Maria Canton
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 14/99) - The uniqueness of the North doesn't apply when it comes to playground safety.

That point was made clear at a Canadian Playground Safety Institute workshop held last week in Yellowknife to review national playspaces and equipment standards introduced in March, 1998.

"Meeting playground standards is part of a proactive approach to safety rather than a reactive approach," said

Glenn McLean, program manager for the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA).

The two-day workshop was attended by more than 50 school board officials, maintenance people and city and government decision makers from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

"The standards represent what a reasonable organization would do to keep their playgrounds safe," said McLean.

"Once organizations are made aware of the standards and understand them, they are keen to follow them."

A whopping 65 per cent of playground injuries are a result of falls onto improper, and therefore unsafe, surfacing.

"If we could only recommend one thing, it would be to focus on surfacing," says McLean.

In terms of surfacing, it is a common fault for many playgrounds not to have the proper depth of surfacing -- sand, gravel, pebbles -- to correspond with the highest point from which a child could fall.

Past-president of the NWT Recreation and Parks Association Brian Kelln says part of the problem is because a lot of playgrounds used to be left to deteriorate before they would be completely replaced.

"What it really comes down to is that people now have concerns about the standards of their playgrounds and that's why we had such a good turn out at the workshop."

More than 25,000 kids were injured at public playgrounds across Canada last year, according to the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRRP) database, in which Yellowknife's Stanton hospital is included.

Kelln also says that the NWT has the highest number of playground injuries in Canada on a per capita basis.

"What we're doing now is working towards preventative maintenance of playgrounds, instead of letting things get run down."

The March, 1998 standards represent the first update of such standards since the introduction of the 1991 playground guidelines.