Saint John woman got the playground movement underway in Canada.

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David Goss

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Now that schools are closed, thousands of New Brunswick children will be heading for the nearest playground to enjoy the swings, slides, and climbing apparatus.

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Youngsters on an inner-city playground on Rock Street in Saint John many years ago.

Playgrounds in times past were simpler, but no less attractive or fun for the children as can be seen in today's photo of youngsters on an inner city playground on Rock Street in Saint John given to the author by Dorothy Wood some years ago.

The children on this playground, which no longer exists except as a summer memory of those pictured, likely had no idea it was there due to the work of a Saint John woman that got the playground movement underway in Canada.

Her name was Mabel Peters, and she was the first to suggest that children needed places to play in cities coast to coast.

It is often stated that Saint John was the first to have a public playground, but that is not correct. However, the city can claim to have been first with the idea.

That happened in 1899, when Mabel Peters, fresh from a trip to her sister's home in Detroit, Michigan, where she had seen children enjoy playgrounds, suggested to the Saint John Council of Women that they should undertake a campaign to have similar play areas in Canada.

They encouraged her to prepare a paper on the matter and read it at their annual meeting coming up in London, Ontario in 1901. She agreed, but due to her dad's death, was unable to attend. However, her Detroit sister, Clara, read the report, and it got things moving. The next year, the meeting was in Saint John, and Mabel was named conveyor of a standing committee for vacation schools and playgrounds, a position she held for the remainder of her all too short life, for she died in 1914.

Montreal established playgrounds in 1902 and Toronto followed in 1905, and Saint John was third, in July of 1906.

That playground was off Richmond Street on the grounds of Centennial School and ran for seven weeks, with an average daily attendance of 450 children. This certainly showed the need for such an area. Equipment included four teeters, three large swings, two sets quoits, two games of ring toss, two bean bag boards, two hundred pails and shovels, a croquet set, two basketball sets, ten baseball sets, one table for clay modeling, two tables for weaving, one sewing circle, and one bead stringing table.

By 1912, when the first St. John Playground Association was formed, (with Miss Peters as its president), there were three playground in operation, and highlight of the summer was a properly equipped playground that was adjacent to the Exhibition Grounds (then on the Barrack Green in the South End) for the public to see. Their report for the year noted, "it was thus a most valuable object lesson to people from centers where such playgrounds have not yet been established."

Which was still most places at the time, and Mabel Peters travelled from one end of the country to the other, and even into the United States to promote the cause.

When she died in August 1914, she was referred to as the "mother" of the playground movement, and it was suggested that every city in Canada should name a playground in her honour. None did "" not even her home town! (A kindergarten in Saint John was named after her, though).

However, last winter, a Saint John student, Moriah Russell, chose Miss Peter's story for her Heritage Fair project, and in addition, chose to write to the Saint John Common Council to correct this oversight by naming a play area in honour of the founder of the playground movement. Miss Russell succeeded in her quest, and sometime this summer, there will be a ceremony, and Miss Peters will finally have a playground named in her honour.

David Goss is a Saint John historian who writes monthly columns looking at various heritage topics.