This year again, local leaders gathered their neighbours, built connections, and restored nature in projects big and small. The movement continues to expand, and we're pleased to share just some of these impacts in our 2025 Impact Report.
Ready to rally your crew and make a visible difference in your local park? This guide walks you through everything you need to host a successful community clean-up in Toronto
Creative ways to connect people to nature, community, and care for ravines in Toronto.
Parc Jarry in Montreal, Toronto’s waterfront, CRAB Park in Vancouver… People are coming together to protect the places they love.
What could Toronto’s parks look like in the years ahead? Our 2026 Parks Platform brings together ideas from Torontonians and four priorities for a more resilient, joyful and connected city.
Host free, community-led park activities in Toronto with the No-Fee Community Activations Booking. This hour-long virtual session will walk you through the booking: what's eligible, and how to apply step by step.
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
Picture three people at a picnic table.
A city councillor, representing about twice as many residents as councillors did before 2018, with the same hours in the day. Much of her time goes to addressing issues and complaints.
A City parks worker. They love their work. The best ideas for them are scattered across a dozen municipal strategies. Few of those guide the budget that decides what they can actually do. Urgent issues land on top of their planned work, and often come first.
A resident worried about the cost of living, his family’s wellbeing, and the health of the city he calls home. This past summer he kept his kids inside more, away from bad air, extreme heat, and ticks. He used to have a plot in the local community garden, and misses that chance to be outside with neighbours.
What would make things better for all three of them?
A connected network of vibrant and resilient parks and public spaces, and a city set up to properly steward, animate and enjoy them.
This year, hundreds of Torontonians shared their ideas for how to make this happen. From Scarborough to Etobicoke, North York to the waterfront, we heard from kids and adults who love their parks and want to see them get even better. Many of their suggestions are already happening somewhere in the city, but often at a small scale, scattered, and dependent on a few determined people.
To scale up, we need a common vision and resources to match.
It is not just Park People saying this. From Toronto’s tourism sector to the Globe and Mail editorial board to national climate advocates, there is unprecedented agreement that Toronto has an opportunity to make high-quality, resilient and beautiful parks and public spaces central to its identity and to the day-to-day experiences of its residents.
The triumph of Biidaasige Park has played no small part here. It has opened the door to a different future by demonstrating the level of ecological resilience, landscape design quality, cultural programming and Indigenous placekeeping that is possible. There is no going back.
Working together
It is not easy for the three people at the picnic table to work together. Despite the fact that we often agree on 80% of what we need to do, austerity, power imbalances, legacy processes and everyday interpersonal tensions keep us mired in the 20% where we don’t.
We believe that the only way to transcend these divisions and build something bigger together is to start with a common vision.
A common vision doesn’t let other governments off the hook. Toronto’s parks are largely municipally funded and managed. But they are not simply municipal amenities – they are essential health, climate, ecological and social infrastructure that must be funded by all orders of government. Municipalities do not have the revenue tools necessary to do this work at the scale and speed required by the crises we face. To add insult to injury, our three orders of government are not all pulling in the same direction right now. Read more about the province’s attacks on parks.
But limited tools are not the same as no tools. Toronto owns most of its public spaces: parks and ravines, but also the 25% of our city that is roads and rights of way, and the significant lands managed by Toronto Community Housing, the TTC, and other City agencies, boards and corporations. Following the New Deal with the province and some higher property tax increases, parks and green spaces have recently seen increased capital and operating budgets after many years of austerity.
Toronto City Council is best placed to push for an integrated vision for parks and public spaces – one that builds from what we have and invites other governments to the table to join us. While we agree that revenue tools should sit where the responsibilities and possibilities lie, until that day comes, let’s focus on describing a future so inviting that other governments can’t help but join us in making it real.
Our 2026 platform has four asks:
What Torontonians asked for. Parks linked to each other, to ravines, to schools, with safe ways to walk and ride between them. Laneways, hydro corridors and rail lands that are treated as part of the public space network. Clear wayfinding, friendly signage, accessible paths and other visual cues that say ‘you are welcome here.’
What we’re asking Council to do:
This cannot be another strategy document that sits alongside others.
This vision would inform the workplans and strategies of multiple City divisions and agencies, providing particular guidance to those parts of the City that could be more involved in parks and public spaces, but may not know how or where to begin. It would also provide a scaffolding for other orders of government, non-profits, philanthropic organizations, community groups, and local businesses to contribute to this bigger picture. It is an opportunity to rally the city together, celebrate what works, and build on it in a bold and motivating way.
Why now? People and other species experience parks and public spaces as one system, but they are planned and managed as several. The flexibility and openness of marginal spaces like laneways and hydro corridors has made them hotbeds of innovative design, governance and programming. But great standalone projects do not add up to an equitable, citywide approach to public spaces, with common standards and benchmarks for design, accessibility and operations.
We also rarely talk about how we get to the park, and what it means for park use when people face a lack of safe walking, cycling, or public transportation options. The City is ideally placed to work with other landowners and stakeholders to tackle this set of interconnected challenges.
Good things that are happening:
What Torontonians are asking for: More washrooms, open more of the time. Water fountains and bottle refill stations. Somewhere to sit. Shade. Paths that work with a walker, a stroller or a wheelchair. In winter, cleared paths, warm places to be together, and fun activities to warm up and connect with others.
What we’re asking Council to do
Why now: Basic infrastructure like seating, washrooms, accessible paths, and lighting are an equity issue. Too many Torontonians are prevented from fully accessing and enjoying local parks because they are missing adequate seating for rest, or a washroom.
This issue is compounding as Toronto’s population ages. Research shows that placing seating every 100 metres, can drive significant increases in park use by seniors, one of the demographics that uses parks the least.
At the same time, our seasons are changing. As smoke and extreme heat play a bigger role in our summers, we risk spending even more time indoors (and online), losing connections to nature and each other in the process. Visiting parks all year round is part of how we positively adapt to our changing climate and stay connected to each other in the winter months. It is also great for stimulating the local economy by getting people out and about, and encouraging tourism outside of the high season of summer. Winter cities like Edmonton and Quebec show us the way. They point to the necessity of investing in infrastructure and programming to encourage winter use.
What Torontonians asked for: Food, music, markets, art. Playful spaces that encourage elders and adults to have fun as well as children. Somewhere to be together that doesn’t involve buying anything. Having a say in what goes on in their local park, and an opportunity to get involved. Knowing who to call to get started.
Why now: Municipal voter turnout is at record lows (29% in 2022!), volunteerism is down, and social isolation is growing. Research shows that we need a sense of belonging and social connection to be healthy. Community-led events and activities build it. Collaborating with community groups, non-profits and other partners extends the reach and diversity of park-based programming, welcoming more Torontonians into parks and green spaces.
Residents should be able to take an active role in caring for their parks. That means accessible permitting, funding opportunities, partnerships with local organizations, and open, transparent relationships with City staff. Supporting resident-led programming, reducing red tape, and investing in community capacity lets parks evolve to reflect local priorities and cultural practices, and builds a lasting sense of community ownership.
Shared leadership in parks and green spaces is not a substitute for strong public management or an excuse for governments to pull back. It is how we build the political constituency and public trust needed for further investment. A U.S. study found that people living near popular parks report greater community connection and greater satisfaction with local government. When people get involved, parks improve, people value them more, and they see government delivering in partnership with communities.
What Torontonians are asking for: More native plants, more trees, less mown grass. Birds and pollinators, supported by the habitat they need. Ravines they can access easily. More opportunities to see and connect to Indigenous ways of being and knowing in urban green spaces. Equitably distributed green and blue spaces that cool our city and make it more liveable. An opportunity to steward and care for nature in the city.
Why now?
The City of Toronto is currently developing a Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan, planned for release in 2027. A sobering 2025 report on Toronto’s climate risks recommended that the City “strengthen existing Natural Asset Management Programs, treating green infrastructure, including Toronto’s ravines, parks, wetlands, and urban forest, as essential city infrastructure to match its critical role in climate resilience.”
Toronto’s ravines are one of the great urban landscapes in the world. They cover about 17% of the city, protect us from floods, cool neighbourhoods, and give people access to nature without leaving town.
But their many strengths can work against them when they encounter governments. Because the ravines serve so many purposes, their benefits land in many budgets: the City’s, the Province’s, Ottawa’s, and TRCA’s. None of them is fully accountable for the whole, and one of the agencies with the greatest expertise and deepest history, the TRCA, has seen its funding and authority steadily eroded by the province.
Toronto adopted its Ravine Strategy in 2017 and began funding it in 2020, with new money for cleanup, invasive species control, and priority restoration projects. The City also asked other governments to contribute. Six years later, the strategy remains far from fully funded.
Asking for funding project-by-project hasn’t gotten us where we need to go. We don’t believe it ever will.
Toronto already has two examples that show what’s possible:
Waterfront Toronto, with a board appointed by all three governments and a shared vision, has delivered some of the best parks in the country, from Corktown Common to Biidaasige. But its funding is negotiated project by project, and while three governments pay to build these parks, only one pays to look after them.
Rouge National Urban Park is a different model. When the City, TRCA, and the Province transferred their lands to Parks Canada, the federal government took on responsibility for running the park. Since then, Parks Canada and its partners have restored wetlands and forests and planted hundreds of thousands of native trees and shrubs.
Toronto’s ravines need elements of both: capital investment from all three governments, and a shared commitment to caring for them over the long term.
You made it to the end of this platform! We hope you came away inspired by your fellow Torontonians’ ideas and by the possibilities for our parks and public spaces.
Share these ideas with your local council candidates and ask them what they’ll do. Here are some specific questions you can use:
Torontonians are paying attention. We are asking the next Council and mayor to put time, money and care back into the places we share – and to do it at the scale the city needs. By investing in our parks and public spaces, our city will grow stronger and more connected. And it all starts at the park.
Premier Doug Ford is not on the ballot, but his government is shaping the present and future of Toronto’s city parks in fundamental ways.
Right now our parks and public spaces are facing a steady series of attacks. There is the unilateral redevelopment of the iconic Ontario Place landscape. and the unnecessary shutting of the Ontario Science Centre, as well as broad, sweeping changes to municipal planning authority through bills like More Homes Built Faster (Bill 231) and Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure (Bill 98).
Through these bills, rules that ensure new residents have adequate parks and greenspace are being weakened in the name of housing affordability and speed of construction. Parkland requirements have been cut in half. For the first time, landowners can compel municipalities to accept encumbered or partial interests in land – including privately-owned publicly-accessible open spaces (POPs) – to satisfy their parkland dedication obligations. If a municipality like the City of Toronto refuses to accept the landowner’s proposal, the landowner can now appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
These changes ignore the detailed, evidence-based parkland planning work done by municipal staff, and are unconnected to the needs of current and future residents. They will negatively impact access to high-quality, ecologically resilient greenspaces for residents in future years. This is a particular risk in the dense transit-oriented communities that are being built along the Ontario Line.
Recent provincial decisions to eliminate speed cameras and remove bike lanes are also impacting park access and safety. Parkside Drive next to High Park is a powerful example of how a dangerous road can make it more difficult, both practically and psychologically, for people of all ages and abilities to visit a park. The planned removal of bike lanes on major streets including Bloor and University will remove safe active transportation options for visiting multiple local and destination parks.
We are counting on our new Council to strategize, advocate, and partner with other municipalities to convince the Province to reverse these damaging decisions. Under the Transit Oriented Communities Act (2020) and Bill 23, encumbered land — including land over transit infrastructure — can count toward parkland dedication requirements. Bill 98 (2026) proposes capping this credit at 70% of land area.
This past August, over 1000 Montrealers marched for the future of Parc Jarry, wielding signs that shouted their love for the park. They were protesting the construction of a new 15,000 seat stadium by Tennis Canada, an organization that hosts professional tennis tournaments and currently occupies about 25% of Parc Jarry’s land. If built, the new stadium would take over more green space, including a public baseball diamond.
The local neighbourhoods of Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension mobilized in full force. The park is critical to wellbeing in Parc-Extension in particular, which features high levels of income insecurity, low green space access, and vulnerability to heat waves due to an overabundance of pavement.
The Parc Jarry march came only two weeks after the federal government announced that they were not moving forward with the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto’s waterfront. The airport expansion plan, driven by the Ontario government, had run into formidable public opposition, with the impact of the plan on the Toronto Islands and Little Norway Park a particular flashpoint. A planned protest led by NoJetsTO that weekend turned into a celebration.
“Both the island airport victory and [Biidaasige] Park represent acts of summoned collective imagination — on the one hand, the shared conviction that engaging government is still worth the effort, even in a cynical age; and on the other, that a sustained and fierce determination by ordinary residents to build a better city can yield absolutely transformative results.”
This is John Lorinc writing about Toronto, but the words apply equally well to Montreal. Le Front Commun pour la protection du Parc Jarry*, the umbrella body formed by many different advocates, is not only fighting against what they don’t want, but also dreaming big about what could be possible instead. Their demands include asking the City of Montreal to create a public council of Jarry Park users – one with real decision-making powers. If planned and implemented well, this could be an innovative governance structure that moves beyond point-in-time community engagement exercises and towards something that looks more like long-term collaborative decision-making between municipality and community.
What can we take away from the passion that Torontonians and Montrealers alike are showing for their parks this summer?
Patrick Corrigan for the Toronto Star:
It is not sufficient to say ‘trust us.’ If governments want public support for a project with major impacts on a cityscape, they need to make the case transparently. Alluding to secret feasibility studies, whether for a tennis stadium or an airport, is just not going to cut it. And the more this happens, the more we risk disillusioning people about the health of our democracy. Luckily…
There has been research showing that large-scale protest movements, like Egypt’s 2011 Tahrir Square movement, are not as effective at driving change as they used to be. Social media allows organizers to reach very high turnout numbers without the need to build the organizing infrastructure – of relationships, meetings, fundraisers, etc. – that used to be necessary. The ties that bind the protesters are weak as a result.
But when you are fighting for a local place, especially one you visit all the time, your activism is IRL by default. It is tied to local relationships and gathering spots. You can see it from your window. Visually compelling interventions like the Front Commun’s light projections and balcony banners take advantage of this direct connection to place, encouraging even more people to feel that they are part of a movement.
Both Parc Jarry and the Toronto waterfront are not out of the woods yet. But the tide seems to be turning on both files. Envisioning the day when advocates celebrate a battle won, what might come next?
Many park advocacy movements spark or renew community-led involvement and programming that continues for years after. Some of my favourite examples are CRAB Park in Vancouver, where a fight for public access to the water led to the creation of a unique park within the Port of Vancouver. CRAB stands for Create a Real Available Beach, and it was the rallying cry for the activists who fought for the creation of the park. Despite being named Portside Park when it was opened in 1987, by 2004 the Vancouver Park Board acknowledged that it was, now and forever, CRAB Park, and changed the name back.
A 1969 mock funeral for the Don River in Toronto is credited with sparking the citizen advocacy that led to the Task Force to Bring Back the Don and eventually to visionary re-naturalization projects like Biidaasige Park. Although many would probably still say no to a glass of Don River water, people and animals are rebuilding their connection to the water today in ways that are sparking tremendous joy across Toronto, thanks to the inventive advocacy of those original student protestors and many others.
In our work at Park People, we often witness groups experience an evolution from green space activism to stewardship. The new role is grounded in the learning and relationships from their advocacy, but also calls on them to develop new skills and ideas. Freed to move beyond a common opponent to organize around, park groups are challenged and liberated to advance a radically positive vision for the space, translating their love for it into a long-term commitment to keep it safe and to help others enjoy it.
“In short, one can understand this strange moment as an epic clash between an envisioned future and a present made real by thousands of individual acts of imagination.”
John Lorinc again. A present made real by thousands of individual acts of imagination sounds like a revitalized civic sphere, rooted in possibility instead of fear. And it all starts at the park.
Ready to bring people together and make a difference in your local park? This guide walks you through how to start and grow a park group in Toronto – from planning your first meeting and organizing activities to reaching new people and navigating City permits, funding, and support.
You don’t need a big budget or prior experience to get started. All you need are people who care about a shared goal and want to make their park a better place. Use this guide to bring neighbours together, get your group started, and find ways to make a difference in your local park.
Start and grow a park group in Toronto.
In 2026, 34 organizations across the country are receiving the Park People Nature Connect Fund. Through nature-based activities, hands-on ecological stewardship and restoration and other forms of landcare, they help people and nature thrive together.
The Fund includes two streams: the emerging stream (up to $5,000) and the scaling stream (up to $20,000).
Scaling stream
Decolonizing and restoring a 1.5-hectare site (The Listen Garden in Fish Creek Provincial Park) by healing soil, reintroducing native plants, creating diverse habitat gardens, and amplifying Indigenous voices via education workshops, audio site tours, interpretive signage, and more.
www.friendsoffishcreek.org
Emerging stream
Connecting residents through hands-on restoration and stewardship education and community care of local native plant habitat and gardens in North Glenora, Edmonton.
www.northglenora.org
Root for Trees – Ongoing forest restoration, more than doubling the size of their initial forest restoration project, plus the formal designation of a 100 km stretch of the river valley as a Bird Friendly Corridor alongside the Edmonton Valley Zoo.
www.ervcc.com
Hike the Greenbelt – A public recreation, environmental education and stewardship engagement series across vital green spaces and parks in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
www.ecologyaction.ca
Green Labs Environmental Education – Guiding participants through an exploration of Earth’s biomes, local biodiversity, and waste reduction strategies, including hands-on activities like vermicomposting and environmental field trips.
www.hopeblooms.ca
Hosting youth engagement events with Friends of Parc Jarry to engage high school age students in environmental learning and stewardship.
Community garden and urban farm community engagement and gardening education events.
www.facebook.com/fermettepointesaintcharles
Pollinator Week and Monarch Butterfly BioBlitz – An interactive awareness booth and community observation activity on pollinators, and a citizen science “census” of butterflies.
www.vertcite.ca/en
Rehabilitation of a degraded wetland through community-led invasive species removal and planting natives to improve water filtration and support local wildlife.
www.ecopap.ca
Completion of an ecological corridor in Montreal through garden beds, edible planters and activation through tours, seed collection events.
www.instagram.com/ruelle_esperanza_verde
Controlling invasive species and planting native trees and shrubs via multiple volunteer programs; plus citizen science initiatives (including The Great Backyard Bird Count, Global Big Day spring bird count, Mission Monarch butterfly survey, Project FeederWatch bird count, and others).
www.lemontroyal.qc.ca/en
Scaling community stewardship in the eco corridor at the base of Mount Royal via volunteer land stewardship, interpretive signs on local biodiversity, guided walks, and planting of native trees, shrubs, perennials, and wildflowers across multiple sites (schoolyard and community gardens, food forests, and “adoptable” boulevard planters).
www.corridorecologiquedarlington.org/en
Supporting the creation of a Miyawaki-style Miniforest. This project includes community involvement and education, soil preparation and planting.
www.urbanature.org
Scaling Meewasin’s targeted grazing and community stewardship program across three new urban/peri-urban conservation sites, representing a significant expansion of their reintroduction of grazing to natural grasslands in over 20 years.
www.meewasin.com
Emerging Stream
A stewardship circle for 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC youth to cultivate native perennials and pollinator plants along the Humber River watershed while strengthening connections to community, culture, and land.
Engaging the community through weekly stewardship sessions focused on building raised beds, managing invasive species, cultivating native perennials, and supporting seasonal seedling and seed swaps.
A series of workshops and guided walks with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers focused on water stewardship, wetland protection, and strengthening relationships with local ecosystems.
Enhancing local biodiversity through invasive species removal, native and pollinator plantings, and the creation of an Indigenous Three Sisters garden, alongside educational walks and workshops on composting and watershed conservation.
www.gnntoronto.ca/groups/prairie-drive-park-group
Expanding community stewardship through a native plant giveaway and educational event that helps residents create and support pollinator-friendly habitats across Toronto.
www.friendsofguildpark.com
Restoring park ecosystems through tree planting, native garden creation, and guided nature walks that provide multilingual environmental education in English, Tagalog, and Farsi.
Scaling Stream
Expanding turtle conservation efforts into three additional Toronto parks while applying Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) to support urban biodiversity and strengthen community stewardship.
www.turtleprotectors.com
Strengthening ecological and community resilience across multiple park sites through invasive species removal, Indigenous plant restoration, and expanded opportunities for residents to participate in stewardship activities.
www.torontonaturestewards.org
Expanding inclusive nature education, stewardship, and community science programs that protect High Park’s rare ecosystems while engaging nearly 1,000 volunteers in hands-on restoration activities.
www.highparknaturecentre.com
Connecting participants with the environment and fostering community leadership through youth-led activities like nature walks and collaborative stewardship projects.
www.ctsyouthsociety.com
Supporting youth to plan and implement small-scale ecological restoration projects and document outcomes to ensure replicability and scalability for the future.
www.unya.bc.ca
Restoration of the Champlain Heights Trail system in an equity-deserving neighbourhood through free educational workshops, hands-on invasive species removal events, 2 mass planting days, and 6 youth education and planting days, among other activities.
www.freethefern.ca
A community planting event to invite new stewards and create a new ephemeral wetland along Still Creek, helping reduce flooding, replenish groundwater, and increase biodiversity.
www.stillmoonarts.ca
A series of guided walks with Indigenous Elders at Stanley Park, bringing diverse community members together to learn, connect, and strengthen relationships with the land and with one another.
www.southvan.org
A one-day BioBlitz bringing together experts and the public to catalogue local biodiversity and identify at-risk or invasive species.
www.entsocbc.ca
Collaborative restoration with community partners and Indigenous groups focused on removing at least 2,000 pounds of waste and invasive species from urban forests, wetlands, and shorelines across Metro Vancouver.
www.weboflifesociety.ca
Volunteer Park Naturalist program offering interpretation on intertidal ecology, wetland ecosystems, and heron colonies, alongside monthly stewardship sessions including invasive species removal, native planting, mapping, and habitat maintenance across multiple sites.
www.stanleyparkecology.ca
Ongoing community-based restoration through invasive species removal and planting events, accessible nature and species-specific walks, Indigenous “Reconciliation Through Restoration” workshops, and Green Guardians training.
www.ecpcstewards.ca
Development of a replicable model for Indigenous-led land conservation through co-created curriculum, a teach-the-teacher program, an Adopt-A-Patch initiative for lightly supervised restoration, and ongoing stewardship meetups.
www.swanlake.bc.ca
Engaging youth to cultivate and distribute native plants and seedlings to transform landscapes around Grant Park High School and other Winnipeg schools.
www.winnipegtrails.ca
We are pleased to introduce the new participants of our Montreal Urban Park Champions program!
This year, the program is taking a new direction: rather than activating existing parks, the Champions are reimagining underused spaces—paved areas, wastelands, or vacant lots—transforming them into green places that support biodiversity, climate resilience, and connections and exchanges among residents.
Discover the 2026 Champions and their projects.
In partnership with the Saint-Leonard Eco-Quartier, Claudia and Benfares aim to revitalize a traffic island located in a residential area.
The site already includes a tree and a partially grassed surface, but it is degraded by winter snow storage. The Champions hope to turn it into a small biodiversity hub through new plantings, making it a more visible, welcoming space rooted in everyday neighbourhood life.
Beyond the transformation, Claudia and Benfares want to raise awareness about the importance of greening practices. Saint-Leonard is a neighbourhood particularly affected by urban heat islands and flood risks, due to limited tree canopy and green space.
Site: Traffic island at the corner of Gauvreau and Périnault streets
A community group led by Louise is continuing the greening and maintenance of a 50-metre planting strip located between a sidewalk and a parking lot.
Since 2022, the site has revealed significant ecological value, including milkweed, essential to monarch butterflies, and a toad that has made it its home. Some plantings have already been completed, but parts of the site remain fragile due to foot traffic and vehicle movement. The Champions aim to continue their efforts to protect biodiversity, enhance the area’s appearance, and help reduce urban heat islands. A key challenge is encouraging greater involvement from surrounding communities.
Connected to the Falaise St. Jacques woodland, this area is part of a longer-term vision for an ecological corridor that supports east–west connectivity for pollinators and north–south connectivity with other green spaces.
Site: Banquette 2342, along Saint-Jacques Street
Xavier and Chantal are working on a project to green a corner space next to a building along the edge of the highway. The site, currently paved and unused, sits at the base of a building that houses artist and woodworking studios.
The Champions aim to transform this space into a greener, more welcoming place that encourages interaction and community gathering, which could also feature works by local artists. This project would be the first step in a broader series of revitalization efforts around Highway 40.
Site: 3333 Crémazie Boulevard
For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the largest urban ravine systems in North America was in their backyard. In Flemingdon Park, 60,000 residents in high-rise towers can see the ravine from their windows. Most had never entered it. Not because they didn’t care. Because no one had invited them in.
The InTO the Ravines program changed that. A City of Toronto and Park People partnership program that brings the principles of the City’s Ravine Strategy – Protect, Connect, Celebrate, Invest, Partner – to life, InTO the Ravines has trained more than 100 ravine champions, and welcomed over 7000 people to participate in hands-on ravines activities. Nearly 2000 of them were visiting the ravines for the first time.
This post is about what happens after Torontonians take part in the program — how champions like Gary and Geri and Nawal Ateeq are making the case for continued investment in community-led nature programming and in the ravines that make it all possible.
Time in nature is critical to our mental and physical health. But for communities living in high-density tower neighbourhoods with little private green space, access to nature is not guaranteed. Ravines aren’t just recreational infrastructure. For many residents, they are health infrastructure.
Nawal Ateeq from Flemingdon Community Support Services put it plainly:
“For us, the ravines mean health in a tower community. They mean climate resilience where heat vulnerability is real.”
InTO the Ravines creates structured access — not just to the physical space, but to the knowledge, confidence, and sense of ownership that make that space usable. Geri describes watching participants’ “initial uncertainty transform into curiosity, confidence, and appreciation.”
Geri and Gary now run a restoration site, organize turtle protection efforts, and have personally walked their MP, MPP, and City Councillor through their local ravine. Nawal’s organization trains new Ravine Champions who guide their own neighbours.
7000 ravine program participants are seven thousand potential constituents who understand why ravines matter. They are a new political constituency poised to support sustained investment in these critical natural spaces.
“What began as a personal shift—from leaving the city to find nature, to discovering it close to home—has become ongoing community engagement. The Park People program didn’t just teach us about ravines; it empowered us to become ambassadors for them.”
Geri James
“Environmental engagement cannot be abstract. It must be local, inclusive, and community-led.”
Nawal Ateeq
Limited wayfinding, steep paths, entrances that aren’t obvious or welcoming. The Ravine Strategy is designed to address these challenges so that the people who need our ravines the most face fewer barriers to visiting them.
inTO the Ravines supports these physical changes by adding the social infrastructure that is key to making people feel welcome.
In Flemingdon Park, Nawal shares, “the program began with stay-at-home mothers who had never worked in Canada and had never entered the ravine visible from their homes. Four park events gathered eighty residents for a first visit to the ravine. Those events built confidence, leadership, and belonging.”
What looks like a simple nature walk is a starting point towards building environmental leaders, strengthening social infrastructure, and advancing climate equity, all at the same time.
Community programming is an effective way to maximize the social value of every dollar of infrastructure investment — but without full funding, both the ravines and the communities that rely on them are not able to realize their full potential.
We currently face over $50 million in unmet capital investment needs in Priority Investment Areas alone, across a 300-kilometre system absorbing increasing climate stress every year. The 2026 update on the Ravine Strategy painted a picture of the joint contributions of City staff, councillors, community leaders and non-profits in advancing the strategy’s goals since 2017.
But with municipalities responsible for maintaining over 60% of Canada’s infrastructure on 10 cents of every tax dollar, Toronto can’t do it alone.
The case for intergovernmental investment is clear. Seven thousand constituents. Trained community advocates. Champions prepared to walk their elected officials through the ecosystems they helped restore.
The future that InTO the Ravines is trying to grow is already here in small ways: newcomers discovering that the green space outside their window is for them. Seniors on trails they once hesitated to enter. Community organizations with the capacity and confidence to shape the places they steward.
Nawal, Geri and Gary are sharing an invitation to our provincial and federal partners to invest with us in bringing this future to life for all Torontonians.
The plot of former agricultural land next to the Parc nature de l’Anse-à-l’Orme, on the western edge of Montreal, is fascinating in many ways. For one thing, it’s home to 270 species of flora and fauna that thrive within a mix of wetlands, woods and meadows. It occupies 365 hectares of land, making it one of the largest undeveloped—and until recently unprotected—swathes of natural territory on this island that more than two million people call home. But perhaps the most surprising thing about it is how few people seem to know it exists.
“At so many of the doors we knocked on, people didn’t even know that right beside them was this massive former agricultural land that was regenerating,” says Sue Stacho, Co-founder of Sauvons L’Anse-à -L’Orme*. In 2015, when a huge new residential project called Cap Nature was announced for this parcel of land, she helped start a group to protect it from development.
“We worked really hard – blood, sweat and tears,” she says. “We had to do so much to communicate why spaces like that are so important.” They knocked on doors, and hosted events like a Mother’s Day walk through the woods and evening stroll to appreciate the frog population: “any type of exposure to the area that we could bring to it.”
It worked. In 2019, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante announced the creation of the Grand parc de l’Ouest*, which will protect the area around l’Anse-à-l’Orme from development. But it goes much further than that: the new green space will be the largest municipal park in Canada, with a 30-square-kilometre expanse that includes active farmland, McGill University’s Morgan Arboretum, existing nature parks and previously unprotected natural areas that were vulnerable to development.
It’s a lesson in how grassroots activism can achieve tangible results. And it’s an opportunity to boost the amount of green space in Montreal, which has only 24 square metres per person, one of the lowest rates among Canada’s cities. But the Grand parc de l’Ouest is also a project of staggering scope, complexity and ambition. Not only does it span an area that is 15 times larger than Mount Royal Park, Montreal’s largest and most recognizable urban green space, it is a hodgepodge of different spaces crisscrossed by roads, railways and watercourses. It spans two Montreal boroughs and three independent towns, encompassing five existing nature parks and lands owned by McGill University.
The Grand parc de l’Ouest brings to mind other large, edge-of-city parks, such as the Rouge National Urban Park near Toronto, Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary and the Blue Mountain Wilderness Connector in Halifax. Like these, the Grand parc de l’Ouest has the dual mission of protecting biodiversity while giving urban dwellers access to nature. Those goals are not always easy to reconcile. In 2019, Parks Canada developed a detailed management plan for Rouge Park with the goal of balancing the needs of agriculture, recreation and conservation. The Nova Scotia Nature Trust, a charity that manages land across the province, is taking a similar approach in its stewardship of Blue Mountain.
For the Grand parc de l’Ouest, the challenge becomes particularly obvious when you look at its location on a map. Autoroute 40, one of Canada’s busiest highways, runs straight through the park, and in 2023 the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) metro system will open with a station at l’Anse à l’Orme, with trains arriving from downtown Montreal every 10 minutes. That will make the park very easy to access but could pose a problem when it comes to managing human impact on sensitive natural areas. On top of everything, the Grand parc de l’Ouest will be run not by Parks Canada or a provincial authority, but by the City of Montreal, which has more limited experience in managing natural areas.
All of that adds up to something with extraordinary potential – and no shortage of pitfalls.
“It’s been a long time in Montreal since we’ve seen the willingness to make these big gestures,” says Jonathan Cha, a landscape architect, urbanist and heritage consultant. “The challenge will be grouping all of these different natural spaces together. It’s a project that will require a lot of time, a lot of money – a very long-term project. But it’s a grand vision. There’s almost no space leftover on Montreal Island and this secures it for the benefit and well-being of the population.”
That this natural space came to be left undeveloped in one of Canada’s largest and most densely populated cities is the result of a half-century of effort by environmentalists and community activists. As with other parts of Montreal, the western third of the island – a dangling apostrophe of land buffeted by Lake St. Louis, the Lake of Two Mountains and the Rivière des Prairies – was once a lush broadleaf woodland frequented by people of the Haudenosaunee nations that lived in the region. After the arrival of French colonists in the middle of the 17th century, the colonial administration gave control of the land to the priests of the Sulpician Order, who divided it into strips of property to be farmed by colonists.
Aside from a handful of villages and early railroad suburbs, the West Island remained largely rural until after the Second World War.
“Even the tree-lined seigneurial property boundaries were still in place,” recalls historian George Vassiadis, who moved to the West Island as a child in 1968. Things changed quickly with Montreal’s postwar suburban expansion. “For the first few years after we moved into our new duplex on Spring Garden Road, the view across the street was of fields which had only recently ceased to be cultivated,” Vassiadis wrote in the arts journal Montréal Serai. “By the mid-1970s the fields had been replaced with houses.”
As bungalows and strip malls quickly ate away at farmland, developers turned their attention to some of the area’s last pockets of woodland. In 1977, plans were drawn up to raze the Bois-de-Saraguay, a biodiverse pocket of forest next to an old village, and replace it with apartment blocks, single-family houses, two shopping centres and a marina. Nearby residents successfully fought the plans, leading to the creation of Montreal’s first nature park. In 1979, Quebec’s government gave the regional council, the Montreal Urban Community, the power to develop a whole network of nature parks, including several that will now be part of the Grand parc de l’Ouest: Rapides-du-Cheval-Blanc, Bois-de-l’Île-Bizard, Cap-Saint-Jacques and l’Anse-à-l’Orme.
Conservation is the focus in each of these parks, but they are also popular recreational spots for people from across Greater Montreal. The largest of the parks is Cap-Saint-Jacques, which every weekend attracts thousands of people, most of them arriving by car, although that could change when the REM offers rapid transit access. In the winter, they rent fat bikes or snowshoes and head off into the woods. In the spring, they drizzle maple syrup onto oreilles de crisse – crispy pork rinds – at the park’s sugar shack. And in the summer, a broad, sandy beach beckons with views across the Lake of the Two Mountains.
Although these nature parks already cover a significant amount of land, they were broken up by private property that was long coveted by developers. For decades, much of that land had been protected by special agricultural zoning, but when the zoning was lifted in 1991, a resulting tax increase forced many farmers out of business. Over the years, the now-abandoned lands steadily returned to a more natural state. “There’s a whole range of wildlife that had been returning to these lands that had now been left fallow waiting for a development project to come along,” says David Fletcher, who co-founded the Green Coalition, a West Island environmental watchdog, in 1988. “All these animals that are iconic in eastern Canada, like the fisher and the white-tailed deer, were finding their way back to Montreal.”
Sue Stacho, who has been involved with the Green Coalition since the early 2000s, came across the abandoned farmland next to l’Anse-à-l’Orme one day while riding her bike.
“It’s this amazing place. Natural,” she says. “It wasn’t managed with trails and park benches everywhere. There are thermal pools in the spring. There are wetlands. Every time I went, if I went in a new way, I would find something new to learn about. If you know your way around, you can be out there all day.”
In 2015, a proposal to develop the land was announced. Known as Cap Nature and billed by its developer as “an environmentally responsible neighbourhood,” it would have preserved 180 hectares of the old farmland, but the remaining 185 hectares would be replaced by 5,500 housing units. Stacho and other members of the Green Coalition decided to fight it. Banding together to form a pressure group called Sauvons l’Anse-à-l’Orme, they succeeded in recruiting a host of other environmental organizations – including the Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS Quebec and the Sierra Club – to join their cause.
Citizen support was particularly crucial to their effort, which drew the attention of Projet Montréal, a municipal political party with a focus on sustainable development. “Once they learned about the space and realized there was real momentum growing for the protection of it, they were always around,” says Stacho. When Projet Montréal won a surprise victory in the 2017 Montreal elections, the wheels for the Grand parc de l’Ouest were set in motion.
The announcement of the park in September 2019 was greeted by the threat of lawsuits from landowners, including the developers of Cap Nature. By the end of that year, however, the city had managed to negotiate the purchase of most of the privately-held land in question. “There’s still about 40 to 45 hectares in private hands, but there’s no way a viable project could work,” says Fletcher. He considers the park a victory. “It’s been a very long haul. Quite a tumultuous three decades. We’ve been on guard with those lands for all that time.”
Fletcher gives special credit to Stacho, whose ability to raise public awareness of the old farmland is what opened the door to the new park.
“She’s a very energetic woman and her team did a remarkable job in bringing that to a conclusion,” he says. Now the conclusion of one chapter is leading to the beginning of another: the process of actually developing the Grand parc de l’Ouest.
Public consultations began last year, with most activities taking place online due to the pandemic. The challenge now will be to balance different visions of what the park should be. Stacho wants to see an emphasis on conservation, but some West Island residents are eager for more recreational opportunities, with some even raising the possibility of motocross trails in a recent online roundtable discussion. The green space is also used for hunting deer and trapping beavers, which the province recently declined to ban despite pressure from Montreal. “I’ve gone out and seen signs of activity there like shotgun shells and rifle cartridges left on the ground,” says Fletcher. “The kind of trapping taking place there is wire snare – it’s brutal. Absolutely horrific.”
Jonathan Cha points out that, beyond its natural spaces, the Grand parc de l’Ouest includes plenty of built heritage, including stone walls and houses from the French colonial era. “You need a very fine-grained knowledge of the territory to come up with a plan for it,” he says. There’s also the question of active agricultural lands, which make up a significant proportion of the new park. “Who will manage those lands?” asks Cha. “Farmer-proprietors? Co-ops? The city will need to create a new model to manage a park like this. There will need to be an additional layer of expertise on top of what they’re already used to.”
It will be a generational process, he says. “You need to have people around the table who are going to be there for a long time. There has to be a continuity in the process. The challenges are so big and numerous and the area is so vast and complicated there isn’t anyone person who can grasp everything that is going to be happening.”
What it comes down to is something Sue Stacho realized in her fight to save l’Anse-à-l’Orme: parks need people. It was the local community that rallied to protect this land from development, and it was through the collective action of many different people that the Grand parc de l’Ouest was created. Now those same people—and many others—will be needed to shape, sustain and nurture the park for decades to come.
About Christopher Dewolf
Christopher DeWolf is a Montreal-based journalist who focuses on cities and culture. Previously based in Hong Kong, he is the managing editor of Zolima CityMag and a regular contributor to the South China Morning Post, Eater and other publications. His book “Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong” examines the tension between grassroots and top-down views of urban life.
As a child growing up on the westside of Vancouver, the railroad track along the Arbutus Corridor ran behind the tall hedges of our backyard. My sister and I would play along the tracks with neighbourhood kids, often leaving pennies behind to discover them flattened by passing trains the next day. Children have a way of turning any space, even an industrial rail line, into a place for social gathering and play. Almost 40 years later, many cities around the world have adopted out-of-the-box thinking, converting underused industrial land into public spaces. This innovative approach to park design includes the Arbutus Corridor, which the City of Vancouver purchased in 2016 and is working to transform into the Arbutus Greenway, a ribbon of pathways and parks through the heart of Vancouver’s westside.
“The Arbutus Corridor has a history and it runs through parts of the city that in everyone’s minds are already developed. Converting it to a greenway was an act of tenacity and creativity, working with the community to see the world in a different way, and to see a park there waiting to be discovered.”
Antonio Gómez-Palacio, a partner at DIALOG, the urban planning firm that led the design and engagement process for the project.
The Greenway’s history spans over 100 years – from its beginnings as a railway for passengers and local industry, to contentious negotiations between the City of Vancouver and CP rail for its purchase. Today, it is an active transportation pathway that runs from the tourist destination of Granville Island to Vancouver’s southern edge, overlooking the Fraser River. In the future, it will become a multimodal corridor linking a series of destination parks and public spaces, and in the meantime, the local community has found creative ways to bring people together along its path.
The Arbutus Corridor, originally called the Vancouver & Lulu Island Railway, was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1902 to connect Vancouver to the Richmond community of Steveston, home to a bustling fishing and canning industry. In 1905, the BC Electric Company leased the line from the CPR, electrified it, and began running a passenger rail service called the Interurban. It departed from the north end of the Granville Bridge, travelled through the westside neighbourhoods of Vancouver, and ended in Richmond. Interurban trains ceased operation in 1952, but short freight trains continued to use the Arbutus Corridor until 2001 (one of its last customers was the Molson Brewery). After that, the tracks remained dormant for 15 years.
Throughout that time, the idea of developing a greenway along the corridor was part of Vancouver’s future plans. Council passed the Arbutus Corridor Official Development Plan in 2000, which proposed turning it into a multi-use transportation greenway. In 2014, the City of Vancouver was finally in negotiations with Canadian Pacific (CP) to purchase the land, which runs through some of the most valuable property in North America; however, they couldn’t agree on a price. As a result, Canadian Pacific threatened to run trains along the line and started tearing out adjacent community gardens in preparation. This action hastened negotiations and an agreement was reached in March 2016, with the City buying the Arbutus Corridor for $55 million. At the time, then-mayor Gregor Robertson said the 42 acres would be used as a greenway with the possibility of light passenger rail in the future.
The City didn’t wait for those plans to be finalized before making the corridor available to the public. Within a year, Vancouver built a temporary 9.5 km asphalt path along the rail line that connected six communities on the city’s westside. The interim design for the Arbutus Greenway has been in place for over four years and is widely used and embraced by the local community. It now attracts thousands of people every day, providing an opportunity to walk, bike, and roll from False Creek to the Fraser River. According to a health study of the Greenway conducted by INTERACT from 2016-2019, the usage grows exponentially every year and, overall, it is seen by the community as a safe natural oasis in the city where you can go for an uninterrupted, smooth stroll and have informal social interactions.
“It has opened up a new avenue of meeting and greeting people and getting to know neighbours.”
Study participant from the Marpole neighbourhood.
“It just feels spacious and open. I feel like I’m suddenly in the midst of nature in the middle of a very busy city, and it’s just peaceful.”
Study participant from Kerrisdale.
In 2018, Vancouver City Council endorsed enhancing the path to give people more places to gather, rest, and enjoy the surrounding landscape. This decision kicked off the planning process to create the Arbutus Greenway. The Greenway’s ambitious plans are not expected to be completed until 2034, but in the meantime, many local organizations have worked to activate the existing space with grassroots projects that demonstrate its potential.
The Arbutus Greenway Neighbour Hub dubbed a local “lending library of things,” was created by Neighbour Lab, a design and urban planning cooperative, in collaboration with the Thingery. A seating area and a bulletin board were set up to enable the community to share information. The showpiece installation was a hand crank that passersby could use to produce kinetic energy to charge cell phones.
“We launched the Neighbour Hub to create a community hub and gathering spot along the Arbutus Greenway,” says Stephanie Koenig, Content Developer for Neighbour Lab. “We designed and built the project together with a neighbourhood stewardship team. We also had a neighbour passing by as we were installing who ended up helping build a free library on the side!”
The next step in the Greenway’s evolution will be to implement the permanent transformation of this space, so that it becomes not just a pathway but a multifaceted destination both for the many neighbourhoods along the route and for people across Vancouver.
In the words of the City of Vancouver, “The Arbutus Greenway is a defining element of Vancouver’s urban landscape. It is envisioned to be a destination inspired by nature and stories of the places it connects.”
Greenways are linear parks for pedestrians and cyclists that connect nature reserves, cultural features, historic sites, neighbourhoods, and retail areas. Vancouver’s most popular greenways have typically been purpose-built and along the waterfront, like the Stanley Park and False Creek seawalls. The Arbutus Greenway is the first greenway connecting the north and south side of Vancouver through an existing built-up area, using repurposed industrial land. The plan for the Arbutus corridor is part of a growing urbanism trend toward transforming obsolete infrastructure into public space. One of the most famous examples is the High Line in New York City, a 2.33 km-long elevated linear park created on a former New York Central Railroad spur. Since opening in June 2009, the High Line has become a tourist attraction that, by 2019, had eight million visitors per year. Projects like the High Line and Vancouver’s Arbutus Greenway exemplify the challenge of finding park space in the built-up city. When there isn’t a parking lot to convert into a park, cities get creative to find other underused pockets of land. In Canada, Toronto’s Meadoway is turning a hydro corridor in Scarborough into a 16-kilometre stretch of urban greenspace and meadowlands. The city also launched the Bentway to turn previously unused space under the Gardiner Expressway near the lakefront into a linear park. In 2020, the need for more urban parks like these reached a fever pitch as cities struggled with citizens in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic demanding more access to nature. It became clear that parks aren’t just “a nice to have,” they are necessary to our wellbeing.
According to a Park People survey in June 2020, 80% of Canadians said parks had become more important to their mental health during the pandemic. As one respondent wrote, “Living alone has meant that walks and outside visits are the only social contact I have had for 4 months. I would have been a mess without access to parks, ravines, trails, and the waterfront.”
In 2017, the City of Vancouver worked with DIALOG, a Canadian urban planning and design firm, to kick off a large public engagement campaign on the future design for the Arbutus Greenway Before the City launched the official public engagement process, there was already buzz and excitement at the community level. City staff initially put out markers along the Arbutus Corridor to start the conversation on its future and received a large volume of responses from local residents. Overall, people wanted the Greenway to be a safe, accessible transportation route with opportunities to socialize and connect with nature:
“It should be a car-free corridor with plenty of opportunities for people to slowly travel its length, stop and enjoy nature, have a bite to eat at nearby restaurants. Parks and open spaces to relax.”
“I would like to see re-introduction of local wildlife if it all possible, more birds, more pollinators. I want to feel like I’m out in nature while in the middle of the city.”
“That is why making the Greenway a people place, instead of just a multimodal corridor, became such a priority,” says Mr. Gómez-Palacio. “There was already so much grassroots involvement and it kept that spirit of park and placemaking front and centre throughout the design process.”
As part of the planning and design process, the Arbutus Greenway project team had 7,000 touchpoints with members of the public at over 50 events, including a multi-day design workshop, numerous stakeholder workshops, open houses, and online surveys. Community organizations such as the Vancouver Public Space Network were involved in the public engagement process from the start, to ensure that the Greenway would include vibrant public spaces and meet the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.
“We advocated for a design that had a strong pedestrian-primary focus, consistently separated ‘all ages and abilities’ bike routing, clear routing for the future streetcar – and, yes, lots of greenery for the greenway.”
Naomi Wittes Reichstein, Arbutus Greenway project lead for the Vancouver Public Space Network.
Reichstein’s mention of a streetcar references a major factor in the design for The Arbutus Greenway: future plans for a light rail transit (LRT) line. Although plans for an LRT remain part of the overall vision for the Greenway, the project’s focus has always been people.
“We have been involved in many designs like this and the biggest vehicle always wins. The Arbutus Greenway project was flipped, the first priority was making it a people place, not the streetcar. I have not seen this before or since,” says Gómez-Palacio. “We’ve made sure that any community programs are not lost when the streetcar is eventually built.”
The City of Vancouver summarized the consultation process in this way:
“The vision for the Arbutus Greenway was born out of significant public engagement on both what people’s aspirations for the greenway were and what they valued in terms of uses, activities and experiences. A number of overarching themes emerged over the course of the planning process. These include a desire for: safe, comfortable, and accessible design; places for social interaction, play, and relaxation; and opportunities for urban ecology and urban agriculture.”
The Arbutus Greenway connects several Vancouver neighbourhoods including Kitsilano, Arbutus Ridge, Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, and Marpole. Reflecting this diversity, the long-term vision for the greenway is divided into eight distinct character zones that offer respite and reflect the look and feel of these surrounding neighbourhoods. This vision includes activated spaces that create a place for movement and a place to linger.
One zone in a retail section of Arbutus Ridge will become an “Electric Alley,” referring to the presence of utility poles and its adjacency to Broadway, a busy retail and movement corridor. This zone will provide an urban backdrop with two plaza areas that eventually connect to SkyTrain’s underground Broadway extension, as well as large overhead frames for public art, lighting, and weather protection.
“We wanted to build on the existing character of these communities,” says Lindsey Fryett-Jerke, urban designer at DIALOG. “At the future Electric Alley, we observed kids selling lemonade and people selling clothing, so a theme of informal commerce emerged and we designed long, wide benches where people could display things.”
“At the Greenway’s southernmost point,” says Fryett-Jerke, “people watch planes landing at the airport, so we created a lookout tower.” That final zone, dubbed “The Lookout,” will boast a multi-storey viewing platform that provides views of the Fraser River Delta, Vancouver International Airport, and the San Juan Islands.
The other 6 zones will feature spaces to socialize and commune with nature. The “Harvest Table,” themed around food, will feature edible landscaping, long community tables for dining al fresco with neighbours, and a flexible space for pop-up activities. “The Ridge” and “Woodland Bend” will create nature sanctuaries, while the “Garden Path” will provide a wetland, boardwalk, and community kiosk. Gathering and activation areas will be created through large plaza spaces at “Kerrydale Pass,” the largest retail and civic hub on the greenway, and at the “Marpole Meander,” with a large community garden, ping pong and game board tables, a giant chessboard, hammocks, a bike skills course, a community “sharing” shed, and overhead frames for lights and public art. It is anticipated that Greenway construction will occur across four successive capital plans (developing two-character zones with each plan).
“The Arbutus Corridor was always considered the backside of the neighbourhoods it ran through,” says Gómez-Palacio. “With this new design, we are flipping it to the front and converting it 180 degrees to make it safe, welcome, and open for everyone.”
Over thirty years later, this hidden play space from my childhood will be transformed into a destination that spans the entire city for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy.
About Jillian Glover
Jillian is an accredited communications professional specializing in transportation and urban issues. She is a former Vancouver City Planning Commissioner and holds a Master of Urban Studies degree from Simon Fraser University. She was born and raised in Vancouver and writes about urban issues at This City Life —named one of the best city blogs by The Guardian.
The Quebec geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin (1923-2020) coined the concept of Nordicity by highlighting that winter is a physical and natural season, and a state of mind.The art of Nordicity means first and foremost harmonizing our lives with the rhythms of nature. It means slowing down, taking time to rest, to go and play outside, or curl up indoors. It also offers numerous opportunities for us to examine our perceptions, attitudes and behaviours as we face the elements and build seasonal resilience.
As a winter nation, the season enriches our culture, shapes how we live together, and move about the city. For example, we are seeing a growing number of homemade skating rinks* in backyards and laneways. Winter biking* has seen a remarkable rise in popularity this winter. Our urban parks are packed with walkers, joggers and people tobogganing, cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. In Montreal, parks have even created the perfect setting for an open-air museum made of snow castles and sculptures*.
“You have to first come to a better understanding of winter before you can experience it properly.”2019 – Daniel Chartier, Founder and Director of the Laboratoire international de recherche sur l’imaginaire du Nord, de l’hiver et de l’Arctique*.
Our local urban parks are ideal places to explore our Nordicity and where we begin to truly love the city in winter. City parks where we can discover the potential of winter and build warm memories that will open us up to future outdoor adventures.
Winter is a variable and unpredictable season and requires the right gear. The choice of clothing and equipment is key to managing extreme weather conditions, such as cold, ice or slush.
In order to properly prepare for those unforeseen situations during your daily travels or outings to the park, choose multi-layered clothing and breathable material known for their ability to retain heat (e.g. merino wool).
Being properly outfitted helps ward off the dangers of ice or black ice. Adjustable ice cleats, for example, are one low-cost solution for ensuring that your walks are always safe and enjoyable.
We are even seeing programs supplying this type of equipment free of charge to seniors to encourage them to go for walks in winter, and also to help them cope with social isolation.
To get all the benefits for our mental and physical health, we need to spend at least 10-20 minutes a day outdoors, especially in winter. Of course, this is even truer now in these times of pandemic and lockdown.
Whether you choose to engage in outdoor activities like photography or winter birdwatching or prefer active transportation like cross country skiing, biking or snowshoeing, you can enjoy additional hours of light and the invigorating and meditative effect of moving about outside in the cold winter air.
“In order to change our attitude, we need to become aware that our perception of our surroundings, and the language we use to describe the various phenomena play a key role.” (Pressman 1985, quoted in Zardini 2005.)
Mental Nordicity is a state of mind. It is the acceptance of winter and the cold as they are. Through acceptance, we can mindfully decide to enjoy winter. And to help you do that, here are a few practical tips:
By adopting these practical strategies and questioning your perceptions of winter and of the cold, you can better understand what brings you pleasure or what concerns you when the cold weather comes. This will help you feel more confident about yourself and about winter. Your journal can also serve as a reminder of the pleasures of winter next time you struggle to step outside.
As you bring your children back from school or during a short break from work, take the time to look around and to observe the natural and urban landscapes. Look for white or immaculate banks of snow, snow-covered trees, frozen ponds or rivers, or urban developments that create microclimates (sunshine, wind protection, etc.).
This quest for natural and urban beauty is one way to appreciate and contemplate winter every day.
The ephemeral nature of snow in the city also becomes an opportunity to celebrate and honour it. Take advantage of the next snowfall to enjoy the effects of the slower pace, the calm and the reduced noise. And why not use this opportunity to start the next snow sculpture contest in your local park?
The more time we spend outdoors in the winter, the more we adapt to the temperatures and the elements, and the more we love this season. Dealing with winter in the city means getting used to the changing seasons that punctuate our lives.
It is therefore important that our urban spaces be adapted for all seasons, including winter. This is what we call “the seasonal resilience of public spaces”. This phenomenon is taking on ever-increasing importance and is becoming part of the “Winter Cities” trend. This movement was born out of a desire to better adapt our urban environment to the reality of winter, to promote innovative practices in urban design and to show the impact resulting from the appropriation of public spaces by local communities, regardless of the season.
Increasingly, tools are being developed for decision-makers, experts and citizens who want to help communities better adapt to the realities of winter. To this end, Montreal has created its Guide Ville d’hiver – Principes et stratégies d’aménagement hivernal du réseau actif d’espaces publics montréalais* .
Getting a better understanding of how our Nordicity is reflected in our daily lives is a continuous process, like the seasons that follow one after the other. But one thing is certain: the pandemic has been giving us a thirst for nature, even after the arrival of winter. Therefore, it is essential that our urban parks and public spaces remain accessible and adapted during the cycle of the seasons.