Victoria Park, Park in downtown London, Ontario, Canada
Victoria Park is a 7.3-hectare park in downtown London, Ontario, Canada. It was laid out by landscape architect Charles H. Miller, chief gardener of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, and contains a bandshell built in 1950 and rebuilt in 1990, a Boer War memorial statue from 1912, and a replica of the Whitehall cenotaph added in 1934.
Victoria Park began as the site of the British garrison and cricket grounds, expanded with new buildings during and after the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. When troops left in 1853 to train for the Crimean War, the barracks housed escaped slaves from the United States as an end station of the Underground Railway. Troops returned in 1861, and in 1874 the land was transferred to the city and renamed after Queen Victoria.
Victoria Park hosts Sunfest, the Home County Folk Festival, Rib-Fest and Fiesta del Sol. Since 2008 every event must follow a waste management plan with Eco-Stations and recyclable or compostable containers, lifting waste diversion from 5% to 50% in the first year. Each winter the trees carry Christmas lights and a vigil marks the École Polytechnique Massacre.
The park sits in downtown London, Ontario, about 1.4 km west of the city centre, on flat ground at 256 m above sea level. An ice skating rink has been built there every winter since 1913, and the area in front of the bandshell serves as a free public skatepark. Festival organisers must supply Eco-Stations and recyclable or compostable containers.
Victoria Park's black Eastern Gray Squirrels were introduced in 1914, when four pairs were purchased. In February 1961 a group was sent to Kent State University in Ohio, where they became established. The park's squirrel population is not native, and the local pastime of squirrel fishing grew around it.
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