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'Our kids deserve to have this': Inuvik, N.W.T., ecstatic about new playground

After seven years of hurdles — from accumulating more than $100,000 to finding proper builders and equipment — the community has made it happen.

Structure 7 years in the making, costing more than $100,000 in donations and grants

Alyssa Mosher · CBC News ·
A child's dream: from four slides — including a kiddie-sized one — to hopping blocks, tick-tack-toe and monkey bars. (Deborah Reid)

It's something the community has been a part of from the ground up; something simple, but hugely important to the people of Inuvik, N.W.T. — especially the little ones.

It's a playground.

People at East Three Elementary School, which has about 350 students from kindergarten to Grade 6, have had a hankering for a proper place for the children to play.

Some of the students at the new playground at East Three Elementary School in Inuvik, N.W.T. They've told their principal this is the best one in town. (Deborah Reid)

When the school was first built five years ago, the architects installed a playground made of logs, meant to emulate the Indigenous peoples' connection to the land.

But school officials soon learned the structure didn't quite work for the kids. They needed something else. 

From left to right: Fred Bailey of Northwind Industries, Lyle Gully of Bob's Welding and Jozef Carnogursky, president of the Nihtat Gwich'in Council. Principal Deborah Reid says these men donated a lot of time to make sure the playground went up before the winter. (Deborah Reid)

After seven years of hurdles — from accumulating more than $100,000 in grants and donations to finding proper builders and equipment — the community has made it happen.

Lesa Semmler says for the past week, "everybody" has been flocking to the new playground. (Deborah Reid)
"Usually you see the kids scattered at recess time, kind of all over," said Lesa Semmler, the chair of the Beaufort-Delta Education Council and one of the key people behind the project. She was there when the playground first opened last week. 

This time, "everybody was on the playground," she said.

The playground is equipped with "everything," according to the young students; from four slides — including a kiddie-sized one — to hopping blocks, tick-tack-toe and monkey bars. It's every child's dream.

"I went around to every classroom today and asked if the kids were finished with the playground," laughed Deborah Reid, the principal at the school. She got a resounding "No" from the students.

Semmler's daughter, who's now in Grade 7, just missed the chance to jump around on a new playground at the elementary school, but Semmler says the work was still worth it. 

It may have been a rainy opening day for the new playground in Inuvik, N.W.T., but that didn't stop the students from enjoying it. (Deborah Reid)

"It really hit home when I was in Yellowknife and I was driving with my husband... and we're passing schools and [in Inuvik] we have one structure, and some of the schools have four, three, two structures," Semmler said.

"That's when me and my husband were like, 'Our kids deserve to have this.'"

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