Behind the Headlines Jnf’s Canada Park’ a Huge Success

The best measure of the success of the Jewish National Fund’s “Canada Park” is the fact that the name has already–in less than two years–become a household word for tens of thousands of families in Jerusalem and in the greater Tel Aviv area. Canada Park, the JNF’s most ambitious recreational project, is a huge (in Israeli terms) recreational facility planned and landscaped by the JNF near Latrun, midway between Jerusalem and the coastal plain.

Work began on it soon after the Yom Kippur War. It is by no means completed yet, as several adjacent areas are planned to be added to the initial parkland area of 1000 dunams. But that initial park has already comfortably absorbed, relaxed and entertained over 30,000 Israelis on Independence Day earlier this month, and thousands more frequent it each Shabbat–and weekdays too–picnicking, exercising, or merely communing with nature.

The overall guideline of planning the park, JNF central region director Mordechai Ruah told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, has been to blend the man-made facilities as much as possible into the existing landscape and scenery. Thus “active recreation” equipment are made of rustic-looking logs and tucked away unobtrusively in valleys; centuries-old terracing is converted into an amphitheater where, it is hoped, youngsters from youth movements who will camp in the park will be able to hold shows and pageants.

Roman underground aqueducts are modernized and an electric pump installed to provide natural-looking man-made lakes and water courses–the water coming from ancient underground springs which supported civilization at nearby Emmaus thousands of years ago. For children there are tree houses, for picnickers, tables and stools–all fashioned out of wooden logs and blending harmoniously into the surroundings. New roads opened by the JNF hugged deliberately the curves of hills and wadis and there are leafy walks for footsloggers which make use of the existing fig and olive trees.

EXPANSION PLANS IN THE WORKS

Much of the 1000 dunams already developed and open to the public be straddles the former Green Line close to the former British police fortress at Latrun which, as an Arab Legion stronghold, took so many Israeli lives in 1948 and did not fall till 1967.

Eventually Canada Park itself will extend over 4000 dunams embracing the historic valley of Ayalon where, as the Bible relates, Joshua successfully prayed for the moon to stand still in its course. It will be linked to some 20,000 dunams of JNF-planted forests of Shaar Hagai on the Israeli side of the pre-1967 line reaching to the kibbutzim of Kiryat Anavim and Neve Ilan on the way up to Jerusalem.

Asked how the public has been treating the facilities provided in the park, park manager Reuven Yeffet replied. “We have found if you give the public something clean and well kept they generally maintain it that way.” Thus the lavatories in Canada Park–also discreetly blended into the landscape–are fastidiously cleaned by the staff and are on the whole kept clean. There are incidents of vandalism but by and large the sports and recreational facilities are also generally well treated, Yeffet said.

AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S DELIGHT

The park is an archaeologist’s delight, with JNF workers constantly turning up interesting finds from the Hasmonean, Roman, Crusader and Byzantine periods. Groups of youngsters who visit the park are encouraged to spend half a day on digs sorting through shards and looking for coins. But what were probably the most interesting finds–hewn out burial chambers from the Hasmonean period–were thoroughly despoiled long before the JNF began opening up the area, says regional planner Amram Elkabi.

One remarkable find remains virtually intact: it is a mosaic floor of a wine press, with stone channels for the wine to run down. JNF men are growing vines around the spot, just as they grew millennia ago, and there are ambitious plans to have groups of school children come and tread out grapes into the ancient stone stills.

Much of the initial outlay for work of the park came from the Canadian JNF. Meanwhile, the JNF in Canada has undertaken another, albeit smaller project: “David’s Citadel Garden” outside the Jerusalem Old City’s Jaffa Gate. The garden, within the framework of the Jerusalem master plan calling for the old walls to be surrounded by parklands, will be an archaeological garden as well as a park. One hundred Canadian Jews will be invited to participate in the project, according to JNF world chairman Moshe Rivlin, who is himself shortly to visit Canada.