He was the Town of Collingwood’s first-ever parks and recreation director, and now he works with other municipalities to share knowledge he gained over his 30-year career.
For this week’s edition of People of Collingwood we spoke with Peter Dunbar, 72, consultant and retired parks director with the Town of Collingwood.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Toronto. I left when I was 18. I got a scholarship to go to University of Michigan for hockey.
I thought I could do a pre-med thing. I did that for about two days.
I had hockey practice every single day for three and a half hours. So I changed it to kinesiology and geography.
After I graduated, I played minor hockey in the States up and down the eastern seaboard for three years. I basically decided that my university degree was a lot better than travelling in a bus all over the eastern seaboard.
I married early at 19. My wife and I bought a house in Palmerston. Affordability was big.
I had put money away from hockey. I dumped my money in the house without a job.
It was the ’70s. You could do that.
My wife and I stayed in that place for two years. I actually got a job down in Cambridge playing hockey. We managed to survive.
The hockey team found me a job driving a bus.
Q: When did you come to Collingwood and why?
A: I ran Drayton Arena for two years, and a person I had met during hockey was running a hockey school in Wasaga Beach.
He phoned me up one day and said there was a good job in Wasaga Beach for someone who knows how to run a hockey school and also run recreation.
I really didn't know how to run recreation because even though I had a kinesiology and geography degree, that doesn't teach you how to do that stuff.
But I was a good people-person. That's the main skill you have to have.
I went to Wasaga Beach for five years, as the director of parks and recreation.
The Town of Collingwood went through a process where they thought they should catch up with the other Ontario communities and put out a job for a recreation director for Collingwood.
I was the first.
Q: What was the experience of being Collingwood’s first parks and recreation director like?
A: Well, there's lots of good stories, but none that you're going to publish.
I started in Collingwood in 1983.
There were a lot of challenges because there was no path.
Ron Emo was the mayor. He said, OK, buckle up. We’ve got a big task ahead of us.
There used to be a horse racetrack here, near the YMCA. Emo wanted to develop the track as a park, and wanted to move the horse track to the Great Northern Exhibition fairgrounds.
That was a big kerfuffle.
On my first night, the first job I had was to tell these guys why we were moving them. There were 25 horse owners, Ron and myself, and I had to break this news.
It was a welcoming ceremony to the community, that's for sure.
You know, their future was a lot better going where they did.
Q: For how long were you the town’s parks and recreation director?
A: For 30 years. I retired 15 years ago in 2010.
I was lucky. I worked at a hockey school in Toronto when I was a kid from when I was 13 until I was 21. Those hours of municipal work went into my pension.
I retired at 57.
Then, I went to teach.
I went to Georgian College for 10 years to see how would I like that.
It was good. My daughter was a teacher by that time and I always said, jeez, you have an easy life. You have the summers off and you have these big holidays.
My daughter didn't like hearing that from me and I had to recant everything because it's a hard job.
Q: What are some things you learned in your time running the parks, recreation and culture department in Collingwood? What are some of your major accomplishments?
A: The ability to move forward on challenges was based on two things: the relationship I had with community volunteers, and my staff.
I had excellent staff.
There was some struggle there between the old, dominant ways of doing things, and we changed a lot to be more efficient. It didn’t always go over well.
I went to Ann Arbor in Michigan, which was a bike-orientated school. I rode my bike everywhere.
Collingwood used to have 1,000 men at lunch time on their bikes right out from the shipyards. It was neat to see that happen. It was almost European. You see that in Denmark and Sweden – people use their bikes a lot.
In Canada, they really didn't. We just like to drive our cars everywhere.
That's my major impact I wanted to contribute.
I started by drawing lines over the whole town. I called them desire lines, to try to connect these different segments of the community somehow, some way.
Collingwood was blessed with old railway lines and dikes. They became the core of transportation modes for the bike.
And then, I just became a pain in the ass. I had many mayors and many town servers arguing that I was messing up the developers because in those days, the developers were worshipped.
I started going to council and created opportunities for them to build this fabulous trails project.
The volunteer crew I had was spectacular.
All the guys – Murray Knowles, Don Paul, Sonny Foley, George Christie – they were killer volunteers.
One time, George and others built a trail by the Home Hardware on a weekend. They just dumped some gravel, some stone dust and got a bulldozer.
But on Monday morning, I walked into town hall and my CAO came out freaking and peaking. As if I was the orchestra leader.
There were a lot of people who also believe that trails were the most beneficial thing they could put in the Collingwood.
I used to call Collingwood’s trail system dry worms on a plate. If you had a bunch of worms on a plate that were disconnected, but they'd be someplace and they'd be wiggly. That's how it looked at the very beginning.
I created a demand for connections. It wasn't a great planning process. Planners would say it was really bad planning. I used the community as the ones who would push the councillors to connect the trails.
I think that still happens sometimes. The best thing I did was pushing trails.
When I was at the end of my career in Collingwood, I did a county study based on everything I learned in Town of Collingwood. That's still in-play.
I do consulting now too. Three years ago, I did a recreation master plan for Clearview Township. I’ve done one for the Town of the Blue Mountains.
I've been busy since I retired from here and from Georgian College. I live in Duntroon.
Q: What are your hobbies?
A: I’m a landscape painter.
I’ve always painted.
I’ve shown in a few art shows.
It was a stress-reliever from being in a pressurized job. It was a good-paying job, but you have to have rhinoceros skin and an alternative focus for your brain.
That's how I survived for 30 years.
I'd go home at night after a very disturbing public meeting or council meeting and I'd paint.
Q: Is there anything else you want people in Collingwood to know about you?
A: My focus was always to make an impact.
Being from Toronto, I could have gone back to Toronto. I was offered lots of jobs, but I found Collingwood to be such a refreshing place to live.
It was the best place I had been in all my travels, and I travelled a lot.
For our feature People of Collingwood, we speak with interesting people who are either from or are contributing to the Collingwood community in some way, letting them tell their own stories in their own words. This feature runs on CollingwoodToday every weekend. If you’d like to nominate or suggest someone to be featured in People of Collingwood, email [email protected].