WELLINGTON COUNTY – If you’re growing kids in your garden, you might want to take a page from the Card/Cooper household.
Rising from the lawn behind their house is a pirate ship where 11-year-old Matilda has been sailing the wild seas, saving her parents from pirate invasions, and numerous other adventures for the past six years.
But that’s not all. There’s also a tree house, a former bus shelter that’s been converted to a play café, a tire swing, a chicken coop that looks like a caboose, a zip line – one for Matilda and one for her Barbies – and a trampoline and other climbing and hanging equipment for the budding gymnast.
“We do have a lot of play structures,” said Alan Card in a phone interview. “But I have to say, during COVID, we were the luckiest people on the planet to have all this at our doorstep. It made all the difference.”
Card, his wife Susanne Cooper and Matilda live at the corner of Highway 6 and Wellington Road 38 in Guelph/Eramosa Township on farm property that has been in Card’s family for some 200 years.
Card is also director of facilities for Drayton Entertainment and the pirate ship was originally built for the stage when the company launched Pirates of Penzance in 2015.
“Alex (Moustakis, artistic director) was in the show and he rode in on that ship,” Card said.
“At the end of the production we were going to break it down when someone said, ‘You’ve got a kid. You take it.’ So I did.”
Matilda remembers playing pirates with her dad on the ship.
“I had a bandana and dad wore a captain’s hat,” she said. “I also had a glow-in-the-dark sword.
“I remember bringing all my dolls out and leaving them in the boat overnight. There was a wind storm that night, the boat tipped, and I had to find all my dolls the next day.”
Card said a couple of the other play structures were given to him from friends whose children had outgrown them. Others were built from wood leftover from productions or from the family farm.
The Caramel Café, as Matilda has named it, is made from an old bus shelter that’s now tricked out to look like a café, with a chalkboard inside listing the chef’s specials.
Cooper, an early childhood educator, used the café as backdrop when she engaged with her students online this past year.
“I appreciate the spirit of ‘Yes, let’s’ as opposed to ‘No, we can’t.’ If you have an idea, let’s go with it,” Cooper said.
“So a lot of what’s here is here just for Matilda. We wanted to provide an opportunity for her to test her strength and endurance and to get some energy out. Even as a toddler, we encouraged her to get in the tree branches.”
Now there’s a tree fort, built on the trunk of a massive cherry tree that had died, with an old split rail fence forming the walls. It stands as high as the roof of their bungalow and sometimes the family will retreat up there with a picnic. Or water balloons.
Cooper said there’s great benefit to outdoor education, where nature and weather can steer the curriculum as much as a teacher. There is lots to be learned from open-ended and pretend play as well.
“And Matilda is extremely imaginative,” Card agreed. “Sometimes it’s a pirate ship, sometimes it’s a boat. Now that she’s older, it’s become a great spot for hide and seek.”
Anyone living in an urban setting wouldn’t be allowed to have so many play structures in their yard. But in the country, where corn is your neighbour and property lines aren’t an issue, there’s freedom to spread out.
“I grew up on this farm and my childhood was spent farming, hiding behind bales of hay and climbing on wagons. I’m glad Matilda can have a similar experience,” Card said.
“Out here we can get as crazy as we want,” Cooper agreed.
