park’s bandshell hosted performances by two of the city’s new-wave rock bands, The Silent Movies and Smarties.