The City of Trail is walking away with a first place win for “Tidiness,” special recognition for The White Garden in Jubilee Park, and a silver award - or second place - in the Class of Champions category of the national 2019 Communities in Bloom competition.
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Trail was up against two other cities in the medium division. Rosemère QC took first place and Summerside P.E.I., third.
The outstanding achievement award of “Tidiness,” as well as the other standings including another five-bloom (top) rating, was announced Saturday in Yarmouth, NS, at the 25th Edition of the Communities in Bloom National and International Awards.
For the past 18 years, volunteers with Trail Community in Bloom, alongside the city and community partners, have been forging ahead with cleaning up and greening the town as part of the Communities in Bloom movement.
This is the first time, however, that countless hours of hands-on toiling has yielded recognition for “Tidiness” on the national scale.
The category includes an overall tidiness effort by the municipality, businesses, institutions and the residents throughout the community. Elements for evaluation are parks and green spaces, medians, boulevards, sidewalks, streets; municipal, commercial, institutional and residential properties; ditches, road shoulders, vacant lots, signs and buildings; weed control, litter clean-up, graffiti prevention/removal and vandalism deterrent programs.
When judges Anne,Marie Parent and Susan Ellis, both from Eastern Canada, arrived in Trail for a first-time visit back in July, the women were taken aback by the city’s present landscape, considering the history of such a big-industry town.
“The Communities in Bloom effort, the public’s, the municipality’s and Teck Metal’s effort is astonishing -they’ve really worked hard to overcome a rocky history,” Ellis said at a July 23 luncheon in Jubilee Park.
“And they have done that. So it’s something that is now fading into the distance and they are left with the legacy of all these projects, which are amazing. Trail is a very nice, welcoming town that should be proud of all these things that are happening.”
Parent echoed her fellow judge’s sentiment.
“You have this this little town, cuddled in all these mountains and the river that flows through and then this big industrial plant right in the middle. Normally (that) would have a great impact,” she reflected that day.
“But then as you circle around the little streets, you almost forget it’s there, until you look up and see the chimney stack. Otherwise, everyone has tidy little gardens they’ve created for themselves, these little sanctuaries that are really, really, great.”
Municipalities across Canada, the United States, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and United Kingdom were honoured at the weekend ceremonies.
“On behalf of the National Committee, Judges and Sponsors, we sincerely thank and congratulate the many hundreds of communities and the tens of thousands of those involved in the program over the past 25 years,” Bob Lewis, national chair, said in a Sept. 28 release.
“Their efforts have helped to green our communities and make them better places to live in, to work in, and to visit.”
Communities in Bloom is a Canadian non-profit organization committed to fostering civic pride, environmental responsibility and beautification through community involvement and the challenge of a national program, with focus on the enhancement of green spaces in communities.
newsroom@trailtimes.ca
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