Borden Park

Borden Park — Edmonton’s amusement park turned architectural showcase

Borden Park is twenty-two hectares of mature trees, flower beds and quietly extraordinary buildings on Edmonton’s near north-east side, wedged between the Virginia Park, Cromdale and Highlands neighbourhoods. For a park that opened in 1906 it has aged in an unusual direction: what was once a fairground with roller coasters, a tea room and the city’s first zoo is now the place Edmontonians bring visitors to show off contemporary architecture. Two of its buildings — a circular glass washroom pavilion and Canada’s first chemical-free public swimming pool — have won the Governor General’s Medal in Architecture. Between them stands a 1950s concrete bandshell, a formal flower garden, ball diamonds and a colossal magenta-and-orange aluminum sculpture. It is a park with a long memory and no interest in nostalgia.

Highlights

• Borden Natural Swimming Pool — Canada’s first public chemical-free outdoor pool, completed in 2018 to a design by Toronto firm gh3 at a cost of about $14.4 million; the water is cleaned by hydrobotanical regeneration basins, crushed-granite filter beds and sunlight instead of chlorine.
• The Borden Park Pavilion — a circular washroom and shelter building by gh3, won through a national design competition in 2011 and completed in 2015: glulam Douglas fir trusses carry triangular glass panels that read as clear from inside and dark and mirror-like from outside. It took the 2018 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture and, in 2021, Canada’s Best Restroom title.
• The bandshell — an arched concrete-and-fieldstone stage built during the park’s mid-1950s rebuild, designed by City Architect Robert W. Falconer with architect W. Pasternak, designated a Municipal Historic Resource on 20 February 2013 and still used for outdoor events of up to five hundred people.
• Vaulted Willow — a roughly six-metre public sculpture by Marc Fornes and THEVERYMANY, assembled from 721 brightly coloured aluminum shingles into a self-supporting branching shell; the park also hosts rotating temporary sculpture exhibitions.
• The formal flower garden — a bedded, symmetrical planting that is one of the last visible echoes of the park’s Edwardian pleasure-ground layout, and a fixture in Edmonton wedding photographs every July.
• UFest, the Edmonton Ukrainian Festival — Western Canada’s largest multi-day Ukrainian festival, held free in the park; in 2026 it ran on 29 and 30 May with hundreds of dancers, choirs and bands, food vendors, workshops and a marketplace.

What you’ll find

The park reads as a loose ring of set pieces connected by wide, tree-lined asphalt paths. The pool complex and pavilion anchor one side, the bandshell and open lawn another, and sports facilities and playground fill the rest. Much of the tree canopy is old, planted when this was the edge of the city, which makes Borden noticeably shadier and cooler than newer Edmonton parks in July.

• The natural swimming pool complex: a forty-two-metre main pool two metres deep, a shallow teaching pool, a sand beach edge, change rooms and the regeneration basins, visible behind glass.
• Two ball diamonds and three tennis courts, plus open field space used for pick-up sport and festival tents.
• A playground built around wooden structures, close to the picnic areas.
• Picnic sites — four reservable and six drop-in, several with canopies — which are booked heavily through the summer.
• Extensive paved walking paths, benches, the flower garden and mature shelterbelt planting.
• Public art on permanent display plus a rotating outdoor exhibition programme that changes every couple of years.

Things to do — and who it’s for

• Swimmers who dislike chlorine — the natural pool is the reason many people cross the city; the water is biologically filtered, held around 24°C, and the experience is closer to a clean lake than a municipal pool.
• Architecture and design travellers — two Governor General’s Medal buildings in one park is a rare thing anywhere in Canada, and both are free to look at from outside.
• Families with small children — the shallow teaching pool, the wooden playground, flat paths for scooters and canopied picnic sites make a straightforward full day.
• Festival-goers — the bandshell and open lawns host concerts and community events through the warm months, and the park is the long-standing home of the city’s Ukrainian festival.
• Photographers and garden visitors — the flower garden, the mirrored pavilion and the aluminum sculpture give three completely different subjects within a few minutes’ walk.
• History-minded walkers — this is the ground where Edmonton’s first zoo and its roller coasters stood, and the bandshell is a rare surviving piece of the city’s 1950s civic optimism.

Getting there & practical

Borden Park sits in central-north-east Edmonton beside the Edmonton EXPO Centre and the old Exhibition Lands, with the Virginia Park, Cromdale and Highlands neighbourhoods around it. The closest LRT stop is Coliseum Station on the Capital Line, a short walk away, which makes this one of the easiest Edmonton river-city parks to reach without a car; several bus routes also serve the Coliseum transit point. There is an on-site parking lot with accessible stalls, and accessible drop-off. Entry to the park is free and it is open daily from 5am to 11pm; washrooms operate roughly 8am to 9pm, and the pavilion keeps shorter summer hours. The natural swimming pool is a separate paid admission with its own short season — in 2026 it ran from 20 June to 1 August, generally 10:30am to 7:30pm and closing earlier on statutory holidays — and it closes on the day when air temperature drops below 18°C, when air quality is poor, or in storms. The pool also runs strict capacity limits, so arriving early on a hot day matters. Allow an hour to walk the park properly, or a half-day if you are swimming.

When to visit

Spring arrives late and fast here: the snow goes in April, the flower beds are planted out in May, and the last weekend of May brings the Ukrainian festival and the park’s biggest crowds of the year. Summer is the park at full stretch — the pool open, the bandshell programmed, picnic sites booked, the canopy deep enough to sit under at four in the afternoon when the prairie sun is merciless. Autumn is short and spectacular: the mature poplars and elms turn in late September, the crowds vanish with the pool’s closing, and the low light works beautifully on the mirrored pavilion. Winter in Edmonton is genuinely severe — long stretches below −20°C, deep cold snaps colder still, and daylight down to about seven and a half hours at solstice — and Borden Park handles it by becoming quiet and graphic: cleared paths for walking, open grassy slopes used for sledding, hoarfrost on the old trees, and buildings that look their best against snow. Dress for it properly and a January walk here is one of the better free things to do in the city.

Good to know

The park opened in 1906 as East End City Park, on what was then the edge of Edmonton. It was renamed in 1914 for Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s eighth prime minister, following his visit to the city on the eve of the First World War. Its early decades were pure Edwardian pleasure ground: picnics and band concerts, a tea room, fairground rides, and the original Edmonton Zoo — the city’s first. On a sunny weekend as many as seven thousand people came. Amusement rides, among them a carousel and roller coasters, ran from about 1915 to 1935, and the park had a “Tunnel of Love” — a dark water ride whose boats were drawn along by magnets. Note that the carousel is history, not a working attraction: no carousel operates in the park today, though the 2015 pavilion’s circular form was designed as a deliberate echo of merry-go-rounds and the park’s fairground past, and an artwork titled Carousel hangs on the pavilion’s west wall. The zoo lasted far longer than the rides, closing only when the Valley Zoo — then Storyland Valley Zoo — opened on 1 July 1959, after which the Borden Park zoo buildings were removed to expand Northlands Park. The whole park was rebuilt in the mid-1950s and reopened on Dominion Day 1958, with the address given by Mayor William Hawrelak, Edmonton’s longest-serving mayor and one of the most prominent Ukrainian-Canadians in the city’s public life. That connection is not incidental: Edmonton has the largest urban Ukrainian community in Canada — 144,620 residents of Ukrainian origin, 14.1 percent of the population, at the 2006 census — rooted in settlement that began north-east of the city after 1892 and grew in the city itself once the Canadian Northern Railway arrived in 1905. St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, whose cornerstone was laid on 1 October 1939 and which was dedicated in 1947, stands in the same quadrant of Edmonton; designed by Fr. Philip Ruh, its seven domes made it the first building in what became known as the Prairie Cathedral style. Borden Park is where that community throws its biggest party, UFest. Two corrections to the common description of this park are worth making. First, the historic pavilion date: the arched bandshell belongs to the mid-1950s rebuild that reopened in 1958 — not 1957 — and was designated a Municipal Historic Resource on 20 February 2013; the celebrated circular pavilion is a separate, much newer building, completed in 2015. Second, no venue called the Edmonton Prairie Theatre could be verified at Borden Park; the park’s outdoor performance space is the bandshell, which holds audiences of up to five hundred. As for the swimming pool: it is open and operating, with a short, weather-dependent season, and it works on a scale of rules unfamiliar to most pool-goers — a head-to-toe shower before entry, phosphate-free sunscreen only, purpose-made swimwear rather than cotton or athletic shorts, and daily and simultaneous bather caps, all of which exist to protect a filtration system made of plants, gravel and microbes rather than chemicals.

Visitor tips

• On a hot day, go to the pool at opening. Capacity is capped, the queue builds by late morning, and once the limit is reached you wait for someone to leave.
• Bring phosphate-free sunscreen and proper swimwear, and expect to shower thoroughly before entering the water — staff enforce this, because the biology of the filtration depends on it.
• Walk the park even if you are not swimming. The pavilion, the bandshell, the flower garden and Vaulted Willow form a loop of about twenty minutes and cost nothing.

Questions & answers

Is the natural swimming pool actually open? Yes. It operates a short summer season — in 2026 from 20 June to 1 August, roughly 10:30am to 7:30pm — with paid admission and daily closures possible when the air temperature falls below 18°C, when air quality is poor, or during storms. Capacity is limited, so it can be full on hot afternoons.

How does a pool work without chlorine? Water circulates continuously through hydrobotanical regeneration basins planted with water lilies and reeds, and through beds of crushed granite. Plants, microbes, zooplankton and sunlight remove contaminants and oxygenate the water. It was the first public pool of its kind in Canada, designed by gh3 with German natural-pool specialists, and the main pool is held around 24°C.

Is there still a carousel or a zoo? No. Fairground rides including a carousel and roller coasters ran from roughly 1915 to 1935, and Edmonton’s first zoo operated here until the Valley Zoo opened on 1 July 1959. Both are history. The circular 2015 pavilion was designed to recall the carousel form, and an artwork of that name is installed on it.

Why is the park named Borden? It opened in 1906 as East End City Park and was renamed in 1914 after Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s eighth prime minister, who had visited Edmonton shortly before the First World War.

What is the Ukrainian connection? Edmonton has Canada’s largest urban Ukrainian community, and Borden Park hosts UFest, Western Canada’s largest multi-day Ukrainian festival — free, with hundreds of performers, food vendors and workshops; the 2026 edition ran on 29 and 30 May. Mayor William Hawrelak, a leading Ukrainian-Canadian figure in the city, gave the address when the rebuilt park reopened in 1958.

Can I hold an event or a picnic here? Yes. There are four reservable picnic sites and six drop-in sites, several with canopies, and the bandshell can be booked for outdoor events of up to five hundred people. Summer weekends book out well in advance.

How do I get there without a car? Coliseum Station on the Capital Line LRT is the closest stop and is a short walk from the park, with bus connections at the same transit point. That makes Borden unusually easy to reach compared with Edmonton’s river valley parks.

Is it worth visiting in winter? Yes, if you dress for real cold. Paths are cleared for walking, the open slopes are used for sledding, and the glass pavilion and concrete bandshell photograph exceptionally well under snow and hoarfrost. Bring proper boots, layers and a windproof outer shell.