Be wary of entering another one of Barrie’s hidden gems of a park. You might run into an escapee. But more on that later.
Gables Park, located off Hurst Drive in Barrie’s south end, has a long history and remains a nature-filled retreat in the city.
With beautiful weather now upon us, tree leaves and ground cover are just ready to pop in the almost 40-acre park — with wide trails and tall trees — fronting onto Kempenfelt Bay.
The first house built on the property, which became known as The Gables, was 161 years ago.
Local writer and columnist Donna Douglas says Gables Park has a “generous” history.
“(A home) was built in 1860 by Capt. W. Durie and named after the green gables of the house that faced the water. A second cottage, Woodcote, was built by Capt. Whish of the Royal Navy,” she says in a 2003 article about the property, adding it was also owned at some point by Henry Boys, uncle to W.A. Boys, who was a Barrie lawyer and Member of Parliament.
“In the 1920s, Sir Edmund Osler, businessman, bought the property and generously converted it to a camp for underprivileged families from Toronto (when he) partnered with the (Toronto) Star Fresh Air Fund for this venture,” Douglas says. “In 1940, Walter Laidlaw bought the property (and) continued to hold the Fresh Air Camps for underprivileged families, and cabins and bunkhouses were built to accommodate the children.”
That purchase led to the park we have today, complete with a few twists and turns, after Laidlaw spent some time recuperating at Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) and left the property and his home to the nursing staff in 1962.
“(Thanks) to the generosity of Walter Laidlaw, who took a liking to his Latvian caregiver and her nursing friends, a parcel of waterfront land in Barrie’s south end is now public parkland,” Douglas says.
But before that happened, RVH would relinquish The Gables as part of its expansion plans in the 1990s.
“The city gave the hospital its land for the current building in exchange for $1 and that property,” she says, adding that in the decades prior, it was still an outdoorsy place to enjoy.
“With community generosity, the property was used for hospital functions, loaned to the YMCA for day camps, and essentially left in its former state. Ultimately, in then '70s, Walter’s gabled home was torn down,” Douglas says.
Deb Exel, a member of the Barrie Historical Archive, remembers seeing parts of The Gables in her youth.
“It was a big old house with fireplaces and a long hall. In the summer, there were tall hedgerows and gardens,” she says. “It was very well maintained, a beautiful property, and on the lake.
“The nursing and hospital staff enjoyed it. They'd come here to swim. Back in the day, the nurses would come and spend the weekend. It was a getaway property for them," Exel says.
Mary Harris, also with the archive, loves this time of year in the park.
“It’s sea of flowers, a patchwork quilt, of yellow, blue and white,” she says. “There’s natural wildflowers, such as trilliums, buttercups, trout lilies and forget-me-nots.
“But there are probably escapee flowers, too, from the original estate, like periwinkles,” she says.
“This park is a well-kept secret. A lot of people who walk through here may have no idea of what The Gables was.”
