Historic South Walkerville park could receive heritage recognition

Optimist Memorial Park in Windsor as seen on March 19, 2026. (Chris Campbell/CTV News Windsor)

A historic park in Windsor could be one step closer to receiving heritage designation.

During the most recent city council meeting, Ward 4 Coun. Mark McKenzie asked administration to study whether the Memorial Park portion of Optimist Memorial Park in south Walkerville should be considered for heritage designation.

He says this is the start of a proper review to fully understand the history of the park, the process to designate, and what options make sense for the park.

McKenzie says the Memorial Park side was turned into a park around 1924 and is from the gravel parking lot next to the community centre to Gladstone Avenue. The newer park of the park is the community centre to the baseball diamonds.

He says residents have raised the idea over the years, adding that many longtime south Walkerville residents still distinguish between Optimist Park and the older Memorial Park section.

“It was originally called Senator Kennedy Park, and then a few years later ended up being known as Memorial Park after the wars and stuff. And so that’s where you’ve got a lot of the mature trees, you’ve got the naturalized area, you have the cenotaph there. And so that’s the area that I’m really hoping that admin will look at.”

McKenzie says any future heritage recognition would need to be balanced with ongoing improvements and public use of the park.

“I’m not trying to stop park improvements either, like that’s not the goal. And I don’t want residents to kind of freak out there. I mainly just want to look at how any potential heritage recognition could then actually be balanced with the regular maintenance and accessibility improvements, playground renewal, you know, so we’re still going to be in there cutting the grass and putting in new paths when they need to be because obviously the park still needs to serve families.”

He added staff seem pleased with the idea.

“I have had some offline conversations with some staff members in the heritage department and they actually were pretty receptive when I brought it up... they said you know what, that’s actually a really good idea, it is something we should probably look at.”

McKenzie says he’s hopeful a report will return to council before the end of the year so the review process can move forward.

The old washroom facility is currently listed as a heritage building within the park; however, they haven’t been used in many years.