posted on August 26, 2009

BMX park a labour of love for 60-year-old

By: Nicole Baute
Published: Aug 26, 2009
Source: The Star

Mike Heaton built this colourful, 8,000-square-foot BMX
playground at Wallace Emerson Community Centre at Dufferin
and Dupont Sts. The 60-something retired teacher still rides,
although admits, at his age, “if you’re gonna make a fool
of yourself, it’s best to do it in private.” (Aug. 20, 2009)

Mike Heaton surveys his park.

"Who's the new kid here?" he wants to know. "The kid with the hair."

The kid soaring up and down the BMX ramps in checkered shorts, with a helmet over his shoulder-length hair and nothing but a tan on the rest of him.

Heaton stops him at the top of a ramp. "I'm the guy that built the park," he says.

Anthony Taverniti, a 13-year-old who's just moved to the city from Woodbridge, takes him in: man with a backpack, Nike skate shoes with yellow laces, a few piercings in his left ear.

Hair: white. Approximate age: 60.

"You built all these ramps?" Anthony asks.

"Well, not yesterday," Heaton says. "It's taken us three years to get it up to where it is."

"It's beautiful," Anthony says.

If you're an adrenalin junkie with an eye for graffiti, it is beautiful at the BMX park at the Wallace Emerson Community Centre, a multicoloured 8,000-square-foot playground at Dufferin and Dupont Sts. packed with $40,000 to $50,000 worth of wood ramps for freestyle BMX, or bicycle motocross.

Heaton, a former geography and outdoor education teacher, built this park and paid for at least half of it (probably more). He still rides, mostly on the dirt runs nearby, but admits he is getting old. "If you're gonna make a fool of yourself, it's best to do it in private," he says.

On a regular day he can be found fixing ramps or helping riders, surrounded by an unconventional cast of characters that includes a former gangster, a Crime Stoppers cop, packs of shrieking children on summer day-camp outings, and the everyday crew of BMXers with bright bikes, scabbed elbows and nicknames like Obama, Pilsbury, Pirate, Smiley and Ginger.

The centre sees a steady stream of riders, as many as 100 to 200 a day, Heaton says. There are loaner bikes for gutsy newcomers.

On a recent afternoon, rain forces the BMXers to retreat to the shelter of the centre's wall, where they work on their bikes and tease each other the way only people who spend a lot of time together can.

Eric Brazil, 14, also known as Pilsbury, was practising "tailwhips" before the rain. "I started competing this year on comps," he says. "I went all the way to Brampton, Chinguacousy Park comp, came in second. No big. Probably the next comp that's coming, I'm going to be second again. Or first. Or third."

Wade Nelson, 38, says Eric used to hang out at the park every day, even though he didn't have a bike. He would wait for the other kids to finish riding before politely asking to use theirs. Nelson, a media studies professor writing a book on BMX, bought bikes and helmets for Brazil and his brother. Now he's one of the best riders here.

Everyone at Wallace will tell you that the park keeps kids out of trouble in this rough-around-the-edges neighbourhood.

Const. Scott Mills is often hanging around, looking anything but inconspicuous with his canary yellow Crime Stoppers SUV parked nearby. He knows the kids by name, runs the legal graffiti program and posts trick videos on the Toronto BMX YouTube site. "I've got a constant uploading onto the Internet of kids doing positive and good things, which is what 99 per cent of the kids in this city do," Mills says.

On the other side there's Joe Thomson, a.k.a. "Grim," president of Toronto's Most Wanted Motorsports, which sponsors four BMX riders. Right now he's planning to help Heaton fix the cracked and worn "lips" on the ramps.

"This wasn't here when I was a kid, and I was a big troublemaker in the neighbourhood," Thomson, 33, says stoically from the sidelines.

He's talking about 31 convictions, "everything from firearms possession to assault, got in a bunch of gang stuff when I was a kid," he says, cracking a smile. He left it all behind him when his daughter Riley was born six years ago.

"Most of my friends and family are either dead or deported or in jail for the next too many years," he says. "So this is a way to build a new family and come together with people."

As for Heaton, "I think he's awesome," Thomson says.

In 2007, Heaton landed a gig running the BMX jam at the Toronto International Bicycle Show and arranged for the ramps to be brought to the Wallace Emerson Community Centre after the show.

"I don't know how I did it, I somehow talked Toronto parks into allowing us to set up the ramps," he says. "I just decided that this would be a good place to invest some time." He rethinks that. "Invest? Spend. Spend money." He laughs.

Wet ramps are dangerous, so every time it rains they have to shut down. He and Mills are determined to find an indoor facility. Heaton is looking for something around the $1 million mark that could also be used for other community sports and activities and he knows some people interested in helping fund it.

Now they just have to find a building. "So far, no hot leads," he says.

It isn't immediately clear what motivates Heaton to do all of this, but Thomson puts it simply. "The love of the sport," he says. "It can't be anything other than that."

Heaton loves to talk BMX, a sport that builds co-ordination, timing, balance and creativity – and, perhaps, an invaluable side-effect: "It's changed a lot of the kids' way of thinking about what they should be doing with their spare time."