After years of planning, the first BMX park in Nunavut finally opened in Cape Dorset
It took lots of work and the delivery of a soil compactor, but there's finally a BMX park in Cape Dorset
Anyone who grew up in a small town without a lot to do can appreciate how exciting it was for the kids of Cape Dorset, Nunavut when a BMX park was built. Brian Reid, one of the youth who helped get the park built, talks about how the kids in town ride bikes a lot but there's never really been an appropriate place to do it.
Usually we just ride on the road, even though it's dangerous.- Brian Reid, Cape Dorset BMX rider
The park — the first of its kind in the territory — opened in 2017, but the volunteers who built it continued to make improvements after opening. One of the major challenges was under their feet the whole time: The dirt track was made of soft, loose soil, which was more dangerous and less fun to ride than it should have been.
The track needed to be compacted, but where do you get a compactor when you live in an isolated town with no roads in or out? You order it from southern Canada and wait for it to arrive by boat with an annual supply delivery.
The summers are short in Cape Dorset, so the park took several years to complete. The compacting process was no different. As soon as the equipment arrived, the volunteers got right to it, despite bad weather conditions.