S2 #18 Parks and Recreation w/ Stew Young

This week’s episode started as a conversation at the memorial service for the late Langford Fire Chief Al LeQuesne (Ret’d). Langford Mayor Stew Young mentioned a new park being named in the Chief’s honour, in consideration of his 44 years of service to the community.

As someone who worked next to the Chief for a few of those years, I was happy to hear about the park, and wanted to learn more, and even happier to learn that what makes the park unique will be the fully-accessible features and equipment.

It will be a revamp of the former Cressida Park, which has seen better days. The City will update it to a modern park, with more amenities than before, and it will become the standard for all new and revamped parks in Langford.

The Mayor proudly notes that on southern Vancouver Island, Langford creates more parks than other jurisdictions - and has been doing that for over 15 years. With 21% of the city in parks and green spaces, they boast 2300 acres in 300 parks!

In addition to the Fire Chief Al LeQuesne Memorial Park (opening in September), the 130 acre Jordie Lunn Bike Park will celebrate the Grand Opening on May 10th. It will also be the host site in July for the Red Bull World Championship Qualifier for the Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Championship in Chile - the only Canadian stop on the Qualifier circuit! Coming up, there will also be a dedication ceremony for the new Flying Firemen Park on Skirt Mountain, in honour of the 2 waterbomber pilots who died in a crash there in 1967. 

Our full conversation illustrated that Langford has bold plans not just for their Parks and Recreation opportunities, but also housing, education - secondary and post, environment, traffic, jobs, and economy. Too much for this episode, so stay tuned for a future episode where the rest of the conversation will show the full-service, self-sustained community and full-circle lifestyle that Langford aims for. The term “From Dogpatch to Desirable” is the teaser that we’ll leave you with.