CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Pickleball Noise In City Parks Debate

Three summers ago, Ashford Falls converted two cracked tennis courts in Linden Park into eight pickleball courts, an inexpensive way, it seemed, to get residents of all ages moving. Today the courts are occupied from early morning until ten at night, and the game’s sharp, hollow pop, repeated hundreds of times an hour, ranks among the most contentious files at city hall. A motion before council would confine play to between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. and commission a study of relocating the courts beside the Harlow industrial park, three kilometres from the nearest homes.

Councillor Marion Lefebvre, the motion’s author, insists she harbours no hostility to the sport. “Thirty people may be enjoying those courts,” she calculates, “with three hundred within earshot who never consented to listen.” Relocation, she acknowledges, would be expensive and the site poorly served by transit; the study is merely “a question worth asking.” On the time limits, her language hardens: inaction “hands the whole cost to the neighbours.”

Graham Whitaker, whose back fence stands forty metres from the nearest court, works overnight as an ultrasound technician and sleeps from late morning until mid-afternoon. “Earplugs and a white-noise machine have scarcely helped; it’s the irregularity that torments me,” he explains. He bears the players no ill will, but maintains the courts should never have been built so close to houses.

That conclusion alarms Shirley Nakamura, whose 140-member Linden Park Pickleball Club consists mostly of retirees, many of whom no longer drive. The club has already encouraged quieter foam-core paddles, voluntarily postponed its morning drop-in from seven to eight and offered to fundraise for a sound barrier. The curfew, she complains, would transform a public park into “a daytime club for people like me.”

Acoustical engineer Helen Okafor contends that the debate fixates on the wrong numbers. A single strike may register no louder than conversation; what averages conceal is a sound that is sudden, high-pitched and unpredictable. Quieter paddles and properly engineered barriers can soften the impact, but limiting hours merely determines the timing of the disturbance. Within about a hundred metres of homes, she concludes, distance is the only dependable remedy.

I play at Linden Park three mornings a week, and I respect my neighbours. Even I admit Mr. Whitaker has a point: the sound is hard to tune out because it is so 6. Choose…erraticdeafeningmonotonousmuffled. Councillor Lefebvre’s plan to 7. Choose…push back the morning startstudy a move to the industrial parklimit the club’s membershipend play early in the evening, however, would shut out my daughter, whose office closes at six.

As Ms. Okafor observes, a schedule only alters when people are bothered, not 8. Choose…how many gather at oncewhether they’re bothered at allwhere a barrier should standwhat the meters register. Harlow would be worse: Ms. Nakamura knows that many of us 9. Choose…have already bought soft paddlesplay only after workhave hung up their car keyslive practically next door. Accept what the club has already tabled, including 10. Choose…a barrier fundraiseran evening drop-in banearplugs for nearby householdsa Harlow site study, and give it one full season. If those measures fail, councillors can revisit relocation.