Marita Payne Park

Marita Payne Park is one of the most beautiful parks in the City of Vaughan, providing a network of pathways under mature black willow, weeping willow, poplar, black walnut and maple trees. Birds and other wildlife are abundant within the park's naturalized areas. The park, named after sprinter Marita Payne, a double silver medalist in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, is located west of Dufferin St. within the semicircular arc of Glen Shields Ave. The flood plain area of the upper West Don now occupied by the park was reserved as open space following the devastation of Hurricane Hazel in 1954, while the surrounding lands were still mostly rural. During the 1960s and 1970s, a golf course occupied the site. Marita Payne Park was constructed in its present form when the area was developed for residential purposes in the early 1980s. Now it is an integral component of the Bartley Smith Greenway trail system, with direct access to the main trail at the south and north ends of Glen Shields Ave.