I've been hearing this my whole life, but it's always been just bald-ass prairie to me.
There is going to be the permanent residential school memorial in there and there is the firefighter memorial as well, don't think the plaza will change much. Best hope is something in the triangle space that activates part of the plaza, but the walkway into the building cuts it off, so I don't have much hope.
A giant slope is probably an issue during the winter. Obviously they do and should clear any snow/ice but there's going to be times it'll be really icy and dangerous.
No. The park is meant to be a natural environment, and should be kept that way. There are very little natural prairie habitats left because of farming and the planting of non native trees and grasses. If you want to plant trees do it somewhere else in the city. The park already has many natural growth forests in it's coulees anyway.
I'm talking about increasing tree coverage with a few small groves/forests. Like increasing the tree coverage from 5%ish to 10%ish.
Agreed, there's a fairly large area that was a gravel pit, and isn't anything right now. You could plant some extra trees and put in a few picnic tables, make it a bit more useful.
That's more or less what I had in mind, some extra trees to make the park more useful and add a bit of variety.
We don't have native prairie and it's actually one of the most endangered ecosystems in the country (5% of native fescue grass prairie is left in Alberta). Wheat and Canola fields don't support the diversity of life that a fescue grassland does, so I think it's definitely worth protecting. It was used for different things before, but the city removes invasive species and plants native ones and are restoring it to what it should be. If we want to plant trees, there are so many places around the city we can do that, but lets leave a part of the prairie as it naturally exists. Insofar as it can be natural with all the people and dogs that go up there lol.