Chisling approached the Rotarians, who'd purchased the park decades earlier as a gift to the town. Club members agreed to let him use the land and donated $10,000 to the project, with a promise of $30,000 in future years. George Vice, a 92-year-old Bowmanville resident, also donated $10,000 in memory of a man who'd given him a job at 14.
Chisling persuaded the federal justice department to contribute $28,000 from its youth justice fund. "That was not easy, believe me," he said.
The money was used to buy plants, truckloads of soil, boulders, interlocking bricks, work clothes, gas for a used truck, lunches for the kids and seven white birch trees to honour Rotary Club members who used their own savings 50 years ago to purchase the land. When work got underway in 2007, the site was "a pile of muck," said Chisling.
Public Stiky Notes
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