Connecting people and places

Community volunteers gathered Sept. 22 to put the finishing touches on a new section of the Junction Creek Waterway Park/Trans Canada Trail, at the corner of Riverside Drive and Worthington Crescent.

Joined by volunteers from Canada World Youth, the group planted trees, picked up litter and did some basic landscaping in what has been described as a pocket park — a small park accessible to the general public, created on a single vacant building lot or on small, irregular pieces of land, a press release stated.

"The Junction Creek Waterway Park forms a portion of the Trans Canada Trail as it passes through Greater Sudbury from Kelly Lake Road and into Downtown Sudbury," said Samantha Baulch, president of Rainbow Routes Association.

"This small section is especially sweet as it gives pedestrians access to this incredibly beautiful yet hidden area, which is in very close proximity to Downtown Sudbury."

David Courtemanche and Franco Mariotti are co-chairs of the Connect-the-Creek Partnership, which arranged the community work day.

"The Connect-the-Creek Partnership is a community-based, volunteer-driven initiative to create a linear park along the full 18-km length of Junction Creek, from Maley Drive in the northeast section of Greater Sudbury to Kelly Lake in the southwest," Courtemanche said. "To date, more than two-thirds of the linear park has been completed and we are looking toward full completion by 2015."

For more information on the trail, visit www.rainbowroutes.com.