The South Hill Community Association is excited for the renaming of the old Wild Animal Park as Tatawaw Park, and they are now set to start to help clean it up.

The Association wants to now start to draw attention to the park, according to association chair Crystal Froese, and will start with a cleanup day May 19.

“We’re inviting anyone to come forward and help up out,” said Froese. “We’re going to be meeting at Seventh Avenue Southwest just in front of the bridge there at 10 a.m.”

Froese said that anyone in the city is welcome to help. Refreshments and rubber gloves are available to anyone in the city who wants to help tackle the litter garbage at the park. This year's South of the Bridge Day is set for June 8.

“It begins at 10 a.m. and goes to 2 p.m. and it is held in the South Hill Fine Foods parking lot,” Froese said. “We have a bike, walk or stroll scavenger hunt that takes you on different courses, and it is able for any level of fitness.”

Froese said there are a couple of different courses that will take people to different historical and interesting spots in south hill. There will also be a heritage history tour of South Hill on the trolley for a donation on that day.

Froese, chair of the Association, said the renaming process went through all the correct steps and they wanted to focus on the first nations heritage of that area.

“We know there’s a lot of history in that park... and one of the participants on the committee, her name is Kayleigh Olson, she’s a young First Nations woman here in our city and she actually had her own little symposium, kind of a town hall meeting, well over a year ago to look at the naming of the Wild Animal Park to help raise awareness of the history of the park.”

Froese said there is a lot of archaeological history from the First Nations and Metis in the park.

“We already have Wakamow, which is a beautiful name for a park,” Froese said. “It just seemed kind of fitting that we would have that one named in a first nations language as well. We’re hoping as the South Hill Community Association to draw some more attention to that park in general.”