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?
We know we benefit when we get outside and connect with others when winter makes us feel isolated. Here are some ideas for how your group can animate parks in winter.
Here are some valuable tips to create a welcoming, safe, and respectful environment for participants of all abilities, backgrounds, ages, and gender identities!
Watch our special launch webinar with the Report's authors to get the inside scoop on our findings.
How the City of Charlottetown’s experience with Hurricane Fiona demonstrates the importance of cross-departmental partnerships and resilient infrastructure to mitigate the impact of extreme winds.
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This case study is part of the 2024 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
By 2030, 30% of Canada’s land, water, and marine areas will be protected. That is, of course, if the country meets this goal, which was set by the international community at COP15, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference.
Reaching such an ambitious goal requires strong collaboration. All levels of government, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, local non-profits, private landowners, and individual residents must all work together. But how do you build such a broad, but also deep coalition?
The work of Nature Canada–a national organization dedicated to protecting Canadian wildlife and wilderness–is all about bringing those various actors together in a concerted effort to work both nationally and hyper-locally through the Municipal Protected Areas Program to ensure Canada meets its 30×30 goal.
While protected natural areas may conjure images of vast uninterrupted pristine landscapes far away from where many of us live, Nature Canada Organizing Manager Dylan Rawlyk argued that protecting land within urban areas is vital.
One practical reason is that the most biodiverse landscapes within the country are situated along the southern edge of Canada where the majority of the population lives within a constellation of urban areas. Another less obvious reason has to do with storytelling. Bringing protected natural areas close to where people live their everyday lives helps make the importance of biodiversity more tangible. “[People] know it, they love it, and they’re connected to it,” Rawlyk said.
While cities often have natural area management and restoration plans in place, they each undertake conservation in slightly different ways, so part of the work of achieving the 30×30 target is working with cities to “unify all of our collective impacts,” Rawlyk said. While the majority of cities listed it as a priority, Park People’s 2024 survey found that one third of cities said addressing federal biodiversity and land protection goals was a high priority in 2024.
Nature Canada has forged both cross-country and hyper-local partnerships, creating, as Rawlyk put it, a web of organizations. At Nature Canada “we play the role of convening all those groups together and ensuring that we can see how the actions each one is doing is contributing to the greater whole.”
For example, in Hamilton, work led by Ontario Nature is helping to convene different organizations to add lands in the city’s Eco Park system to Federally recognized protection status. By working with the City of Hamilton, Hamilton Conservation Authority, and Hamilton Naturalist Club, the goal is to assess current lands and see which ones may need some different protection policies in place to meet the Federal definition and contribute to the overall 30×30 goal. Projects like this aligned with Federal programs such as the National Urban Park initiative led by Parks Canada are important to meet biodiversity protection goals.
Collaboration with First Nations communities and Indigenous organizations is “core” to the work, Rawlyk said, especially given the colonial history of conservation movements that have displaced Indigenous peoples from their land. To ensure these past mistakes are not repeated, Rawlyk pointed to an example of recent work by Réseau de Milieux Naturels protégés in Quebec, which “ran a workshop with a range of land trusts and also First Nations communities to try to build bridges between them.”
Nature Canada has also built partnerships with regional non-profits such as Ontario Nature and BC Nature who better understand local contexts and have strong political ties to move policies forward. Drilling down even further, working with hyper-local organizations, such as Whistler Naturalists Society, is essential because these groups hold deep knowledge of specific places, often performing activities like bio-blitzes to monitor species.
“That level of species understanding within the region is incredibly vital to be able to move forward with this work,” Rawlyk said. Even individual residents play a key role as they “can advocate to put more conservation measures in place” and act as watchdogs to ensure these places stay protected.
As climate change brings more frequent extreme weather, cities are grappling with increasing storm damage to parks and infrastructure. In 2024, 97% of municipal parks departments said that addressing impacts from climate change and extreme weather has become a challenge. Floods, droughts, and fires all pose risks, but there’s another element that’s caused massive damage in recent years–wind.
Park managers we spoke with in 2023 mentioned increasingly intense storms that don’t just bring higher wind speeds, but winds that last for more sustained periods, causing far more damage. While cities have begun to redesign parks to withstand flooding or adapt to drought through altering planting palettes, preparing for high wind presents a difficult challenge.
As the Parks and Recreation Manager for the City of Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, Frank Quinn knows a thing or two about preparing for storms. But when Hurricane Fiona hit the Island in September 2022 as one of the strongest storms to ever land on Canadian shores, it was a different beast.
The storm was Atlantic Canada’s most costly, causing $220 million in damage to Prince Edward Island alone. Hurricane Fiona lasted for hours, damaging municipal infrastructure and ravaging the city’s tree canopy. In the Royalty Oaks natural area many old growth trees were knocked down–some 300 years old.
Quinn said the City’s Emergency Measures Organization, which includes senior staff from different departments, met frequently leading up to the storm as well as afterwards. As a smaller city, Quinn said people from different departments are used to working and supporting each other–something that came in handy after the storm.
“We all had good working relationships, we all know each other. We had a wide range of experiences and expertise.” They were able to draw on each other’s knowledge of internal staff expertise, but also contractors who could be brought on to help.
Public safety and clean-up were top priority, but Quinn was also cognizant that “once you’re in the house for a couple days, you want to get out.” His team assessed every playground within the first couple of days as well as inspected trail systems, posting notices about what was closed and what was open for use.
Without power, communication was a challenge, Quinn said. As the city cleared trails and re-opened amenities like playgrounds, they posted messages on the city’s website and used the media. But the key to public messaging was working with community organizations, like church groups, to pass information along to city residents.
The City is now building redundancies into systems and creating more back-up services. One big issue during the storm was fuel, Quinn said. While staff had fueled up machinery and vehicles prior to the storm arriving, when they needed to be refueled there were issues because the main fuel depot did not have a back-up generator on site.
“We dealt with smaller storms before where there were power outages for a day or two, but when you have a storm and sections of the City doesn’t have power for two weeks, this creates several issues and challenges,” such as where to get fuel.
Franck Quinn, Parks and Recreation Manager for the City of Charlottetown.
Quinn said the City has learned lessons from the experience of Fiona and has already begun to prepare for the next storm. “We’re building new infrastructure and making it more resilient so that it can stand up to higher winds,” he said. The City also purchased new equipment that can be used for cleaning up trees, but can also be adapted for other day-to-day uses like grading trails.
When it comes to the health benefits of parks, what’s in a name? Can different types of parks – with varying sizes, histories, descriptions, and designs – offer the same benefits as Canada’s historic “destination parks?” Through Cornerstone Parks’ latest research, the answer is clear. Yes, and the key is making space for stewardship.
Cornerstone Parks launched in 2021 as the only national network maximizing the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks through direct funding for community stewardship, capacity-building within and between park groups, and measuring the impact of our collective work. In 2023, Park People analyzed two years’ worth of surveys from park users and volunteers at our founding three Cornerstone Parks – Stanley Park in Vancouver; High Park in Toronto; and Mount Royal Park in Montreal – to better understand the relationship between those parks and community health and well-being.
Our initial Cornerstone Parks Reports show that park use is associated with better health and well-being, and that these benefits are dependent on park users feeling nature-connected. People who engage in park stewardship (nature-based programs that invite volunteers to care for the land) versus other park activities report powerful environmental and social connections that make them happier and healthier. The results also show that some communities are unfortunately less engaged in park stewardship than others. The good news is that park stewardship – and its resulting health benefits – can often be accessed in unexpected places.
Understanding that most city residents do not live close to historic destination parks like Stanley Park, High Park, and Mount Royal, we wondered whether different types of large urban parks – from newer adaptive reuse projects to undeveloped arteries like river valleys – likewise boost community health.
To find out, we conducted voluntary, online and in-person surveys with 86 stewards participating in programs at four new Cornerstone Parks partners, Free the Fern Stewardship Society and the Everett Crowley Park Committee in South Vancouver, the Meewasin Valley Authority in Saskatoon, and the Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal. Between August and November 2023, survey respondents shared how stewardship impacts different aspects of their well-being and their engagement in pro-environmental behaviours.
Our 2023 Cornerstone Parks Reports echo the trends seen in our 2022 reports. From surveys with volunteer stewards at the new Cornerstone Parks, we found that:
Due to those nature connections, we found that:
These results are similar to what we heard from park stewards volunteering in long-standing destination parks in 2022.
Further, we investigated which park elements best support nature connections and thus have the greatest impact on health. Volunteer stewards in 2023 say that the places that best promote wellness-boosting nature connections are trails (25%); natural areas that include wildlife, forests, and native plants (30%); and around water (15%).
Volunteer stewards also say that the following places inhibit feelings of nature connectedness: grey/paved spaces (33%); crowded spaces (16%); recreation facilities including sports facilities, playgrounds, and other structures (21%); manicured lawns and non-native plants (17%); and areas with litter (12%).
The results demonstrate that naturalized spaces are essential to building strong connections to our environments. However, creating naturalized spaces in urbanized areas is not an easy feat. Our new Cornerstone Parks have found their own innovative ways to ensure diverse urban neighbourhoods enjoy nature nearby.
Free the Fern and the Everett Crowley Park Committee work in Everett Crowley Park and the adjoining Champlain Heights Trail system in South Vancouver, BC. Champlain Heights contains a former city landfill as well as hundreds of low-income, co-op, strata, and seniors’ housing units. The area now boasts the fifth largest park in Vancouver, Everett Crowley Park. The park and trails are part of the only 4% of native forest remaining in Vancouver, making them a refuge for residents.
“Our greatest success that these ecological improvements reflect positively on the mental and physical health of individuals, especially those who live in the Champlain Heights community.”
Damian Assadi, Chair of the Everett Crowley Park Committee and Director at Large of Free the Fern
The park and trail system balance the much-needed features of the neighbourhood – including the busy Champlain Heights Community Centre, and sports and recreation facilities – with assets proven to promote nature connectedness. Free the Fern’s many projects include a Healing Forest, recognized by the David Suzuki Foundation as dedicated to the land’s first inhabitants and their descendants. They also include a Native Food Forest whose fruits, berries, and other edibles benefit both food-insecure humans and wildlife, birds, and insects.
The Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal is also an adaptive reuse project. It includes a former railway that connects to the biodiversity of Mount Royal through a series of interventions within the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough. This densely-populated, lower-income area contains many elements that inhibit nature connections, including paved spaces, crowds from the nearby universities, numerous sports facilities, and litter generated by local shops and restaurants.
“The city is an ecosystem, but a very disturbed ecosystem where we can create a habitat for species to thrive. But the ecosystem is also full of people with connections to the places they live. A socio-ecological approach balances people’s attachment to the places they live with the needs of ecosystems and creates new connections between both, for the benefit of both.”
Alexandre Beaudoin, Founder of the Darlington Ecological Corridor
Darlington achieves this balance of biodiversity, food security, and climate resilience by re-introducing nature connections into the urban fabric. They do this through giant gardening pots placed along the corridor where neighbours can reserve a pot, take free gardening courses, and plant their choice of edibles and flowers. Darlington maintains a nourishing forest and community gardens along the route, enabling residents to access fruits, berries, and plant medicines. A third of Darlington stewards (33%) say that these food forests are their favourite places to connect to nature. Knowing the well-being impacts of water, Darlington is also revitalizing a healing pond for patients of a local rehabilitation institute whose sensory, language, hearing, and motor abilities are impaired.
The Meewasin Valley Authority operates in the Meewasin Valley, a 6,700-hectare park that spans the South Saskatchewan River for 75 kilometres through and beyond the city of Saskatoon. Meewasin’s central location and massive trail system enable over 2 million visitors annually to explore its nationally unique ecosystems without leaving the city. Stewards could not contain their love for Meewasin, with almost 50% providing additional programming feedback and telling us they want more opportunities to volunteer!
“Meewasin aims to transform visitors through meaningful experiences: teaching about sustainability, how to be a good steward to our natural environment in our everyday life, and ways to stay involved through volunteering, donating, or sharing information.”
Andrea Lafond, CEO of Meewasin
The Meewasin Valley is linear and uninterrupted by development; therefore, it extends the benefits of nature to a wide variety of communities. Upgrades to the Meewasin Trail mean that residents from North, South and core Saskatoon neighbourhoods have access to the park and its programs. Access isn’t limited to those with the physical ability to travel there; Meewasin’s work exists in the digital space as well. The Meewasin App highlights traditional uses for the region’s land, river, and medicinal plants to showcase the intersection between traditional Indigenous and ecological knowledge.
Large urban parks aren’t bound by any one definition. Whether they’re 100+-year-old destinations like Stanley Park, High Park, and Mount Royal Park, or take other innovative forms, they offer proven health and well-being benefits to their communities. The 2022 and 2023 Cornerstone Parks Reports prove that the most important predictor of health and well-being is nature-connectedness. While Canadian cities continue to densify, there is a lot that they can do to reclaim their “in-between” spaces and create meaningful connections for the diverse communities that surround them.
Free the Fern and the Everett Crowley Park Committee, the Meewasin Valley Authority, and the Darlington Ecological Corridor reach out along neighbourhood trail systems, river valleys, and rail corridors – sites that resist urban development – to nourish their communities. They offer wellness-boosting programs and volunteer opportunities alongside access to food, healing, knowledge-sharing, and other points of connection. They thereby sustain and enrich both their own organizations’ capacities and the lives of residents around them.
It doesn’t matter what a park is called so much as it matters that communities feel called to it. Communities hear that call via the many nature-connected features, programs, and stewardship opportunities offered again and again by Cornerstone Parks. Hear the call and experience what park stewardship can do for you!
Food-based park programming like food forests, community gardens and edible plants have grown in scope and popularity in the last five years in Canadian cities. Clearly, both municipalities and community members see the potential for food production in parks and want to see more of it. Over the past three years, 50% of city residents consistently say they’d like to see more urban agriculture and community gardens in their parks.
But if cities are planning to invest in park-based food programs, how can they ensure they are being used and, crucially, that produce is actually reaching those in need?
Launched in 2020, the City of Victoria’s Get Growing Victoria program uses a food justice approach to provide gardening supplies to communities at-risk of experiencing food insecurity, including people experiencing houselessness, Indigenous and racialized communities, seniors, and youth.
Instead of only focusing on increasing access to fresh food for all residents, food justice acknowledges that certain populations face structural and systemic barriers to food security. By acknowledging the barriers to gardening, the Get Growing program is able to provide sustainable and healthy food to those who tend to be excluded from community garden programs.
The Parks department quickly realized that the best way to reach those at-risk populations was to partner with non-profit organizations who know the community needs best. Collaborating with non-profit partners also meant the City was better able to meet the community where they’re at rather than expecting people to self-identify and sign-up for the program through city processes.
The program now has 67 community partners including public health organizations, mental health service providers, immigrant and refugee organizations, social service providers and affordable housing organizations. The partner organizations distribute gardening supplies and vegetable seedlings grown in City greenhouses to their clients and community members so they can use the materials at home or in their local community garden. Get Growing gives partners the autonomy to integrate the materials into their program delivery in ways that best suit their community’s needs.
City of Victoria food systems coordinator, Julia Ford, tells us they would not be able to run the program without the non-profit partners. “They greatly increase our impact, and allow us to reach more vulnerable communities that the program is intended for and who may not otherwise interact with the City directly.”
Exemplifying Julia’s point, this year our public survey found that over 30% of city residents do not feel confident that they know who to reach out to if they experience a problem or have feedback about their park. By collaborating with local non-profits that do have stronger rapport with local community members, the City of Victoria can reach those who feel disconnected from city services.
Now in the program’s fourth year of operation, it is estimated that 400,000 pounds of fresh produce has been grown. Beyond that, evaluation of program participants found that the vast majority of participants felt that the program increased their mental well-being, intake of healthy foods and increased their overall physical activity levels. The program demonstrates what’s possible in parks when we start looking at them with community health in mind.
“I think this program demonstrates the potential for Parks Departments to really look at the resources they have available and think creatively about how to use them to support community and preventive health in a much more active way,” Ford said. “I think within the Parks sector there’s a solid understanding that passive park use and access to green space is important for mental health and well-being. But how can we move to be active partners in supporting communities who want to spearhead innovative uses of public space? How can we support people to explore new recreational activities in a meaningful, accessible and equitable way?”
Julia Ford, City of Victoria Food Systems Coordinator