The 85-year transformation of Giizhigooweyaabikwe Park

Giizhigooweyaabikwe Park at 242 Lizzie St. at Logan Avenue is a 1.5-acre oasis in the city’s Centennial neighbourhood. Its origins date back to the Second World War and a community organization that is currently celebrating its 130th anniversary.

There was a worrying spike in truancy and juvenile crime in Winnipeg during the Second World War. With no father figure around and many mothers working outside the home for the first time, children as young as ten were roaming free and getting into trouble.

The city did not have its own recreation department until 1946, so it established a $5,500 fund that community organizations could draw from to subsidize the creation of recreational programs and spaces.

School trustee Jessie MacLennan noticed that the funding was for school-aged programming only, which she felt was an injustice to mothers who needed amenities for their pre-school children as well.

MacLellan was a member of the Council of Women of Winnipeg, an organization with a long history of supporting projects for children, from the Children’s Hospital to kindergarten associations, and asked it to help. The Council, now celebrating its 130th anniversary, agreed to sponsor the construction of a pre-school playground.

A 100-foot by 75-foot greenspace was chosen at the corner of Fountain Street and Alexander Avenue and with $100 in seed money from the city, MacLellan and the Council of Women got local businesses to donate lumber, Kelvin High School students to build swings, a slide and a teeter-totter, and unemployed men to do the digging.

At 2 p.m. on June 28, 1940, MacLennan raised the flag at the opening ceremony of the Council of Women Playground surrounded by local schoolchildren.

This was just one of the many accomplishments of Jessie MacLellan who came to Winnipeg from Scotland in 1918. She co-founded the Manitoba League of the Blind, was a charter member of the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, and worked tirelessly for many local charities.

MacLellan was a school trustee from 1925 until her death in 1942 and was the first woman to serve as chair of the Winnipeg Public School Board in the 1930s.

The Kiwanis Club of Winnipeg took over the playground in 1946. It had deeper pockets than the Council of Women and had been working with the city and private donors to create a network of more elaborate playgrounds.

The park was renamed Kiwanis Playground No. 2 and a wading pool, pool building and merry-go-round were added. For its part, the city expanded the park’s footprint east to Lizzie Street and north to Logan Avenue.

Metro Winnipeg took over the operation of city parks, including this one, in the late 1960s. It was renamed Lizzie (Street) Playground and for many years had summer recreation staff assigned to it to create programming for area children.

The park was renamed Giizhigooweyaabikwe (Painted Sky Woman) Park in 2018 to honour community leader and activist Leslie Spillet. It has since undergone more than $350,000 in renovations.