Peril in the Blooms is set in Riley Park.
Riley Park was one of Calgary’s earliest parks to include a wading pool. The author recalls wading there in the updated pool built in about 1980.
P.D. Workman also remembers swinging for what seemed like hours while her father tried to photograph the gray squirrel that lived in Riley Park and ran along the telephone lines. At the time, spotting that squirrel was memorable; this was before Calgary’s eastern gray squirrel population exploded across the city.
Eastern gray squirrels are an introduced species in Calgary. City zoo inventories record black squirrels escaping in 1935 and again in 1936. Most of Calgary’s eastern gray squirrels are now believed to descend from pets and zoo escapees from that period, with an estimated population of 100,000 or more. Despite the species name, most of Calgary’s gray squirrels are actually black in colour.
The cricket pitch in Riley Park was apparently established and in use in 1908, before the park was officially established in 1910. Prairie Winds Park, the setting for Grounded in the Wind, and Riley Park are two of Calgary’s parks with cricket pitches.
While the botanical study gardens mentioned in this story are fictional, there are beautiful flower gardens in Riley Park and an amazing variety of trees. The Senator Patrick Burns Memorial Rock Garden was built with more than 20,000 pieces of flagstone salvaged from the senator’s 18-room mansion.
Enter a mystery rooted in gardens, botany, and hidden danger in Peril in the Blooms, Parks Pat Mystery #15.
