A group of local residents joined the City of Brantford and the Branlyn Neighbourhood Association in celebrating the opening of the Silverbridge Park playground on Monday, August 25, 2025.
The park’s upgrade includes additional trees, new playground equipment, accessible and paved pathways, a sheltered picnic area, wood chip safety surfacing under play areas and new benches.
Throughout the event, youngsters took full advantage of the new playground equipment by taking turns going down the slides, climbing various play structures, or checking out the swing set. The City also brought along several lawn games for families to enjoy, including connect-four, jenga and a large chess board.
During the event, Joe Rejdych, president of the Branlyn Neighbourhood Association, said it was nice to have the playground updated given that the residential area will be expanding over the next decade.
He also added that he hopes to work alongside the City’s Parks and Recreation department and Council to have a playground added over at Jaycee Sport Park on Dunsdon Street.
“We only have a few parks in our area and this is one of our new accessible ones for people and for the kids,” he said. “In the next ten or 15 years, this is going to be a hot spot for housing, so they’ll have to have more parks and more everything for the kids to play in.”
Ward 4 Councillor Linda Hunt, said she was happy to see how the park has improved.
“It’s great to see the accessible playground features so that this can be enjoyed by all of the children of the neighbourhood,” she said. “As we talk about what’s going to be the new north end, we’re going to have just that many more families that are going to need this kind of facility and amenity space for them to enjoy. This has really been a joint effort between the neighbourhood association, the area residents and our staff to get this together, and it looks great, kids are certainly all having lots of fun.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
