On the way to meet Chuck Konkel to discuss his participation in cleaning up Deekshill Park, I stopped by the Park for one final look and was astonished.

The trash was gone. The discarded tires were gone. The mangeled shopping cart buggies were gone. The plastic pop and water bottles were gone. The trees were in fresh leaf. The grasses were green and delicate blue flowers thrived within the natural regeneration area.

Where the hell had all the crap gone?

I ran down the winding trails and did start to find some plastic bags and discarded newspaper, but these were obviously freshly littered garbage.

I walked along the banks of the small stream where even the green scum was missing. A small raccoon seemed as stunned to find himself in a pristine paradise as I was.

Eventually, as I followed the stream along, I did find a cluster of old tires and lawn chairs and shopping carts blocking a bend in the stream. Who ever had cleaned the Park hadn't been perfect.

On the way back out of the Park I discovered a park employee busy picking up the fresh litter and went over to talk to him. It seems our City Councilor, fresh from being embarrassed in front of the thirty neighbours who had come out to attend our Community Association meeting, had given the parks superintendent hell for only doing a half job.

Sting by the criticism, the Parks superintendent had assigned a full crew to the park clean up and they had spent three full days and had taken four truck loads of litter out of Deekshill.

The park employee wasn't optimistic about the parks future, though. He felt the residents of the subsidized apartments who surround the park would just return to their casual disregard of the environment and the litter would return.

"It's a shame," he said. "This is such a beautiful place."

I met Chuck Kunkel at Starbucks. He had already been for a return visit to Deekshill himself and was as impressed as I had been. He asked me to keep an eye out for any other similar project he could help with. We talked for about an hour.

He paid for the coffee.