As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks?
Park clean-ups bring neighbours together, foster connection, and leave a lasting impact—explore our 5-step guide to get started.
Explore inspiring community-led events funded by our microgrants program, from land-based learning to nature walks and skill-sharing workshops.
How a temporary plaza in Montreal’s Parc Marcelin-Wilson was created to offer a gathering space for youth, with design improvements informed by Metalude’s insights through direct observations and youth engagement.
Come together with community members, park professionals, and municipal staff at the 2025 Toronto Park Summit!
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
Large urban parks are critical spaces for city residents to build meaningful connections to nature and each other. We already know that people who engage in hands-on, nature-focused activities in parks experience powerful social connections; a sense of belonging, meaning and purpose in their lives; greater physical health; and overall life satisfaction. We need more parks that can lead by example in extending those benefits to equity-deserving communities across Canada.
This summer, Park People welcomes new partners into the Cornerstone Parks program. Everett Crowley Park & the Champlain Height Trails join founding parks High Park, Mount Royal and Stanley Park and new members: the Darlington Ecological Corridor and Meewasin Valley Authority. Together they hold space for nature in cities and demonstrate what’s possible for communities within large urban parks.
The Cornerstone Parks Reports on Stewardship and Park Use demonstrate that volunteer park stewardship makes people healthier and happier. Among the findings:
Unfortunately, these benefits aren’t equitably enjoyed:
The Canadian City Parks Report also found that post-pandemic, surveyed BIPOC Canadians became more interested in stewardship activities (70%) than white respondents (54%).
So what are the ongoing barriers to park stewardship for diverse communities? And who is helping to support those communities’ well-being by overcoming them?
In equity-deserving communities such as Champlain Heights in South Vancouver, B.C., park groups play a crucial role in supporting residents’ health and well-being. Champlain Heights contains a former city landfill and now boasts the fifth largest park in Vancouver, Everett Crowley. Everett Crowley is a 40-hectare park home to Avalon Pond and Kinross Creek, which provide critical habitats for birds, amphibians, fish, and other wildlife. The park and adjoining Champlain Heights trail system are part of the only 4% of native forest remaining in the city. Champlain Heights has hundreds of low-income, co-op, strata, and seniors’ housing units alongside some of the city’s oldest trees.
The City of Vancouver dedicated Everett Crowley Park in 1987 after lobbying by local residents. Those residents then created the Everett Crowley Park Committee (ECPC), a sub-committee of the Champlain Heights Community Association. The committee’s mission is to encourage stewardship of this resilient urban forest by hosting community stewardship events, outdoor education, and an annual Earth Day festival. In 2022, 306 volunteers contributed nearly 1,000 hours towards park stewardship, removing approximately 80 cubic meters of invasive plants.
Just east of Everett Crowley, another stewardship group is hard at work in the trail system that winds through Champlain Heights. In 2021, local residents noticed invasive plants taking over the trails. Together they formed Free the Fern. Like the ECPC, Free the Fern brings their community together through environmental stewardship activities such as invasive plant pulls and native planting events. Since 2021, their 277 volunteers have removed 50.33 tons of invasive plants. They’ve also planted over 1,300 native plants.
“Parks are not simply places of respite with grass and trees. They are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. We believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places shaped by and for the people living there.”Sparking Change Report
“Parks are not simply places of respite with grass and trees. They are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. We believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places shaped by and for the people living there.”
Sparking Change Report
Our Sparking Change Report suggests five ways of catalyzing social impact through parks, particularly in underserved neighbourhoods:
We spoke with Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern, to understand how these five factors appear in Champlain Heights.
Becoming involved in a local park can foster a sense of possibility, creating momentum for change that can galvanize others. One strategy for creating shared ownership is pairing park improvements with conversations about ongoing community involvement.
The Champlain Heights Community Centre is jointly operated by the Vancouver Park Board and the Champlain Heights Community Association (CHCA). The CHCA is also the steward of Everett Crowley Park. The community centre is a neighbourhood “anchor” that offers residents leisure activities and an entry point for involvement in the park and trails. Through community events, notice boards, and tool storage, the centre creates a relationship between the (indoor) resources available to community members and their potential to create change through improvements within the park, along the trails, and beyond.
Building skills and confidence through volunteering in the park can ripple outwards, leading to greater civic engagement. Hiring a community organizer from within the local neighbourhood can be a crucial support pillar for volunteers. This helps build capacity and ensure groups remain community-led.
As Free the Fern’s founder-turned-Executive Director, Grace is a passionate volunteer who recruits, coordinates, and supports fellow neighbourhood stewards. “All our current 9 board members live within the neighbourhood of Champlain Heights,” Grace notes.
“Most of our volunteers who attend our monthly pulls and fall planting live a short walk from the trail. This year, as part of our Native Food Forest project, we have incorporated outreach events so that the larger community can be informed and share their ideas with the project. We distribute flyers to townhouses adjacent to the trail and post them on local community Facebook groups. In addition, we have signage on the trail that directs people to our website to learn more and get involved with Free the Fern. It is so important that those living within this neighbourhood have a hand in stewarding the Champlain Heights Trail system.” Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern
“Most of our volunteers who attend our monthly pulls and fall planting live a short walk from the trail. This year, as part of our Native Food Forest project, we have incorporated outreach events so that the larger community can be informed and share their ideas with the project. We distribute flyers to townhouses adjacent to the trail and post them on local community Facebook groups. In addition, we have signage on the trail that directs people to our website to learn more and get involved with Free the Fern. It is so important that those living within this neighbourhood have a hand in stewarding the Champlain Heights Trail system.”
Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern
While improving a park’s physical infrastructure can invite more people to use it, what really brings a park to life are activities and events that engage people in meaningful ways. Park programming needs to be inclusive and representative of the local community.
“Inclusivity is a journey, one that will continue as long as you seek to understand and better serve your community,” Grace says. “I have learned so much about how to be more inclusive by listening to volunteers.” She cites stories of community members directly shaping Free the Fern’s inclusion practices: from purchasing extendable garden tools for wheelchair users and ergonomic tools for people with arthritis to offering free food and beverage for volunteers and ensuring all events remain free. Future plans include budgeting for babysitting at events and offering prepaid transit vouchers.
“Everyone deserves access to environmental education, no matter their financial situation.” Grace Nombrado
“Everyone deserves access to environmental education, no matter their financial situation.”
Grace Nombrado
Parks have a long history as democratic spaces, catalyzing interactions between people of different backgrounds. It’s important to recognize and remove barriers to those people working together. One strategy is for municipalities to review park oversight through an equity lens to ensure they are not creating obstacles–like a lack of clarity around park management and what’s permitted.
“When people ask me, ‘Is this city land?’, I say, ‘Yes, and WE are the city.’ We, as citizens, should see park spaces as spaces for all of us. Spaces for us to gather and spaces for us to care and connect with the land.” Grace Nombrado
“When people ask me, ‘Is this city land?’, I say, ‘Yes, and WE are the city.’ We, as citizens, should see park spaces as spaces for all of us. Spaces for us to gather and spaces for us to care and connect with the land.”
Grace talks about balancing the initial fear of breaking city rules with a determination to be transparent. Free the Fern formed when diverse citizens decided to steward the land together. The city was not sure what to do to support the group. Should they set safety guidelines? Who in the city should oversee the group? Just as the process seemed to be getting tangled in red tape, Free the Fern decided to invite the city workers on a tour of the trail. Walking past hundreds of ferns, Oregon grapes, huckleberries and Douglas firs, the city workers were impressed that local citizens had accomplished so much on their own. The city pledged full support for Free the Fern’s stewardship effort.
The economic effect of parks is often spoken about in terms of increasing property values. This sometimes sparks concerns about gentrification. However, parks can offer many benefits to people living in the community–including leverage.
“Champlain Heights [is] an experimental mixed-income neighbourhood built in the late ‘70s,” Grace explains. “Rather than single-family homes, the city chose to build townhouse complexes here–a mix of strata, co-op, low-income, and senior townhouses… Many of these co-op townhouse leases are coming to the end of their term. There is a concern if the city will renew leases or if they will choose to redevelop our neighbourhood, perhaps to include towers for higher density levels.”
“The Champlain Heights trail system, a strip of the original Douglas fir forest, is also on leasehold land and not protected from development. One of the best ways citizens can protect the trail from development is to steward it. By removing the invasive plants and replanting native plants, we show that the trail system is a thriving, biodiverse ecosystem rather than a hazardous area. By connecting as a community and volunteering, we also increase the connections with each other and future chances for advocating in the neighbourhood as leases run out. With our thriving, diverse community, we have proved that this ‘experimental’ neighbourhood of Champlain Heights works.”
Volunteer park stewardship has the potential to make all people healthier and happier. However, our ability to extend these benefits to equity-deserving communities like Champlain Heights relies on reducing barriers to engagement. Free the Fern and the Everett Crowley Park Committee are critical additions to Cornerstone Parks, as they demonstrate what’s possible in their neighbourhood.
Cornerstone Parks lead by example. They offer opportunities for people of all identities, ages, languages, and abilities to pursue health and happiness through park stewardship. Read the Cornerstone Parks Reports to understand how park stewardship makes us happier and healthier. And follow our new partners, Free the Fern and the ECPC, as they demonstrate how you can better support your equity-deserving communities.
Les Amis de la Montagne, Stanley Park Ecology Society and High Park Nature Centre, three of Canada’s most successful and longest-standing park-based non-profit organizations, were among the 100 Delegates in attendance when Park People launched its national network at the Heart of the City Conference in Calgary in 2017.
As Park People expanded its national programs and launched the first Canadian City Parks Report, we learned of the immense impact of these groups. For example, while four million people visit Banff National Park every year, over 8 million visit Mont-Royal – 30,000 times more visitors per acre of parkland. In fact, taken together, these three large urban parks see more than 17 million visitors every year.
Over the course of the pandemic, Park People began hosting a series of virtual “cinq a sept” sessions with large urban park organizations to delve deeper into how we could best serve these groups so they could, in turn, maximize solutions to make our cities greener and more resilient in the face of a changing climate. We learned that these large urban parks need recognition and funding to support their immense contribution to climate change and community resilience.
During the pandemic, Canadians flocked to Mount Royal, Stanley Park and High Park in never-before-seen numbers. In Park People’s own survey, we found that almost three-quarters (70%) of Canadians said their appreciation for parks and green spaces has increased during COVID-19. It’s clear that even as vaccines bring the end of the pandemic into view, there will continue to be unprecedented pressures on the unique ecosystems found in these parks.
Today, Park People is excited to be launching Cornerstone Parks, the first-of-its-kind national collaboration to revitalize the green infrastructure of the country’s largest urban parks and celebrate their incomparable value to overall wellbeing. We call them ‘Cornerstone Parks’ to express how central they are to our cities.
A Cornerstone Park is defined as a large urban green space that contributes biodiversity, ecosystem services, and multiple parks uses to the community at large. In these parks, City staff, local and park-based NGOs, and community leaders facilitate activities focused on environmental education and stewardship, to engage people from diverse backgrounds in connecting to nature and to each other. These Cornerstone Parks provide invaluable environmental and social benefits to our urban environments that make our communities healthier and more resilient to the effects of climate change.
In the first year, Park People is bringing these three groups together to support their ecosystem revitalization efforts. In Toronto’s High Park, funding will improve wetland health and restore the globally rare Black Oak Savanna habitat by removing invasive species. Efforts in Montreal’s Mont-Royal will likewise mutually benefit the park’s forests and wetlands. Through planting and stewardship work, the restored marsh will be better able to absorb stormwater thus improving groundwater quality and the habitat for species. This will reduce erosion and surface water runoff that damages the forest. In Stanley Park, by planting 500 native trees and shrubs and removing 10,000 square metres of invasive species, efforts will enhance the health of this coastal temperate rainforest that serves as a powerful carbon store and wildlife habitat in downtown Vancouver.
“Today, we understand nature’s role in restoring our sense of well-being. We need to go further and take a bigger view on how restoring nature actually makes our cities more resilient to the impacts of climate change.”
Sara Street, Executive Director of High Park Nature Centre
In addition to supporting critical restoration work, Cornerstone Parks will act as a backbone to connect these large urban park NGOs together to establish a forum for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of best practices. The Cornerstone Parks program will be underpinned by a rigorous impact evaluation to measure and amplify learnings about the value of large urban parks for community well-being and ecosystems.
“By working as a group, we can make a greater difference, scale up our work and tell our collective story in a way that none of us can do alone.”
Dylan Rawlyk, Executive Director at Stanley Park Ecology Society
“Cornerstone Parks recognizes we have so much to share with, and so much to learn from, our fellow non-governmental parks organizations across the country. Park People is bringing much-needed awareness to how important these green spaces are, and providing us with the necessary framework to revitalize the ecosystems.”
Hélène Panaioti, Executive director of Les amis de la montagne
The long-term vision of the program is to ensure that there is an ecologically and socially vibrant Cornerstone park within reach of every urban Canadian. Park People’s Program Director Natalie Brown says.
“Large urban parks offer so much value for cities. Park People’s providing a backbone to strengthen their work and galvanize support for more large urban parks. There’s no question that there are large-scale precious landscapes that could serve climate change and community goals. We couldn’t be more excited to help make it happen.”
Natalie Brown, Program Director at Park People
Through its National Network, Park People will identify other large parks across Canada where investments and a connection to the network will provide maximum ecological and community benefits.
With the Park People Conference quickly approaching in June, we caught up with keynote speaker Dave Meslin. Dave is a community organizer and activist and author of Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up. He is the Creative Director of Unlock Democracy Canada and founder of many impactful initiatives including Toronto Public Space Committee and Cycle Toronto.
Dave Meslin: Parks and public spaces, to me, are sacred because everyone has equal access. What I love about all of our parks and our sidewalks and our alleyways is that no one gets across the street first based on which credit card they have in their wallet. So, I think there’s something beautiful and sacred about them that we need to speak up for and protect.
DM: So many aspects of my work and my belief system feel sacred to me because it’s not just about work and it’s not just about politics and votes and lobbying and legislation. It’s where I find spiritual grounding.
We’re at a time when people are increasingly turning away from organized religion. That raises the question: what replaces the rituals of gathering in synagogues, churches, mosques or temples? Where do people find spirituality, grounding and meaning with organized religion playing less of a role?
To me, public spaces are one of those places.
Something sacred is something that you feel you would be willing to defend even at personal cost. Something you would make sacrifices for. I feel that way about our public spaces. I feel that without that type of protection, they’re at risk from various forces.
DM: I think the biggest risk to public spaces and parks is actually advertising. The only reason advertisers aren’t there right now is because we have considered parks to be sacred. Let’s face it, advertisers will put their logo on anything. That is unless we declare a space as sacred, and the list of what we consider sacred is rapidly shrinking.
I could see a municipal council saying: “Well, here’s a new revenue source we can tap into. We can put digital billboards in all our parks. People go to parks. Advertisers want to reach people. They would love to reach people who enjoy nature. We could sell to advertisers to reach that target market in our parks.” The only way you fight against that is by saying: No, this is sacred space. That would be like putting a billboard in a church or in a mosque and no, we’re not doing that.”
DM: I think that the biggest hurdle a lot of people experience is believing that their ideas have value and are important enough to be worth fighting for. That their voice that is worthy of being heard. That’s the equivalent of the closed doors.
Another huge obstacle is that people just have no idea where to start. Most people don’t really grasp the difference between municipal, provincial and federal government, in terms of jurisdiction. And that’s not their fault. We don’t teach it well. It is complicated. Like, who does health care? Well, there’s a Provincial Minister of Health. There’s a Federal Minister of Health. And then municipal governments do things like long term care and daycare and harm reduction.
Also, City Hall can be an intimidating place. I talked about this in the book: there’s no one at the doors of City Hall saying, “Hi, how can I help you?” There is at Walmart. There is at the Apple Store.
That’s why getting people to join together in groups is so important. That’s why what Park People does is so important. People are more likely to make stuff happen in a group because it creates the sense that “I’m not alone.” It helps build people’s confidence. There’s strength in numbers because it’s scary to do things alone.
If you’re intimidated about something in the first place, the chance of you doing it on your own is almost zero. But the chance of a group saying, “Hey, this is something we can work towards. This is something we can organize together.” That’s like a much more appealing invitation. It’s actually revolutionary.
I really like the educational component of it. They take a small piece of the capital budget, and then divide that up among a bunch of neighbourhoods, and let the local residents decide how to spend it.
It’s a great way to build democratic experiences, but it’s also a great way to learn about municipal budgeting, and what government actually does.
One of the main roles of a council is to decide how much money to bring in and how to spend it. The best way to teach that is by giving a little bit of money to people in the community, and asking “well, what do you want to do with it?” It’s just an incredible civics class.
DM: There’s this thing called Arnstein’s Ladder. It’s one way of looking at the different levels of engagement. Essentially, the bottom rung of the ladder is token engagement. That’s where the government decides what they want to do, and then it’s a fake survey or a fake townhall. I don’t think there’s evil intent, but do I think it is a kind of arrogance. It’s municipal staff and politicians thinking they know what’s best and treating the consultation like a nice gesture. It’s not a good approach. Not only is it not democratic, but it always creates really angry people.
On the opposite end of the spectrum there’s direct democracy. That’s where ordinary people get to vote and make all of the decisions. I’m not in favour of that either. Not only do I think that people don’t want to read 200 page staff reports, but more importantly, if you created a system where everyone gets to vote, who would actually have the extra time to do that reading? It’s going to be wealthier people who have babysitters and have house cleaners. Not the folks who are doing three jobs to pay the rent and feed their kids. So what some people think is the highest level of engagement is actually incredibly inaccessible to ordinary people.
DM: I think it’s context-specific. Let’s say, there’s gonna be a redesign of a park that asks: what do we want to happen in this park? That’s the kind of thing where people who use the park and live in the park and near the park should vote on it. That’s actually an ideal opportunity for direct democracy. I feel the same about the naming of parks. I don’t think politicians should get to name parks after other politicians. It should really be up to the people who use the park.
Parks are a perfect example where direct democracy makes sense. It’s a small bite-sized level, and the decisions aren’t super complex compared to you know, a multi billion dollar operating budget of a city.
Municipalities have a moral obligation to invest real money in actively advertising opportunities for engagement beyond the usual suspects. How about actually paying people to participate? Everyone’s got a different perspective based on their age and their gender and their confidence and how they’re using the space. And I just think the city should make more of an effort to actually invest in getting those voices heard.
I think about people like my mom and my sister. Super caring, super smart people who would never be caught dead at a “town hall meeting”. They wouldn’t even know there was a town hall, let alone take the time to go to it.
But, they know so much about their parks. My mom is nervous to walk on the track in her park because there’s a place where it kind of dips down and people could hide and you wouldn’t see them. I never thought of that. It’s not something I worry about or think about. She didn’t know who to talk to, so she asked me what she could do.
If you’re trying to find the people to consult about a park, why just not go to the park? That’s what credit card companies do to get people to get their cards. They stand at the store or at the airport and solicit people. They don’t invite you to come to a meeting to talk about credit cards at a community centre. They go straight to their target audience. We should be doing the same thing. It’s not hard to find your target audience if you’re talking about parks. They’re at the park.
Really, there should never be indoor consultations about parks. The best place to talk about parks is in parks.
TD Park People Grants is a nation-wide program that builds vital connections between people and parks.
Each year, we support over 70 community groups across 21 urban areas to animate their local green spaces with engaging events. From Indigenous plant medicine workshops to nature walks, we’re looking for unique ideas that centre environmental education, sustainability, or stewardship, and are designed with accessibility and inclusivity in mind.
In 2025, event organizers are eligible to receive $2,000 to bring their park vision to life.
Need some inspiration for your park event? Read on to learn about three of the incredible groups that received TD Park People Grants in 2024!
La Boussole is a Francophone nonprofit organization based in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. They support people experiencing poverty or marginalization to access health services, housing, and employment in French, while uniting their voices to raise awareness of the issues that face the community.
Through their 2024 TD Park People grant, La Boussole sought to reduce the barriers that prevent Downtown Eastside residents from enjoying nature in their city—such as transportation costs and the stigmatization that unhoused people face when in green spaces—and create restorative experiences that supported their participants’ mental health and wellbeing.
La Boussole organized two events, starting with a nature walk in Spirit Pacific Trail. Participants were led by a facilitator who shared knowledge of natural preservation, Indigenous land rights, and climate justice as they explored the lush forest together. Next, they held an eco-art-therapy session in Stanley Park, where participants were guided to create art using natural elements without damaging the environment.
“These kinds of events are crucial for our audience as the Downtown Eastside area is extremely urban,” noted La Boussole’s facilitators. “The population is suffering from extreme heat in summer and losing its connection to nature.”
Thanks to their efforts, 28 participants had the chance to deepen their connections to the environment, and to one another, through restorative experiences in their local forests.
”I really enjoyed this outing in the forest. It was nice to return to the Pacific Spirit Park, it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. I love forest smells, pine smells and it was cool to go on the walk with Aloïs because there were lots of things we learned that I didn’t know. Being with the whole group, everyone was able to share a little bit of their little anecdotes, the little information they had on their side so it was a great experience.”
Event participant
LifeSchoolHouse is a network of barter-based “folkschools” that create connections through skill-sharing across Nova Scotia. Folkschools are informal learning spaces, usually held in a person’s home, where neighbors become teachers as they share their skills in small group workshops.
LifeSchoolHouse breaks down the financial barriers many people face when trying to access education, and helps to connect neighbours in simple but meaningful ways. In this vein, organizers at the LifeSchool House in Spryfield, Nova Scotia used their 2024 TD Park People grant to organize two free outdoor events where neighbours shared knowledge of environmental education, sustainability, and stewardship with fellow community members.
These immersive experiences included guided nature walks for 43 participants of all ages to explore their surrounding environment. 16 volunteer teachers assisted them in identifying flora and fauna, while offering tips on sustainable practices for preservation.
After their walk, the groups enjoyed a locally-sourced lunch followed by a litter clean-up session—offering a tangible way for participants to keep contributing to the wellbeing of the local green spaces.
“These parks are right in our backyards and we don’t even realize all the treasure they hold.”
“Thank you so much for putting this together! We expected it would be fun, but it far exceeded all expectations. Everyone was so kind, especially with the sort of chaos that comes with little people. It meant so much that my child was welcome. We loved getting to meet everyone, and feel like this is our community!”
The Kapabamayak Achaak Healing Forest Winnipeg is a living memorial to Indigenous children lost to or affected by the residential school system. It was the second Healing Forest developed in Canada, and is part of a growing network of sites linked by the National Healing Forest Initiative.
A place for healing and contemplation, the Winnipeg forest is an open-air, land-based classroom for elders to share teachings and ceremony. These Keepers of the Forest have hosted dozens of teachings and ceremonies since the site was developed in 2017.
In 2024, they used their TD Park People grant to partner with local schools to bring together children and educators to reflect upon Truth and Reconciliation and the value of environmental conservation. Their land-based learning experience incorporated Indigenous Ways of Knowing, showing children the healing power of connecting with the land and traditional plants like the sage which grows in the forest.
Their two events in 2024 brought together over 300 attendees (students, teachers, and community members), and included a nourishing meal of bannock and jam.
“The schools we work with have large numbers of Indigenous children. Many have relatives who are still dealing with the intergenerational trauma of residential schools. These events honour their lived experience and provide a path to healing based upon Indigenous Ways of Knowing.”
Event organizers
Have these events inspired you?
Visit our TD Park People Grants page for more information, and full eligibility criteria, for this year’s program. Applications are open now and close on February 24, 2025.
In her recent presentation at the 2022 Park People Conference, Akiima Price called herself a “nature-based social worker,” quickly followed by the disclaimer “but I don’t have a degree in social work.”
What Akiima does have is three decades of leading community-centred park programs in economically stressed communities. In her presentation at the 2022 Conference, Akiima spoke about the Friends of Anacostia Park program she designed in her role as a consultant with the National Park Foundation. At the 2023 Park People Conference, Akiima will be featured in a Keynote Presentation on designing meaningful park programs that serve parks and the needs of equity-deserving communities.
Presentation of Akiima Price on “Nature and Engagement in Economically Stressed Communities” at the 2022 Park People Conference.
Akiima’s career began as a National Park Service Interpretation Ranger at Lake Mead Recreation Centre just outside of Las Vegas. According to National Park Service literature, the role of park interpreter exists to “help park visitors learn to care about park resources so they might support the care for park resources.”
Throughout her career, Akiima has resisted “park resources” being the sole focus of her national park work. When working with economically stressed communities, Akiima elevates the importance of reciprocity. As she said in her 2022 presentation: “the community isn’t just a friend to the park, but the park is a friend to the community.”
The vast majority of the community surrounding Anacostia National Park is African American and experiences some of the greatest income disparities and health inequalities in the US. The life expectancy of those living close to the Anacostia River is five years lower than in the rest of Washington D.C and poverty, diabetes, and obesity rates are significantly higher. The systemic nature of racism is deeply embedded in Anacostia’s landscape where sewage left the Anacostia river severely polluted and interstate construction severed neighbourhoods’ access to the national park.
Given this context, Akiima questions why “park resources” should be at the centre of all park work. She asks:
“As a human, you have to consider, how important is it that these kids can name five snakes if they have to process death on a regular and they’re fundamentally not safe?”
For Akiima, It’s a matter of where you put your focus.
Akiima has pushed the National Park Service to embrace a broader definition of the term ‘environment’ to include factors that deeply impact the lives of people living in economically stressed communities. Akiima’s definition of environment is far more inclusive. She defines it as: “the living and non-living things that make up your immediate surroundings.” Within this definition, as Akiima emphasized: “crack is an environmental issue,’ as are crime, drug use and incarceration.
This approach to “environmental issues” helped Akima design an exercise that invites participants to identify what she named the “powers and challenges” that exist both within the community and within the park.
The goal of the exercise is to identify solutions that match park and community needs and opportunities. For example, this exercise might inspire one to ask: “How could recreational activities in the park help address incarceration in the community?” This very question led to the design of a park program in which the National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens attended a late-night roller skating session in the park where park visitors were invited to design nature-based cards sent to incarcerated loved ones.
As Akiima emphasized, the ideas don’t always line up, but when they do, it’s magic.
“A lot of environmental groups will immediately say, well, we’re not social workers.” And while Akiima admits this is true, she encourages the organizations she works with to recognize the assets that exist right within the community. Just because the park service doesn’t have the answers doesn’t mean they’re off the hook for delivering programs of value to the community. As Akiima put it: “Hey, guess what, you can partner with people that do that work, right?”
As Akiima emphasizes, trusted community partners are essential to linking the community to the park. One prospective partner, the Office of Victim Services is hoping to engage victims of crime in mental-health-focused park walks that can provide an alternative form of relief to individuals who may avoid conventional talk therapy. As a secondary benefit, the park walks would help support the mental health of social workers who are particularly prone to burnout. That’s the kind of creative partnership that Akiima loves to create.
Akiima provided the above map of partners, which orders partners into priority, in waiting and future partners and recognizes both community and environmental organizations.
Embedded within the Friends of Anacostia Park members is the “Friends Corp.” The Corp are members of the community who receive both paid work and transferable skills by working in the park. Each member of the Corp is encouraged to pursue goals that link their gifts to the park, and each member of the Corp gets the support they need to achieve their goals.
Akiima has built-in efforts that elevate the profile and presence of the Corps within the park and the greater community. Corps members have been featured in simple baseball-type cards that highlight their relevant experiences in the park, and in the community. The cards helped the Corps members recognize the gifts and assets they bring to the park and helped community members build trusted relationships with Corp staff. As Akiima explained in her presentation, one Corps member Phyllis (pictured below) who previously experienced drug addiction was recognized as an “Addiction Recovery Advocate” on her card.
Phyllis is currently working on hosting Narcotics Anonymous meetings in Anacostia Park and this card helps build her credibility with the community she’s serving. As Akiima puts it:
“She doesn’t have to have a Ph.D. for me to respect her. I have the utmost respect for these people because they have these incredible experts this incredible expertise that is extremely relevant in these communities.”
Akiima’s work has the National Park Service is reshaping how the organization thinks about inclusion. Akiima’s love for her community has fuelled her commitment to making sure that the needs of economically stressed communities are deeply embedded in the design of park programs. Akiima’s favourite quote sums up the love that underpins her approach: “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
It’s no question which one Akiima is.
We’re delighted that Akiima will be a Keynote speaker at The Park People Conference in Toronto in 2023.
Park People is thrilled to announce three new partners within our growing national network of Cornerstone Parks: the Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition in Edmonton, AB; Toronto Botanical Garden in Toronto, ON; and Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, NS.
Launched in 2021, Cornerstone Parks is the only national network dedicated to maximizing the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks. These are critical spaces for people living in cities to build meaningful connections to nature and each other, and they give cities a head start when mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Large urban parks often require more maintenance, operations, and programming resources, as well as innovative solutions to their unique challenges. Cornerstone Parks convenes organizations working in parks across Canada through a community of practice. The program supports them through direct funding for community stewardship and restoration, capacity-building within and between park groups (especially in equity-deserving communities), and measuring and storytelling the impact of our collective work.
The Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Ecology Action Centre join the program’s three founding partners – Stanley Park Ecology Society in Vancouver, BC; High Park Nature Centre in Toronto, ON; and Les Amis de la montagne in Montreal, QC – as well as returning 2023 partners the Everett Crowley Park Committee and Free the Fern Stewardship Society in Vancouver, BC; Meewasin Valley Authority in Saskatoon, SK; Rowntree Mills Park in Toronto, ON; and Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal, QC.
The Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition (ERVCC) is dedicated to the protection, preservation, and regeneration of the North Saskatchewan River Valley and Ravine System in Edmonton, AB. The river valley is an 18,000-acre “ribbon of green” forming the largest expanse of urban parkland in Canada. The volunteer-led Coalition collaborates with many conservation groups and initiatives – including Swim Drink Fish, Edmonton Native Plant Society, Shrubscriber, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Edmonton’s Root for Trees – to support conservation and restoration through knowledge-sharing, co-stewardship, public education, and political advocacy.
Through Cornerstone, they aim to accelerate the number of trees and plants planted alongside Root for Trees, enhance water monitoring with Swim Drink Fish, support the Tree Equity Program and Bird Friendly Edmonton, and pilot a new trail restoration program with their City. All this while creating employment opportunities that elevate people-power over carbon and exploring future designation as a National Urban Park.
Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) offers an array of gardens spanning nearly four acres in Toronto, ON, adjacent to the Don Valley Ravine, Wilket Creek, and Edwards Gardens. They’re currently undergoing a landmark expansion across a 35-acre site, re-aligning their efforts to become a purpose-led botanical garden, cultivating a community with a profound connection to nature, and inspiring impact in their unique ecosystem and beyond.
With Cornerstone support, Toronto Botanical Garden will pilot a series of activities – including accessible ravine tours, citizen science initiatives, seed saving, and a fall festival coinciding with City of Toronto Ravine Days – to help communities engage more deeply with their local ravine systems and support ecological restoration efforts.
The Ecology Action Centre has operated as a member-based environmental charity in Nova Scotia since 1971. Their efforts to establish a Halifax greenbelt – a thriving and protected network of parks and greenspaces – have led to strong partnerships with local conservation organizations representing three key locations: Purcells Cove Backlands, Blue-Mountain Birch Cove Lakes, and Sandy Lake-Sackville River.
As a Cornerstone partner, the Ecology Action Centre will expand its existing hike series to improve public awareness and engagement within these parks, initiate research on local invasive species through citizen science programs, and pilot new activities like park user surveys. They will support Blue-Mountain Birch Cove Lakes as they, too, explore future designation as a National Urban Park.
Welcoming new partners into the Cornerstone Parks program helps us to make different (yet equally critical) connections: between parks in the same municipalities and across different municipalities; between long-established and newly-emerging park-based organizations; and between different types of large urban parks, as shaped by our changing cities.
By fostering relationships between different parks within the same urban centres – Vancouver, Edmonton and Saskatoon, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax – Cornerstone Parks enables peer-to-peer support where challenges like invasive plant species, wildlife interactions, and the impacts of climate change (as well as local policies to address them) are often the same. By creating dialogues between cities, the program exposes park groups to new (and shared) challenges and demonstrates novel models of collaboration and co-governance to help surface transferrable solutions.
Since 2021, the program has evolved to address the fact that there are many different types of large urban parks. This includes historically prioritized destination parks like our founders, Stanley Park in Vancouver, High Park in Toronto, and Mount Royal in Montreal. It also includes “adaptive reuse” projects like Everett Crowley Park and its connecting Champlain Heights trail system in Vancouver and the Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal – a former landfill site and rail corridor, respectively – whose revitalization creates new and essential green spaces for equity-deserving communities. It further includes connective parks like ravines, river valleys, and greenbelts that continue to resist urban development as cities rapidly grow around them.
Canada’s large urban parks are vital nature spaces that deserve our support. Whatever their location and history, and however long their organizational legacy of conservation and care, they all provide critical nature and community connections to people living in cities.
Cornerstone Parks enjoy benefits that they, in turn, multiply and extend to the urbanized, often equity-deserving communities who visit them. They do this through accessible programs and opportunities that measurably improve park users’ and volunteers’ physical health, mental health, and overall well-being. A win for these parks is a win for communities.
The Cornerstone Parks program is honoured to play a role in providing shared resources, networking and capacity-building, impact measurement and storytelling, and overall advocacy to help support the continued growth of our new partners, the Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Ecology Action Centre, and uplift the ongoing work of all our Cornerstone Parks.
I will retire from my co-leadership position at Park People at the end of June 2024, thirteen years after I founded the organization.
This milestone has me considering the many positive changes that have happened in urban parks in Canada since 2011 and the special role that Park People has played in advancing them. It’s been quite a journey for me, the organization, and Canada’s incredible ecosystem of city parks.
Since the very beginning, Park People’s work has been about creating new connections—between people and nature, between neighbours when they meet by chance in public spaces, and between leaders and bold ideas that can make our parks even better.
Park People’s own origin story echoes this theme brilliantly. In 2010, I released a paper for the Metcalf Foundation, “Fertile Ground for New Thinking,” with my ideas for improving Toronto’s park system. Its final recommendation was to start a park-focused NGO in the city. At the time, I had absolutely no intention to start or lead such a group, but an enthusiastic group of people were inspired by the paper and pushed me to start an NGO. In return, I cajoled them into becoming our founding board members and volunteers. We then embarked on a bold plan to support more people to see themselves as park leaders and to connect them to the tools they would need to create great parks for everyone.
On April 12, 2011, we officially launched Park People with our Toronto Park Summit. This was our first opportunity to connect park professionals and emerging advocates in our city. Through these lively conversations, we began building the collective power required to support and sustain vibrant green spaces that all urban residents can enjoy.
In the years since our original group of board members and volunteers has expanded exponentially: Park People now has more than 25 staff members, offices in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and a national board of city and community builders. We’ve also engaged thousands of new supporters — our Park People Network now unites 1,400 local park groups in 35 cities in every province, and we’ve provided grants to grassroots community leaders to animate their parks in 21 urban areas.
When launching Park People, our goal was to spark a city parks movement that could fundamentally change how our society sees the value of these public green spaces. It was an ambitious vision, but I think that through our work with many great partners and community leaders, we’ve achieved it.
Canada’s parks have changed significantly in these last 13 years, mostly for the better. Park People is proud to have been a small part of these shifts, contributing vital research on trends and opportunities and working with governments and park leaders to support progressive park policies.
As a result:
The major increase in park use during the height of the pandemic wasn’t a one-time blip: I’ve never seen so many people using our parks in so many new and creative ways. Parks are where we meet with friends, celebrate occasions, mourn losses, sample great food, hear music, and experience art—they’re key to the diversity, richness, and joy of urban life.
This belief has long guided the design of Park People’s grants, training, and networking programs, which have helped hundreds of people turn their parks into dynamic community hubs. We’ve consistently made the case for the unique value of parks, from our parks-focused platform for the 2014 Toronto election to solutions papers, national conferences and our Canadian City Parks Report.
They aren’t frills—they’re core to the character of our communities. Our research has shown that they measurably improve our physical, mental, and overall well-being and can serve as antidotes to the social isolation and loneliness epidemic.
Who isn’t using parks is as important as who is. Through programs like Sparking Change, Park People centres equity-deserving communities in our program planning and delivery, collaborating with them to ensure their knowledge and experiences make parks accessible for all. As we embark upon this work and share what we have learned from it, we’ve observed that equity metrics have increasingly become a core part of park planning and acquisition strategies in municipalities across the country.
As Rena Soutar of the Vancouver Parks Board says, “There is no such thing as a culturally neutral space that’s been touched by human hands.” The 2022 Park People Conference featured three of Canada’s leading Indigenous park professionals, Rena, Lewis Cardinal, and Spencer Lindsay, who addressed how colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can embed reconciliation and decolonization into the places we call parks. As an example, the Vancouver Park Board has implemented co-management and guardian programs with Indigenous communities. At the same time, Edmonton worked closely with Indigenous leaders on kihcihkaw askî, the country’s first urban Indigenous culture park site.
As our climate changes, urban parks are becoming increasingly important spaces to mitigate heat, absorb stormwater, and protect plants, animals, and people. Park People has been at the forefront of highlighting opportunities for parks to serve as powerful tools for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The value of a park doesn’t lie in size. Small pockets of green space can be far more meaningful to our well-being. As our cities increasingly densify and the cost of land rises, we’re seeing neglected spaces such as those under highways, roads, electricity corridors, railway lines, and even old landfills being transformed into beautiful natural spaces. Our research and financial support helped spur such innovative parks as Toronto’s Meadoway and Bentway and Calgary’s Flyover Park.
We’re asking a lot of our municipal parks departments. More people are using parks, and staff are now entrusted with addressing issues of homelessness, equity, reconciliation with Indigenous people, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. In my opinion, their work is more interesting and rewarding, and park staff are making a positive difference in our cities and communities. But it’s certainly a tougher job than it used to be. In response, Park People has made supporting and connecting our municipal park staff partners one of our top priorities.
The populations of our cities are rapidly increasing, and park budgets in Canadian cities are frankly not keeping up. If this longtime trend continues, I’m concerned about what our parks will look like 13 years from now. Without appropriate funding, there won’t be enough parks to meet community needs. We’ll slide down into an American-style model, where a lack of government support created a crisis in parks that philanthropy and private conservancies had to address. Partnerships and philanthropy are great, but there is absolutely no replacement for properly funded city parks departments.
Creative community partnerships are no longer the exception for city parks; they’re the norm. From working with local volunteer groups to creating formal park conservancies, park departments are embracing collaborations with unexpected partners to add value to city park resources, not replace them. Park People made the case for such partnerships from our earliest days, and we have helped to nurture and lay the groundwork for some of Canada’s leading park partnership models. Meanwhile, the federal government is becoming an important player in city parks. Canada was once one of the few jurisdictions without a strong federal role in city parks. But after creating Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, the federal government has initiated a process to create six new national urban parks across Canada in the next few years. Provinces like Ontario, which have traditionally stayed away from pursuing provincial parks in cities, have also committed to new urban parks. Park People has been excited to partner with governments and support these game-changing efforts.
Park People didn’t invent community involvement in parks — there were people across Canada doing that long before 2011. But we played a critical role by bringing them together, amplifying their voices, sharing their successes, inspiring others, and most fundamentally, making it easier for them to unlock resources and address barriers so that they can make their parks more vibrant and their neighbourhoods stronger.
The last 13 years have seen incredibly positive changes in Canada’s urban park system. I’m proud to say that Park People has played an important role in advancing these developments.
Decolonization of park practices, according to Rena Soutar, begins with the recognition that “there is no such thing as a culturally neutral space that’s been touched by human hands.”
On the first day of the 2022 Park People Conference, three of Canada’s leading Indigenous park professionals, Lewis Cardinal, Rena Soutar, and Spencer Lindsay directly addressed how colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can work to embed reconciliation and decolonization into the places we call parks.
Lewis Cardinal’s ceremonial name sîpihko geesik means “blue sky” and was given to him with the understanding that his ultimate purpose on Earth is “to build relationships between two worlds that don’t understand each other.”
In Edmonton, Cardinal is living up to his ceremonial name by devoting his work to building understanding between settlers and Indigenous communities. This lifetime of effort culminated in the recent opening of kihciy askiy, or sacred land, Canada’s first urban Indigenous ceremonial site in Edmonton’s River Valley.
In his presentation at The Park People Conference, Cardinal made it clear that the foundation for the 2022 opening of kihciy askiy was laid eighteen years earlier in 2004, when Aboriginal communities and the City of Edmonton co-created the Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Accord Relationship Agreement. The Agreement’s guiding principles established a new relationship between the two groups, which is best reflected in the statement:
“We believe all people in Edmonton are served well by positive relationships between the City and Aboriginal communities.”
Indigenous approaches to positive relationship-building such as mutual exchange and partnership, listening and storytelling, ceremony and celebration were, according to Cardinal, integral to the process of creating kihciy askiy. Over the long process of seeing the project to fruition, conflicts and challenges, of course, arose. However, Cardinal believes that the Agreement and the practices it codified helped “tamp down the darker forces of humanity” that can undermine visionary projects like Edmonton’s kihciy askiy.
Cardinal emphasized the importance of codifying the tenets of relationship-building in Agreements like the one in Edmonton. Once put in writing, these tenets set an intention for relationships that can be returned to again and again. In fact, one of the core principles of the Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Accord Relationship Agreement is a renewal, which includes the principle of “acknowledging this Agreement as a living document to be reviewed on a periodic basis to maintain accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and responsiveness.”
Like Cardinal, Rena Soutar, Manager of Decolonization, Arts and Culture, and Spencer Lindsay, Reconciliation Planner, both from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, consider the act of engaging in difficult conversations as the pathway to decolonizing park practices.
The Colonial Audit, which will be released in December, uses conversation as its central tool. In fact, for the audit, Soutar and Lindsay conducted 21 interviews over 5 months across 7 departments. As Soutar and Lindsay see it, only meaningful conversations can reveal the deep-seated colonial assumptions, beliefs and approaches underpinning the organization’s colonial park practices. In the audit, they identified 27 stories that illustrate the current effects of colonialism.
One story of embedded colonialism that Soutar and Lindsay shared at the Conference is the development of Vancouver’s NorthEast False Creek Plan. NorthEast False Creek is a prime downtown waterfront area in Vancouver that was set for redevelopment. Consultations with Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and Urban Indigenous communities revealed that “access to water” was a top priority for the park’s redevelopment. However, when preliminary plans for the site were shared, it was clear that this critical piece of First Nations’ input was lost in translation.
The Park Board hit ‘pause’ on the project to take the time to understand how, after so much consultation with local First Nations, the park’s design could miss the mark. The conversations that ensued helped highlight the importance of “cultural translation” in park design.
As Soutar and Lindsay shared, for the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations “access to water” in the park’s design meant the individuals would have direct access to the shoreline- in an intimate and immersive way. However, colonial mindsets dictated that “access to water” meant enjoying beautiful vistas of water from a distance. In other words, for settlers, access to water means a beautiful vista from which to gaze at nature from a god-like vantage point. For local First Nations, it meant fishing, conducting ceremonies, and placing their hands and feet directly in the water.
As Soutar and Lindsay highlighted, the Northeast False Creek Plan reveals the consequences of unexamined colonial perspectives. The conversation that centered First Nations’ perspectives instead of settler ones, as Soutar says, “turned the narrative upside down to show the embedded colonial perspective.” These conversations made invisible colonial worldview visible, which then opened up the opportunity to “unlearn.”
Cardinal, Soutar, and Lindsay all underscored that decolonizing colonial relationships with nature is an urgent imperative. As Cardinal put it, “we are living in sacred times.”
Decolonizing our relationship with nature means, according to Cardinal, “understanding the connection between ourselves and the natural and spiritual world that surrounds us.” Cardinal shared that reciprocity with nature requires settlers to recognize that humans are not at the “top of the food chain” or at “the center of the universe,” but rather occupy but “one seat in this great circle of life.” As he puts it, “being in a relationship uncentres individuals as the focus,” and helps people view themselves in “a bigger context of family, community, and nature.”
Like Cardinal, Soutar and Lindsay emphasized that decolonization is the only path forward if we are to protect ecological diversity, which is essential for humans to survive. As their presentations underscored, the future of humans is bound up with our relationships with each other and with the rest of nature. As Soutar shared, “plenitude, abundance—that was already here” before settlers arrived and declared Vancouver’s unceded territories ‘parks’ that are ‘for everyone.’
As Soutar, Lindsay, and Cardinal make clear in their presentations on decolonizing parks and relationships, if we are to collectively move in the direction of decolonizing our parks, we must “forget everything we know” about our relationships to each other and the rest of nature. But, before we can forget or unlearn, we need to render the too often invisible colonialist practices visible. The learning, which is the focus of the audit, moves us in the right direction since, as Soutar reminded attendees: “decolonization is a direction, not an outcome.”
Let’s Hike TO is a thriving Toronto organization that intentionally extends a warm invitation to people of colour, newcomers and young adults to join in engaging group hikes. Take note: The hiking group’s name is not just Hike TO, but Let’s Hike TO. The Let’s in the organization’s name signals both the group’s warm and welcoming nature and its core ethos that getting comfortable walking outdoors is best done in a safe and engaging community setting. While anyone can attend their walks regardless of their age or identity, the group has made an intentional effort since its inception in July 2021 to become the city’s diversity-focused hiking group.
In her latest book, Michelle Obama says: “For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in.”
Speaking to Camara Chambers, one of the four Founders of Let’s Hike TO, it’s clear that her group’s commitment to inviting others into nature underlies the group’s success. To date, Let’s Hike TO has led over 100 hikes attended by 1,300+ attendees. The hikes regularly fill beyond capacity, a phenomenon that’s been fuelled by widespread media attention in outlets ranging from BlogTO to the Guardian UK.Park People played an important role in the group’s early success by providing funding and training through our InTO the Ravines and Sparking Change programs. Now, with the group having recently secured non-profit status, we spoke to Camara to dig deeper into what it really means to invite communities into nature.
Growing up in London, Camara had a decidedly urban upbringing. Nature-based activities like camping, fishing, skiing and hiking were not, as Camara shared, in her family’s wheelhouse. Just to put a fine point on the subject, she tells me, “I definitely did not in any way identify as an outdoorsy person”.
In fact, Camara moved to Toronto as an adult to find a slower pace of life. And, while it may seem surprising that someone would turn to a big city like Toronto for a sense of calm, Camara assures me that the Canadian city is much slower-paced and less intensely urban than her bustling home city of 9 million residents.
As Camara was settling into her new home and career, an older colleague invited her to join her for a hike at a local hiking club. Camara had never heard of the club and had never hiked before. But, that initial invitation led Camara to “immediately fall in love” with hiking:
“It was calm, it was relaxing. I felt at peace with myself, I was immediately addicted.”
On that very first hike, Camara was so smitten that she made the decision to become a volunteer hike leader. Right away she started designing and leading hikes that reflected her own interests and the kind of hikes she’d be keen to join.
“We’d start at a TTC station and we’d end up at a craft brewery,” she tells me. “But, all along the way, we’d hike through lush ravines and green spaces. And, more and more people started coming out.”
Even though her hikes were well attended, Camara noticed that the people attending the club’s hikes tended to be older, long-time hikers and established Canadians. “The demographic was just not anywhere near as diverse as the city,” says Camara.
At the time, Camara was enrolled in a community organizing leadership course at Harvard. She thought the course’s practicum would provide a perfect opportunity to address the hiking club’s lack of diversity. Camara started small, writing a proposal to help the club attract young adults to their hikes. Ultimately, her proposal was rejected by the board.
Speaking of the hiking club, Camara shares: “There was a strong resistance to change and a general feeling that enough was being done already, but I could see so many untapped opportunities and ways to involve more diverse people.”
As academic and outdoor enthusiast Jacqueline L. Scott said in a recent article:
“Many people see nature as a neutral space that’s open to everyone. And while it’s true there isn’t usually any barbed wire preventing racialized people from accessing it, our findings show there are quite a few societal barriers they face.”
Frustrated by the inertia and keen to kickstart a practical solution, Camara decided to work with the three people who became her Co-Founders to create a new grassroots organization focused on inviting new communities into hiking in Toronto. “My colleague invited me to join on a hike, that’s how I got started,” says Camara.
“It’s important to invite people and welcome them into nature. Without that invitation, some people just don’t see themselves there. I know I didn’t.”.
By establishing Let’s Hike T.O., the three Founders set out to invite-in communities that had been systemically left off the hiking invitation list. In so doing, Let’s Hike T.O. sought to redress the embedded racism and exclusion in the hiking community and deliberately connect communities to the benefits of nature.
The iconic phrase ‘build it and they will come” proved to be true for Let’s Hike T.O. When the group extended an invitation to join hikes, a diverse community of hikers showed up.
“To be honest, the barriers didn’t really exist,” says Camara. “People just needed someone to show them that they could hike. To make it feel safe and accessible to them. It’s just that no one had asked them directly.”
How did Let’s Hike T.O. do it? Here are some of the strategies they use to extend the invitation to a new and eager community of Toronto hikers.
Like Camara, not everyone who eventually falls in love with hiking identifies as an “outdoorsy person.”As Camara freely confesses:, “I don’t know that much about like the flora and the fauna and I don’t know if I’m that interested to know that much about it.”
This may sound shocking to a die-hard naturalist, but Let’s Hike T.O,’s approach is:
“There are many ways to hook people on hiking, so why not be creative? There is nothing you can’t pair with hiking. Literally, you can do hiking plus anything.”
The groups’ “hiking + anything” approach has resulted in sold-out hikes on topics ranging from foraging to photography.
Hikes often feature an issue expert who leads the hike alongside the volunteer guide. That means that volunteer hike leaders don’t need to be experts on every topic under the sun and that the hikes always feature fresh content.
Using this approach, Let’s Hike T.O, has hosted hikes that feature equity groups, including hikes on Indigenous knowledge, Jewish history, and Black history. Camara has found this to be a great way to encourage equity-deserving groups to attend hikes.
For example, Park People’s InTO the Ravines program supported a hike in and around Toronto’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood. The hike was called “Walk Good”: after the Jamaican patois expression used to wish a departing traveller good fortune before a trip. The 5km hike led by two Black Torontonian hike leaders introduced participants to Little Jamaica’s Black history, featured Caribbean snacks like plantain chips, and engaged hikers in a 30-minute facilitated discussion about how racial identity impacts experiences in the ravines.
“A lot of people think they have to buy a lot of gear to go hiking and a lot of clubs insist that you need to have hiking boots. Particularly if you’re hiking in Toronto in the summer, you can get away with hiking in running shoes, or whatever shoes you feel comfortable walking in.”
As Camara points out, if people think they need to invest in expensive equipment to participate, they are much more likely to be intimidated and opt-out. Also, equipment costs can be a significant barrier to participation.
If the goal is to encourage people to opt-in, then it’s important to prioritize showing up over gearing up. While Camara emphasizes that people may eventually want to invest in simple gear like crampons during icy winter days, it’s best to solidify buy-in first.
Every Let’s Hike T.O. hike begins and ends at a TTC station or bus stop. The built-in assumption that participants have access to cars not only favours those with the greatest economic privilege but inadvertently punishes people who are choosing a more sustainable mode of transportation. Finally, making all the hikes TTC accessible helps people recognize that they don’t need to have a car to participate in hiking.
Also, as Camara points out, if you organize an event at 2 pm on a Tuesday, anyone who works typical office hours or a day job is automatically unable to attend. So, to reach a broader base of young prospective hikers, Let’s Hike T.O. schedules most of their hikes on weekends. Hikes start at 10 am or later, a time that says “we get it, you want to sleep in on the weekend.”
And, after hikers get their much deserved beauty rest, they don’t need to worry about falling behind because a number of Let’s Hike T.O.’s hikes happen at the comfortable pace of 3-4km per hour. This pace is slightly slower than the average adult walking speed. That means that participants of different ages or beginners don’t need to struggle to keep up. Instead of feeling bad about lagging behind, participants can focus on the positive experience of being in nature together, at any speed.
From the get-go, Let’s Hike T.O. has exclusively used familiar social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to attract new hikers.
Rather than relying on people finding them on the web, Let’s Hike T.O. spends its time where their audience is already hanging. Using a visual platform like Instagram allows the group to profile diverse participants having fun in nature. Pictures help curious types see themselves as potential hikers. It seems to be working as they’ve already secured over 2,000 followers.
Once they’ve been invited into hiking, Camara wants Let’s Hike T.O. participants to get hooked on the benefits of spending time outdoors.
“We’re definitely not the gatekeepers of nature. I always hope that people leave our hikes with an understanding of how they could do it themselves.”
The hikes are designed to build participants’ confidence in several key areas.
First, Camara emphasizes that through hiking, many new hikers build up their confidence in their body’s ability to carry distances. Hiking outdoor terrains gives people the opportunity to explore their body’s capacity and limits, and get hooked on the endorphins produced through physical fitness and activity.
Hiking also helps participants see their city differently. Toronto ravines, in particular, can be hidden in plain sight.
“The hikes give people an opportunity to learn about the natural spaces around them. Particularly if you live in a very urban part of Toronto, you might not have access to natural spaces like the ravines.”
Finally, the hikes provide an opportunity for participants to experience the benefits that come from spending time in nature. As highlighted in Park People’s 2022 Canadian City Parks Report feature on nature connectedness: “When we tune ourselves into the natural world, we feel more positive emotions, like vitality. We also ruminate less and act kinder and more generous to those around us.”
Camara’s own experience of becoming “totally addicted” to hiking happened because her time in nature provided her with the sense of calm she had been craving. She’s watched gleefully as she’s been able to spread this sense of calm and wonder to a new community of hiking participants since the group started only 18 months ago.
While it was a serendipitous invitation that inspired Camara to start Let’s Hike T.O., this inviting spirit underpins everything the organization does. By employing a strategy deliberately designed to invite people of colour, newcomers and young adults into hiking and reduce the barriers to participation, Let’s Hike T.O. has succeeded in connecting new communities to the benefits of spending time in nature. They’ve not only succeeded in redefining what it means to live in the city, they’ve redefined what it means to be an ‘outdoorsy person.”
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its latest report. In response to the report’s finding, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Terrible, alarming climate change news makes it difficult to know how to inch forward in any direction and to decide if our actions even matter.
This Venn diagram, created by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and co-founder of the Urban Ocean Lab is a useful tool to answer the question, ” What should I do about climate change?”
It’s featured in her TED Talk How to find Joy in Climate Action where she says:
“People often ask me what they can do to help address the climate crisis. But what they usually mean is what’s one quick, easy, simple thing they can do. Well, that particular ship has sailed.” She adds:
“All too rarely are we asked to contribute our special talents, our superpowers, to climate solutions. And what a failing. For that would actually enable the radical changes we need.”
Maggie Dunlop, a 2022 InTO the Ravine Champion, has many superpowers. She’s an education researcher and mother of two children under five who joined the program because she believes: “I have to be able to look them in the eyes in 2050 and tell them I did everything I could.”
About a minute into talking with Maggie, she sort of casually says:
“I was thinking, you know, we are just on a runaway train, and I can’t do anything to stop it. And I came to the conclusion that I just have to do a little thing. And that little thing is probably to make people a bit more connected to our place – the world around us.”
I paused and circled back, “The runaway train you mentioned?” I asked. And Maggie verified that yes, she was talking about that runaway train. The runaway train where it feels like you are a strapped-in passenger, most certainly not in the driver’s seat, with the train hurtling toward climate catastrophe.
Living your Venn diagram can feel small as climate change looms so very (very) large. But, at the same time, when a recent New York Times headline posed the question “Do You Have to Be an Optimist to Work Toward a Better World?” this answer resonated with me most:
“It’s important to imagine a positive future for a positive future to happen.”
In short, there is nothing naive about optimism. And, there’s nothing naive about Maggie who says: “It is not easy doing something new. There is a reason why things aren’t already being done.”
The new thing that Maggie is doing is helping her community dip into and see the green spaces and ravines in her community. That’s what connects her to her Venn diagram.
Access to amazing green spaces is what drew Maggie to her Toronto Rockcliffe Smythe neighbourhood. Rockcliffe Smythe was mostly farmland until the 1920s when it became home to a significant gravel quarry. The gravel pit was converted into Smythe Park and gifted to the community. The park is at the end of the Black Creek watershed, about 70 metres from the Humber River. It’s a growing and densifying community situated in a delicate river valley on active flood plains where homes regularly experience flooding. It’s also home to wood ducks, beavers, opossums (North America’s only marsupial), snakes, lizards and a greatly reduced population of frogs, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, fish, and turtles.
As an InTO the Ravines Champion, Maggie and her neighbour and fellow mother Francine Brunet received a little bit of funding, and some critical support to make a meaningful difference in connecting their community to the green space and biodiversity Maggie desperately needs them to notice.
You can hear Maggie’s frustration when she tells me: “People are “just buying stuff, and spending money and just not really thinking about how it’s all connected.”
Maggie’s a regular visitor to High Park where she takes her children to play and attends events when she can. It was in High Park where she was trained as a Turtle Protector. With a stipend to host an event in the park, Maggie and Francine hired a retired science teacher that Maggie met at an event in High Park. Maggie invited the teacher, and his box of caterpillars, to Smythe Park on a sunny summer afternoon.
Oh, and about 100 people showed up.
That’s the simple version.
The less simple version is that Maggie stopped people on her commute to work, with pockets full of flyers and her three-year-old daughter in a bike seat to joyfully tell passersby about the caterpillar event. She and Francine also strategically hosted the workshop on a day when families were hosting barbeques and gatherings in the park. They strolled over to families and invited them to come on over.
Later that summer, in a quiet corner of Smythe Park, stretching their stipend even further, Maggie and Francine hired an artist to lead a clay turtle-making workshop with families. They divided the group, with half heading to the water’s edge to learn about the turtles that live in the community. Prior to the event, most of those in attendance knew little or nothing about the turtles that live in the community and didn’t know that two species of turtles are provincially designated as of “special concern.”
This issue is of special concern to Maggie:
“When we don’t know that we’re among turtles when we don’t know what a red-winged blackbird looks like, we’re kind of walking through the world a little bit blind.”
Maggie grew up in England and was very disoriented by the varied species she encountered in her new Canadian home. “When I came here. I didn’t know what the trees were or the birds or the flowers. And, I felt illiterate as a result.”
So, Maggie is determined to build up ecological literacy – not just her own, but her community’s.
“If they know what a starling is, and they don’t see them so often anymore…when they notice that the animals that they’re used to seeing and whose behaviour they know, are acting differently….If they notice that the berries that this animal eats are not growing at the right time anymore, then it starts to make sense that we should be concerned about this.”
Maggie hopes to create a guide that translates common species’ names into Spanish, Portuguese, and Somali – the languages of parents of young children in her community. Because, “It’d be much easier for people to understand, to remember, if they knew what local animals, flowers and trees are in their own language.”
Maggie is planting seeds – seeds of knowledge, joy, literacy, awareness, building a better world, using her own two hands. Make no mistake about it: this is climate leadership. As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, the creator of the Venn diagram, says:
“There is so much work to be done, Please, do not choose something that makes you miserable. What we need is a change in every sector and every community. The solution shouldn’t be ‘What can I do to address the climate crisis?’, but ‘What can we do together?”