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For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the…
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Are you currently running your park group with a growing number of volunteers? Is your group getting more ambitious and looking for some direction around governance? The committee model is useful when your group is too large for a leadership team model or if you are looking for ways to share leadership better and move things along more quickly. How the committee model gets applied varies based on the nature of your group and your goals. We asked the Friends of Roxton Road Parks to give you a flavour of what the committee model might mean for your organization.
It’s no surprise that park groups organize themselves differently from not-for-profit organizations with paid staff. For many volunteers, park work is a ‘side-hustle’ on top of work or family responsibilities. Individual responsibilities can range from light to overwhelming, and the governance model that an organization has a lot to do with moderating workload.
Grassroots Growth, a project from Volunteer Toronto, highlights three models of governance common for smaller organizations like most community park groups. The three most common models to consider for your community park group are Strong Leader, Leadership Team and Committee. This article will illustrate the application of the Committee model, as applied by (FoRRP).
According to Grassroots Growth, with the Committee model “members of the governance structure are organized into various committees or working groups. Each committee is responsible for specialized tasks with respect to the group’s activities. All the committees do work that ties back to the organization’s mission and vision.” The Committee model is useful when your group is too large for a Leadership Team model or you are looking for ways to share leadership better and move things along more quickly.
We spoke with Zac Childs, Convenor of FoRRP in Toronto, Ontario, whose organization takes care of three parks in west Toronto: Fred Hamilton Playground, George Ben Park, and the Roxton Road Parkette. The organization came into being in 2011 when a group of eight Ward 19 neighbours responded to a City of Toronto need for local guidance on upgrades to Fred Hamilton Playground. These eight people formed FoRRP, which started out with a Leadership Team governance model: each member had a distinct duty, but all worked together on a common goal. The Leadership Team model spreads the load amongst a number of members.
As the group’s goals quickly became more ambitious, members were struggling to keep up with all of the duties that their positions entailed. A year after it was formed, the loose affiliation of people sharing a common purpose had officially formed the Friends of Roxton Road Parks, comprising a Board of Directors and distinct committees formed to oversee specific aspects of the revitalization of the three adjacent parks along Roxton Road.
FoRRP moved from a Team Leadership to a Committee model in order to tackle more projects more effectively, spreading the workload amongst more people in an organized fashion. Committees consist of several members who tackle one project area, such as ‘history’ or ‘playground’. Each FoRRP committee has a Chair and a Co-Chair to lead committee activities. Committees may also have other regular members, depending on their size. All committees are overseen by the Board of Directors, which decides on the direction that the organization is going to take. Directors may be Committee Chairs and Co-Chairs, but it is not a prerequisite for being a Director.
Committees pursue various initiatives independently and make their own decisions. Major initiatives are typically approved by the Board of Directors before they are initiated, especially if they require funds from the group or municipal approval. If there are multiple options, Directors may decide to hold a vote.
In all, FoRRP has over 50 members including Directors, committee members and peripheral members who mostly come out to events. The organization also maintains an email list of approximately 150 consisting of members and volunteers, neighbours, park users, and anyone else who wishes to follow the group’s activities.
“The more the better,” comments Childs.
“Groups like ours can use all the friends we can get, so we don’t insist on membership to be in the know about what we are doing. In fact, that information encourages people to join.”
FoRRP holds an Annual General Meeting, open to the public, where Board Directors and Chairs of the various committees are nominated and voted in. To keep silos from forming within the group, the organization also has four Steering Committee meetings per year in which they discuss park activities and the progress of the committees. Some members of the broader group also attend these meetings.FoRRP committees currently include:
Since the FoRRP group officially convened in 2011, some City of Toronto funds were procured and allocated for work beginning at Fred Hamilton Park for maintenance and capital upgrades. Significant park levies from a condo development on College Street have provided additional funds for future upgrades as well, but that was not enough. FoRRP applied for a Live Green Toronto grant, for which they had to become an official not-for-profit (NFP) organization. Since FORP already had a board of directors and a more formalized governance structure, they were ahead of the game in that respect.As part of the transition to NFP, FoRRP decided on four key principles to guide their park husbandry, principles designed to align the growing membership on organizational purpose:
Volunteer groups need to build in resilience in order to operate and thrive. The Committee model helps with that. When there is a change in the group or someone in a leadership position leaves, a benefit of the Committee structure is that it enables another member who is already involved in that aspect of FoRRP’s work to step in and fill the shoes of the member who is departing.
Like most all-volunteer groups, FoRRP has had many people join and step away as their interests and obligations changed. In a bid to facilitate such changes, the group has come up with a few practices: asking for advance notice when someone is stepping down, always bringing in new volunteers, keeping good records, and being open to dropping a park initiative if a member resigns.
As Childs says:
“Ultimately, we want our members to keep doing what they’re doing as long as it’s fun. When you get people working together in committees, it increases their ability to step up and fill a void left by a departing committee member. We’re prepared when people come and go.”
If your parks group is taking on more responsibility and has a growing core team, think about the Committee model of governance. It puts control into more hands and can make it easier to divide the workload to achieve more. It’s also a flexible path to creating a more formalized governance structure. This can ease the way to incorporation if that is a group goal.
Because parks are used by different people whose sense of safety may bump up against one another, the topic of safety is very complicated. What makes one group feel safe, may make another feel unsafe and unwelcome. At its core, safety means inhabiting a predictable, orderly world that is somewhat within our control. After our basic physiological needs are met, the need for safety and security is a basic need for everyone.
How do you create safe environments in parks?
Because parks are used by different people whose sense of safety may bump up against one another, the topic of safety is very complicated. What makes one group feel safe, may make another feel unsafe and unwelcome. We spoke to two community park groups who have faced safety challenges and are working hard to make their parks welcoming, inclusive, and safe places. Here’s what we learned.
When a sexual assault happened in Graham Park in September 2017, the community surrounding the St. Clair West Neighbourhood in Toronto was devastated. People retreated from the park and laneway that was a common access point to the park.
The park had experienced mounting safety concerns over many years and the sexual assault catalyzed the community members surrounding Graham Park to move into action. Feeling helpless in addressing this complex topic, their first step was to connect with Metrac, a non-profit that delivers innovative safety services in Toronto, including conducting safety audits for communities. As they describe, the goal of Metrac’s safety audit is to “improve the environment to make it safer, more inclusive and less threatening for users.”
When Julian Back contacted Metrac, they set up a one-day training followed by a safety audit. The audit was open to everyone in the community and to any park users. Key government and park staff were also invited.
The core of Metrac’s safety audit process is a facilitated walk around the entire park, giving everyone a chance to reflect on their experiences and feelings of safety while at specific locations within the park.
As Metrac points out, “lived experience informs the outcome of the audit.”
To this end, Metrac strongly encourages groups to go the extra mile to ensure that people from different ages and backgrounds participate in the audit. This is anything but simple to put into practice. But, they encourage groups to go beyond the general principles of good outreach to ensure a range of perspectives are welcomed and heard. A solid approach is working with community leaders who have the trust of the community. Providing them with some training and key messages to address any concerns will help ensure diverse representation.
Even if there’s not a version of Metrac in your city, it’s critical to have a facilitated discussion about the challenges the park is facing. An experienced facilitator can make sure voices are respectfully heard and that no one group or individual feels like the “target” of the discussion, even if conflicting perspectives of the park emerged.
For example, youth who gather on the picnic benches may justifiably feel unsafe when adults throw accusatory glances or make disparaging comments. On the flip side, the adults may feel unsafe when large groups of youth congregate on park benches. It takes careful facilitation to make it possible to recognize and acknowledge differing and conflicting perceptions of safety, but it is possible.
“The safety audit is an opportunity for the community to learn how to better resolve conflict, together.”
Linda Frempong, Safety Audit Coordinator at Metrac.
Another Toronto park group, Friends of Masaryk Park and Melbourne Parkette formed to help improve conditions in the park which had been neglected for years and was in a horrible state of disrepair, including broken benches and playground equipment, dead trees and broken lights.Masaryk Park is in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, where people struggling with addiction live alongside the largest concentration of Tibetans outside of Asia. It’s also a community that is quickly gentrifying.
Friends of Masaryk Park and Melbourne Parkette took concrete steps to get input from as many people in the community as possible.
Very quickly, Susan Armstrong, the group’s founder, learned two valuable things:
Approaching the challenges of the park through the lens of safety ensures improvements will move more quickly with the Municipality.
Community members need to participate in the process since they know their park best and are at risk of feeling alienated by the very people who are trying to help.
Armstrong kicked off the new Friends group by launching a petition asking the city to replace a broken-down play structure. The petition included pictures of the structure in a state of disrepair. The petition gave the park group a reason to connect to the community and to make it known that they were actively working to engage the city. They also communicated that a meeting in the park would follow the petition to discuss next steps.
“The truth is, more affluent residents tend to be more vocal and therefore don’t leave a lot of space for the rest of the community,” says Armstrong.
The Friends group addressed this challenge by decentralizing the input process by allowing people to share their views on potential changes in the places where they spent time. A small group of volunteers approached residents one by one to let them know of the potential changes to the park and to get their input. It is a great way for park groups to meet neighbours and to reach out to residents who you might not hear from. They also posted notices of the changes at the library, the community centre, the Community Health Centre, at a series of community meetings and of course, right in the park.
Metrac’s 40-page report on Graham Park highlights numerous recommendations on improved lighting and visibility, the park’s features, the quality of maintenance and access to the park and the beautification of the park to create a space that is engaging and inviting. The report was shared with the Councillor and policeJulian Back knows that it will take time to implement the changes and is confident that key structural changes will happen over time. But he also realized that quick wins would help build momentum for the park.
One of the key recommendations from the report was to make the park entrance much more inviting. Previously, a park sign forced people to enter the park through a narrow, roughly paved entryway that made them feel unsafe. Now, the entrance to the park has been significantly opened up by moving the sign and electrical box and the pathway has been repaved. Because the park’s entrance is ostensibly the doorway to the park, the change made a significant impression on the community.
Another finding was that the alleyway at the back of the park was tagged with graffiti, making the view into the park uninviting and ominous.
With funds from a community-driven crowdfunding campaign and the support of the city, local community members Julian Back and Kim Lesperence engaged with Wall Expressions and Street Art Toronto and 40 walls and garages were painted with vibrant artwork–all in a single weekend. It was a painting blitz which resulted in a vibrant “outdoor art gallery.”
Julian and Kim invited the whole community to join in a celebration in the Graham park while the painting process took place. The celebration helped launch the new murals which brought much-needed vibrancy to the park.
Susan at Masaryk park drives home the importance of small changes.
“Once residents see a few improvements they will take notice and start to view the park differently.”
After the petition was submitted, the park’s play structure was replaced within 6 months. Next, the city removed a fence and dense shrubs and lowered a hill to improve sightlines and make the park feel more open and accessible from the street.Over the next 2 years, broken benches were removed and replaced, and finally, more garbage bins made a huge difference in getting garbage out of the park. A small but mighty way to make a difference.
Susan’s experience has taught her that while it’s important to have a plan for changes to the park, you have to be willing to be flexible.
“Keep asking the City nicely and stress the need for safety” she advises.
Of course, Masaryk park still has a very long wish-list but an iterative process has benefits: people feel the history of the park is respected and they get to see how small changes impact park use.
Safety comes with getting more people to come to the park. Generally, a busy place is a safe place. This goes back to what Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street.”
Masaryk park has a long history of collaborating with local organizations to animate the park. Greenest City, a local non-profit has a flourishing community garden, called HOPE community garden, in the park and they have partnered with Friends of Masaryk Park to host parties, art projects, potlucks in the park and provide support for the summer/fall Good Food Market.
In addition Friends of Masaryk Park and Melbourne Parkette has collaborated with the local library to host kids book readings, sourced drums from the local Community Health Centre to run community-led drumming lessons, and worked with the Greenest City to host a Good Food Market in the park.
The Friends of Masaryk Park also hosts their own programs in the park-like family pizza parties, a pumpkin parade, the annual 50 Cent kids book sale, movie nights, and splash pad Water fight nights.
Susan’s advice is that it can literally take years for programs like these to catch on, so be patient and give programs time to grow and iterate.
Since changes at Graham Park, Julian has seen more young children using the park and more summer camps use the park for activities. It’s the beginning of a long journey to restore a sense of safety within the community, but it’s already making a difference. also a flexible path to creating a more formalized governance structure. This can ease the way to incorporation if that is a group goal.
How can you make sure the next group of volunteers are well-prepared to step into their roles? Diane Dalkin, President of Calgary’s Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society (FoRRGS) has made a point of planning for the next volunteer board President, long before she’s ready to step away from her role with the non-profit volunteer advisory group. Here’s Diane’s candid advice on succession planning to help your group with volunteer ‘futureproofing.’
From day one, Diane Dalkin, President of Calgary’s Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society (FoRRGS) operated under the principle that her time at FoRRGS is finite. She openly discussed this with the Board of Directors and has used it as a guiding principle in her role. Diane admits that this approach fundamentally changed how her group operates. Built-in succession planning pushed her team to be deliberate about codifying practices and documenting historical information. For example, FoRRGS had a long-standing verbal agreement with the City of Calgary whereby the City provides the group with free access to space and marketing materials and in return, FoRRGS leads educational programs on the site and helps raise funds for the park. Soon after starting, Diane requested that this verbal agreement be formalized with the City and suggested an annual Letter of Understanding with the City, to ensure that future members of the group and City staff could understand and benefit from the mutual agreement, regardless of staffing changes.
Diane believes that leadership potential can come from anywhere in the organization and that welcoming new people is key to succession planning. That’s why she implemented strategies that made it easier for people to join Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society. Here’s her advice:
Diane and her group changed the member structure to allow people to join the Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society without joining the board. This way, new members can ease into the organization, contributing time and talent in small, convenient increments and learn the ropes. This also helped new members fall in love with the purpose of the group, before making the time commitment required of board members. Diane says this strategy has helped attract several new people to the group and has become a gateway to deeper engagement.
FoRRGS has a great story to share about this historical garden park – Diane realized this early on and helped get that story into important marketing platforms like their website. Recognizing that technology is such an important vehicle for today’s communication strategy (i.e. social media), Diane made it a priority to find tech-savvy members to create their website and social media content. Diane believes that the group’s strong online presence featuring the park’s legacy, history, plant life, news and events is essential to attracting a broad range of new audiences.
In the past, the group was predominantly made up of history buffs. Diane and the FORRGS team recognized that there was an opportunity to attract different park users to the group. Diane and her team enlisted plant enthusiasts, educators, photographers, bird-watchers and people who just had a love of the park to become more engaged. Today, the team is comprised of Master Gardeners, retired teachers, engineers, geologists, yoga instructors, artists, communication professionals, financial advisors, and students, to mention but a few. The diversity of the group keeps ideas interesting and helps generate programs that appeal to a wide range of park users.
Diane has put practices in place to ensure that important information exists in more than one person’s institutional memory. For example, team members are encouraged to work in pairs, with a focus on information sharing. This way one member mentors the other in a particular skill. And, if one person can no longer commit to the volunteer group, someone else is prepared to step in and keep projects moving forward. Of course, no one likes to think of endings. But, by building the end into the beginning of your volunteer role, you can make sure that the final chapter is a happy, successful one, for everyone.
This resource will help you join the growing number of people helping improve their local park. It will show you how to get involved with your existing local park group and the step-by-step process you can follow to launch a new one.
By creating a community park group, you are showing that you care about parks and communities and want them to be better. There have been community park groups doing great work in their parks for decades. Park People is helping to grow the number of groups and build a connected network of groups across all of Canada.
Anyone can join a community park group! You can find an up to date list, contact information and links for many community park groups on the website of your city.
Many cities support park stewardship through Adopt-A-Park or Park Ambassador programs. If that’s the case, contact the Adopt-a-Park program coordinator in your city; he or she will be able to tell you if there is already a group in your park. If you’re not sure if you city has any stewardship programs, start by contacting 311.
In most Canadian cities, there is no official process for starting or registering a community park group. In some cities, adopt-a-park or other city-run park stewardship programs provide a formal process for getting involved – call 311 to learn more. While you may not need permission to start a community park group, it is always important to build a good relationship with your local city councillor, park staff and residents.
There are no formal rules or guidelines on how a community park group should be organized and operated. Just as every park is unique, every park group is unique and you will have to find the structure that works best for the members of your group. Here is a list of tips to keep in mind:
When you are starting out, keep it simple and easy. Unless you are getting into significant fundraising or cash flow, there is no need to incorporate as a non-profit.Becoming a legal charity that can issue tax receipts for donations is very time-consuming and expensive. If you are considering doing fundraising for your park, there are far easier alternatives than becoming charitable.Even if you don’t incorporate as a non-profit, your group can get a bank account, sometimes with low fees for community groups.
As citizens, we all have a say and a responsibility for our shared public spaces. Often these spaces are municipally owned parks, but they can also be social housing lands, schoolyards, electric transmission corridors or civic plazas. It’s important, before undertaking any work in the park, to find out who owns the land and who runs the maintenance operations. Connect with your councillor before undertaking any park projects. Your role as a community park group is to:
Ask any local community park group and they will say that one of the keys to their success has been building a constructive relationship with the staff who oversee the park. Find the park staff person whose job it is to monitor and stay on top of all key problems and issues in their assigned parks.Build a relationship with your park staff by:
Your priorities will depend on the needs you identify in your park as well as the talents and interests of the people involved. One person can’t do it all – try assigning key people to specific initiatives. Here are just a few examples:
Fundraising is never easy but it’s a critical way to show that there’s support for your project in your community. Here are a few ideas that have been used by park groups across Canada.
You are not alone and there are many people who want to help you succeed! Park People is here to support and guide you every step of the way. Sign up for our newsletter and check our Facebook and Instagram feed to stay on top of new developments in parks across the country. Attend our in-person or virtual events to meet and learn from other park groups.
We look forward to getting to know you.
“You are the spark! Share your dream for your park space with your closest friends in your neighbourhood and start the fire. Organize a community meeting with your councillor and advertise with flyers in your local paper. Collect emails at the meeting and ask each person on that list to invite one other neighbour to get involved. Set up your park group on Facebook and ask everyone to join. Now you are ablaze! Nothing is impossible!”
Dawn Chapman, Friends of Moncur Park
Working with a charitable trustee is a common, and very important step in your group’s growth. If you’re hoping to raise funds for events or park improvements, you’ll need a charitable trustee to receive funds and provide tax receipts. However, the benefits of having a positive relationship with a charitable trustee far exceed fundraising objectives. When well aligned, a relationship with a trustee will help both groups flourish.
As a small, community-based organization, how do you raise funds to do the things you need to do? You need to bring on new members, undertake projects that may involve hard costs and publicize the events you hold. And when you want to do something ambitious, you really need to get creative about fundraising. Grassroots organizations in Canada can take the form of an Association, a Trusteeship, a Not-for-Profit, or a Charity. Only two of these will enable you to issue donor tax receipts and to apply for most forms of publicly available grants. They are trusteeships and charities. Establishing a charitable trusteeship is the simplest, fastest way to issue tax receipts and access grants. In essence, you align your organization with a charity whose mandate is somewhat similar to yours. Tax receipts are important to donors, especially larger donors, because a portion of funds donated gets deducted from their taxes. We spoke to Julet Allen, Program Director at Delta Family Resource Centre, a grassroots, non-profit, community-based agency in Toronto’s Rexdale community.
The process of signing on a trustee is straightforward.
First, find a registered charity that does something similar to what you do. For example, if your mandate is to take care of and improve a local park, you could align yourself with a charity that has an environmental mandate, even if it’s, for instance, preserving wilderness areas across Canada.
Next, approach one or more organizations with a proposal. You will want to find an advocate within the organization. At some point, you will probably need to explain what you want to do to their senior staff or board of directors.
To establish a charitable trusteeship, you will need a Letter of Agreement that outlines the terms of the partnership and the roles and responsibilities for your group and for the charity. That’s pretty much all you need. There’s a sample letter below.
As far as responsibilities go, your group would typically be responsible for finding and writing grants, managing the deliverables and funding, managing the relationship with the funder and reporting back to them. The trustee would provide legal charitable status, history and credibility that you can mention in future proposals, a bank account and the financial infrastructure to manage money. As a charity, they will have a legal governance structure that likely includes a board of directors, audited financial statements and an annual report. These are things required by most funders.
As Julet emphasizes, being a trustee is a commitment that takes time:
“Ensure that the organization you want to work with has the same vision for you as you do for yourself…and that they have time to work with you.”
The main reason that a potential trustee would take you on is to further their own mandate.If they want to educate the public about wild places while working to preserve them, they may see the value of your mandate to maintain the integrity and enjoyment of a local park. Likewise, if they work to improve living conditions in a high needs neighbourhood, they may understand the important roles a safe, enjoyable park plays in terms of outdoor recreational and mental wellness.Trustees get to further their mandates, but they also get a small portion of funds you raise—typically 10% to 15%. That may seem like a lot for not much, but keep in mind that the charity has infrastructure to maintain, returns to file, cheques to process and bookkeeping to perform. By taking you on, they are also taking on reputational risk.Another kind of risk, legal risk, is something to discuss before signing a partnership agreement. Are you going to be covered under their insurance policy? If so, they will have to contact their insurance representative and may incur additional cost. Or they might ask you to prove that you have liability insurance of your own.
You might be thinking: ‘well, if we register as a charity, we can keep all the money we raise’. You would be correct, but there is a reason why most grassroots organizations progress the way they do. Here are the steps that most groups take:
The reason is that becoming a charity takes years, requires a lawyer and comes with obligations such as forming and keeping a board of directors and filing a charitable tax return every year. Most grassroots organizations find that in the early stages, these are not responsibilities they want to take on.
Any group that is a charity can be your trustee as long as you have something in common with their charitable mandate. We often advise park groups to find local organizations to partner with: if they are local, they can partner on doing things together. So if the charitable organization is having a street festival, you could complement it by putting on a park festival at the same time. As Julet aptly states: “Trusteeship goes beyond the financial. A trustee can provide guidance, like how to plan a budget or get funding. Trustees have resources that you can tap into.”
Not everyone knows where to find local charitable organizations. The best place to start is with precedents: park groups are often trusteed by local community health organizations, church groups and other neighbourhood organizations.
Before you enter into an agreement, it’s important to find the right fit. Part of that involves having clear conversations with a potential trustee about your mandates, your planned activities and your goals. It’s a good idea to document those conversations through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or a Letter of Agreement, also called a Partnership Agreement.
A trusteeship is hands-down the best way for a smaller organization to gain the important advantages of a charity without all of the work and up-front cost. If you choose to go down that path, we wish you the best of luck in your quest! We’re looking forward to seeing you grow.
Click here to see a sample of trustee agreement.
Are you considering a community garden for your community? Chloe Sanchez is working on one for her Community Housing residence and her experience and insights can help you get started.
Chloe Sanchez believes that green spaces “unlock the parts of people that allow them to expand and grow.” This belief has fuelled Chloe’s work on a community garden that will bring the healing power of plants to the people in her neighbourhood. Chloe lives at Toronto’s 415 Willowdale, a Toronto Community Housing community in the inner suburb of North York. The community is made up of 280 units with very little access to green spaces. Chloe is 415 Willowdale’s tenant representative and has been working for three years to realize her vision of a healing, outdoor space for the people living in her community, and beyond.
Two years ago, a grant offered through Park People and TD Bank helped Chloe begin envisioning and planning her greening project. She quickly discovered that the property she wanted to use to create a community garden was not, in fact, owned by Toronto Community Housing, but by the City of Toronto. This unexpected learning added complexity and extended the timeline for the project. Chloe maintained a positive attitude and pivoted, giving her focus to animating the vacant green space with events to deepen the community’s engagement in the concept of growing healing and medicinal plants. Now, Chloe is moving forward her community’s vision for a greenhouse that features plants that heal.
Here’s how she did it.
Chloe’s advice is simple: start with your city councillor.
“It’s critical to develop a relationship with your councillor, but it’s not as easy as it sounds, because they’re often so busy.”
When first meeting your councillor, Chloe advises bringing your proposal, project plan and blueprints. Because they were so well prepared, Chloe and her group had a positive response from their councillor and were able to develop further plans that addressed their questions and concerns. One of the concerns was related to vandalism and theft that has occurred in several other community gardens. To address this concern, Chloe worked with the city on the concept of a greenhouse.Chloe also advises that groups work hand in hand with their funders, who can offer much more than financial support for projects. She credits TD FEF with providing practical advice and feedback on both the initial vision for the garden and the greenhouse.
“They’ve worked on so many projects. It’s a good idea to connect with funders like TD FEF for advice and insight to make the project succeed. You both have a vested interested in making the project a success.”
Chloe knows alot about medicinal plants, but she also knows that there are a number of people who have more specialized expertise than her:
“If I don’t know something, I don’t know it. But, that’s okay, because other people are around who can help me.”Chloe and her group have consulted with numerous experts including Indigenous leaders, horticulturalists, naturalists and educators. In fact, experts have led many public events at the site, including nature walks and the making of natural treats like jams, herbal teas and natural skin salves. These events help community members get engaged in the idea of the community garden and see the direct benefits. Chloe advises groups to provide an honorarium to people providing their expertise wherever possible, “paying people a small amount shows them that you value their time and knowledge.”The group also worked with numerous professionals including the architects, planners and city officials who are helping make the greenhouse a reality. Chloe advises that choosing the right people to work with is critical for your project’s success, so take your time in selecting the pros you want on your team. and valued? Discuss amongst yourselves after the first meeting. Chances are high that your instinctive reaction is the correct one.
Chloe is working with a team of ten volunteers. When it’s busy, the team meets weekly. During the colder months, they meet monthly. The group has divided up responsibilities in areas like volunteer engagement, outreach and workshop coordination. This volunteer team will also oversee the final plans for the greenhouse and its building. “It’s important to have a diverse team. You need people with different skills like experience working with funders, the city, w participants and with planting. Be open to everyone,” suggests Chloe
The North York community, in which Chloe lives, is incredibly diverse. The group has actively created ways for many of the ethnic and cultural communities to engage in the healing garden and greenhouse. Programming such as making tea and hosting an Iranian tea ceremony helps encourage the local Iranian community to get engaged in the garden. The group has also fostered a relationship with their local Chinese community through regular activities like Tai Chi and Chinese medicine workshops. Indigenous communities have been engaged through nature walks and programming, featuring the many uses for herbs such as sweetgrass and sage.Chloe advises that when you’re choosing what to grow in the garden, be sure to have fan favourites like lavender and bergamot, but also consult people of a range of cultural backgrounds and consider ethnic crops that can grow locally.
One point that Chloe wants to emphasize is, “breathe, this is going to take a while.” The process of securing the permits for the greenhouse took the 415 Willowdale group more than two years. However, Chole emphasizes that going slowly has its benefits. “At every stage,” Chloe says, “I’ve learned something that will make this project better.” The greenhouse is set to be built in 2019. It’s been a three year journey, but one that will make a world of impact in her community.
Partnerships can be fruitful, but finding and building the right partnership can also be challenging and time-consuming. If the organization you want to work with is not on the same page, a partnership can even be counterproductive. The key to any worthwhile partnership is sharing the same vision and building trust.
Building partnerships with other groups in the community can help you achieve your goals more quickly and effectively. We spoke to Shahina Sayani, a Community Planner with the City of Toronto who shared her insider tips for making community partnerships work.
Does the local community organization you want to team up with share your vision? Start by clearly articulating your vision as an organization and your vision of the project on which you want to collaborate. If you don’t have your vision quite clear in your mind, don’t hesitate to say so. Some of the most successful partnerships are built when organizations start with an idea and build a vision and a plan together.Insider Tip: If the group you want to work with has a website or other materials, read up on the organization to see whether their focus and vision dovetails with yours. If it appears to, clearly articulate your vision for the project in your first meeting and gauge the other party’s reaction.
Trust takes time to build. In a true partnership, both parties have to be able to invest time in working together. If you can both commit sufficient resources, you’ve cleared the second hurdle.
The next part of trust is respect: all partners have to have an equal seat at the table. Yours may be a small, informal grassroots organization composed of dedicated volunteers. Now, imagine that you are entering into partnership with a local church group, a Rotary club or other established community organization. Will you have an equal say in the project on which you wish to collaborate? Partnerships that work best are built on an equal playing field.As Shahina says:
“Successful partnerships are built on an even playing field. Be committed to creating an equitable platform for collaboration.”
Equity in the relationship percolates down to things like education, volunteerism (versus professionalism), race, age and gender. How do both parties deal with the diversity at the table? Is it valued? Are a volunteer’s in-the-trenches lived experiences considered as valuable as academic achievement or professional experience? It is imperative that everyone feels comfortable, that everyone is heard and valued, and that the process is inclusive.
Insider Tip: Trust is something that you feel, so engage your “spidey senses” as soon as you start interacting with a local community organization. Are your ideas embraced? Do you and your colleagues feel empowered and valued? Discuss amongst yourselves after the first meeting. Chances are high that your instinctive reaction is the correct one.
It goes without saying that effective partnership includes clear communication. People on all sides of the table need to know up front what expectations are regarding:
Insider Tip: Be clear about this part of your vision early on in the process. Communicate how you see roles being allocated, what your timeline is and what would constitute success for you. Also be clear about the need for regular meetings and other communication, and who is going to be the communication point person on each side!
Milestones tell you whether you and your partners are on track. Shahina makes an important point when she says: “Clarity is critical. Make sure that everyone knows up front what expectations are on all sides.”
If you are building a flower bed, for example, milestones might be:
Insider Tip: Draw up a list of milestones, put them into a timeline and secure partner commitment on checking in regularly to ensure that each milestone—no matter whose responsibility it is—gets met.
Did your project succeed? What did you learn from each other? Recognizing cross-learnings are both critical and exciting when you’re partnering. And coming together to celebrate your achievement is uplifting—it’s the cement that solidifies a partnership and makes future joint actions a happy prospect.Insider Tip: Either meet with partners at project completion to celebrate your joint achievement on the spot, or meet up afterwards to evaluate how well it went, what you learned from each other and how the project could have been improved. Don’t forget to express your thanks! That can mean anything from bringing muffins to the meeting to sending a formal letter of appreciation and acknowledgement, to presenting the results of the project to your community organization partner’s members.
The Quebec geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin (1923-2020) coined the concept of Nordicity by highlighting that winter is a physical and natural season, and a state of mind.The art of Nordicity means first and foremost harmonizing our lives with the rhythms of nature. It means slowing down, taking time to rest, to go and play outside, or curl up indoors. It also offers numerous opportunities for us to examine our perceptions, attitudes and behaviours as we face the elements and build seasonal resilience.
As a winter nation, the season enriches our culture, shapes how we live together, and move about the city. For example, we are seeing a growing number of homemade skating rinks* in backyards and laneways. Winter biking* has seen a remarkable rise in popularity this winter. Our urban parks are packed with walkers, joggers and people tobogganing, cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. In Montreal, parks have even created the perfect setting for an open-air museum made of snow castles and sculptures*.
“You have to first come to a better understanding of winter before you can experience it properly.”2019 – Daniel Chartier, Founder and Director of the Laboratoire international de recherche sur l’imaginaire du Nord, de l’hiver et de l’Arctique*.
Our local urban parks are ideal places to explore our Nordicity and where we begin to truly love the city in winter. City parks where we can discover the potential of winter and build warm memories that will open us up to future outdoor adventures.
Winter is a variable and unpredictable season and requires the right gear. The choice of clothing and equipment is key to managing extreme weather conditions, such as cold, ice or slush.
In order to properly prepare for those unforeseen situations during your daily travels or outings to the park, choose multi-layered clothing and breathable material known for their ability to retain heat (e.g. merino wool).
Being properly outfitted helps ward off the dangers of ice or black ice. Adjustable ice cleats, for example, are one low-cost solution for ensuring that your walks are always safe and enjoyable.
We are even seeing programs supplying this type of equipment free of charge to seniors to encourage them to go for walks in winter, and also to help them cope with social isolation.
To get all the benefits for our mental and physical health, we need to spend at least 10-20 minutes a day outdoors, especially in winter. Of course, this is even truer now in these times of pandemic and lockdown.
Whether you choose to engage in outdoor activities like photography or winter birdwatching or prefer active transportation like cross country skiing, biking or snowshoeing, you can enjoy additional hours of light and the invigorating and meditative effect of moving about outside in the cold winter air.
“In order to change our attitude, we need to become aware that our perception of our surroundings, and the language we use to describe the various phenomena play a key role.” (Pressman 1985, quoted in Zardini 2005.)
Mental Nordicity is a state of mind. It is the acceptance of winter and the cold as they are. Through acceptance, we can mindfully decide to enjoy winter. And to help you do that, here are a few practical tips:
By adopting these practical strategies and questioning your perceptions of winter and of the cold, you can better understand what brings you pleasure or what concerns you when the cold weather comes. This will help you feel more confident about yourself and about winter. Your journal can also serve as a reminder of the pleasures of winter next time you struggle to step outside.
As you bring your children back from school or during a short break from work, take the time to look around and to observe the natural and urban landscapes. Look for white or immaculate banks of snow, snow-covered trees, frozen ponds or rivers, or urban developments that create microclimates (sunshine, wind protection, etc.).
This quest for natural and urban beauty is one way to appreciate and contemplate winter every day.
The ephemeral nature of snow in the city also becomes an opportunity to celebrate and honour it. Take advantage of the next snowfall to enjoy the effects of the slower pace, the calm and the reduced noise. And why not use this opportunity to start the next snow sculpture contest in your local park?
The more time we spend outdoors in the winter, the more we adapt to the temperatures and the elements, and the more we love this season. Dealing with winter in the city means getting used to the changing seasons that punctuate our lives.
It is therefore important that our urban spaces be adapted for all seasons, including winter. This is what we call “the seasonal resilience of public spaces”. This phenomenon is taking on ever-increasing importance and is becoming part of the “Winter Cities” trend. This movement was born out of a desire to better adapt our urban environment to the reality of winter, to promote innovative practices in urban design and to show the impact resulting from the appropriation of public spaces by local communities, regardless of the season.
Increasingly, tools are being developed for decision-makers, experts and citizens who want to help communities better adapt to the realities of winter. To this end, Montreal has created its Guide Ville d’hiver – Principes et stratégies d’aménagement hivernal du réseau actif d’espaces publics montréalais* .
Getting a better understanding of how our Nordicity is reflected in our daily lives is a continuous process, like the seasons that follow one after the other. But one thing is certain: the pandemic has been giving us a thirst for nature, even after the arrival of winter. Therefore, it is essential that our urban parks and public spaces remain accessible and adapted during the cycle of the seasons.
This past year, parks have been used more than ever, but their benefits have not been equally enjoyed—a point highlighted in our 2021 Canadian City Parks Report.
The onset of COVID regulations and their enforcement have given rise to a growing culture of surveillance, policing, and fear that could easily become part of our “new normal” if not recognized and resisted. A new report by Toronto’s ombudsman provides insight into these realities and offers lessons for moving forward. The report, released earlier this month, found that COVID-related rules in Toronto’s parks were unfairly communicated and enforced during April and May 2020.
We know city resources have been stretched throughout the pandemic. Staff have had to deal with fast-changing situations and public health recommendations—all while under-resourced. For example, 60% of cities in our Canadian City Parks Report said COVID has impacted park operation budgets, making it even more challenging to do more with less. There is an opportunity, however, to look at past and present actions, as the ombudsman has done, to understand a new way forward.
The ombudsman report’s findings include that Toronto’s guidelines on use of certain park amenities were unclear—for example, benches were not listed on the city’s website as a closed amenity, yet people were issued tickets for using them. The ombudsman concludes that:
“Because of confusing and inconsistent messaging, some people were afraid to use our public parks at all, for fear of being ticketed. This was unfair.”
The report also found that bylaw officers were directed to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to enforcement—an approach described by the ombudsman as “unacceptable, unclear, and unfair”—leaving some officers feeling that they had to abandon their usual discretion in favour of ticketing in all cases.
This enforcement had a disproportionate impact on poor, marginalized, and unhoused park users, the report found. Independent investigations confirmed two serious incidents of racial discrimination in enforcement between May and June 2020.We’ve seen similar cases play out across Canada. In Montreal, for example, a group of five women of colour were singled out and fined in a busy Jeanne Mance Park. In Ottawa, a Black man was assaulted by a bylaw officer while out in a park with his seven-year-old daughter. A report by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association found that similar instances of discriminatory enforcement were widespread, often taking place in parks.
Findings from our 2021 Canadian City Parks Report confirm that these issues extend across Canada and beyond the early stages of the pandemic. Of the 32 cities we surveyed for the report, 84% said that they increased by-law enforcement in response to COVID-19 physical distancing measures.
This increase in enforcement has coincided with increased barriers to park use—barriers that are not evenly experienced.
In our survey of nearly 3,500 Canadians, respondents who identified as Black, Indigenous, or a person of colour (BIPOC) were more likely to report experiencing social judgement from other park users (28%), fear of ticketing/policing (24%) and harassment/discrimination from other park users (22%). The response from white Canadians was lower on all counts at 17%, 15%, and 8%, respectively.
Given these barriers, it is perhaps unsurprising that we also found BIPOC Canadians were less likely to experience health benefits of parks during the pandemic. For example, 88% of respondents who identified as white said that parks had a positive impact on their mental health, compared to 69% and 72% for those who identified as Black and Indigenous, respectively.
These findings highlight the concerning impacts of the growing securitization of parks—a trend that existed before the pandemic but has since accelerated. Sometimes, this plays out subtly. Consider benches with middle armrests that prevent people from lying down—a classic example of defensive design. This can also manifest in “ghost amenities”—a term coined by scholar Cara Chellew that refers to the absence of features like washrooms or sheltered gathering areas that are thought to attract “undesirable” behaviour. As some cities closed park washrooms during the pandemic or removed group seating to support physical distancing, it will be essential to ensure these amenities return to parks as restrictions are lifted.
Or consider the culture of interpersonal policing (i.e. neighbours watching neighbours) that has crept into parks, fuelled by COVID “snitch lines.” Since April 2020, Toronto has received over 30,000 complaints related to COVID rules in parks. Not only does this strain staff resources, but also comes with “considerable risk of unfounded complaints, overfocus on marginalized people, and discriminatory enforcement by police and by-law officers,” experts argue.
Although outside the scope of the ombudsman’s enquiry, few examples illustrate the securitization of parks more clearly than last month’s eviction of encampment residents in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park—a brutal show of force that involved hundreds of police officers, private security guards, and city staff overseeing the eviction of only a couple dozen encampment residents.
The city repeated this again on July 20 in Alexandra Park when it surrounded the park with police and security to evict encampment residents, including arresting nine people and barring journalists from entering the area.
This type of enforcement causes direct harm to encampment residents. As we explored in our 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, research shows that encampment clearances often uproot support networks, push people into more isolated locations where they are subject to increased safety risks, and violate the rights of Indigenous peoples, among other damaging consequences.
Actions like these also contribute profoundly to the stigmatization of homelessness. As part of the Trinity Bellwoods eviction, the city erected fencing, patrolled by security guards, around the perimeter of the former encampment to allow for “environmental remediation,” effectively barring people from using the space.
Similar fences have been put in place at other former encampment parks, including Toronto’s George Hislop Park and Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park. While surely the grass in these parks would benefit from some TLC, the same can be said of many other parks across the city that remain fence-free. It’s hard not to imagine there are ulterior motives—namely, keeping unhoused people out of the parks.
The fences have not only a functional role in preventing access to the park, but a symbolic one—they deepen existing hostilities by contributing to a blame dynamic where housed people attribute the “loss” of their park to environmental damage caused by their unhoused neighbours.It’s not uncommon for homeless communities and the environment to be pitted against each other in parks conversations, but we need to keep things in perspective: the environmental impact of a person experiencing homelessness is likely much less significant than any housed person with more disposable income to participate in consumption (just witness the environmental impact caused by the hundreds of partiers in Trinity Bellwoods over several weekends). These cruel actions frame homeless communities as destructive to the environment, positioning them as scapegoats when the real attention should be on our collective failure to realize the right to housing for all.
The ombudsman’s report offers 14 systemic recommendations that the city has committed to implementing, including directing the Municipal Licensing & Standards (MLS) division to develop an anti-racism strategy, as well as a plan “to hear directly from community organizations, particularly organizations serving vulnerable and marginalized people,” to ensure their feedback informs enforcement activities.
Building on these recommendations and drawing on past Park People research, we offer the following advice to help create parks that do not rely on enforcement and securitization:
Park rules can be helpful—even outside the context of a public health crisis. Past Park People research has found that a lack of clear rules can create anxiety about whether certain uses are welcome, inhibiting people from engaging with a park. By contrast, positive rules—those that are framed in terms of what you can do—can be enabling, by helping to remove the guesswork. In other words, rules can be freeing—as long as they are clear, reasonable, and culturally appropriate. For example, placing a sign in the grass that says “have a picnic here” rather than wrapping picnic tables in caution tape.
But rules need not be coupled with punitive enforcement. A McGill University report exploring COVID-related enforcement highlights that there is weak empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of monetary fines as a strategy for gaining compliance. Moreover, as the report authors argue, such measures “can be reasonably believed to cause greater harm than good, especially for marginalized populations.”
Rather than aiming to push homeless communities out of parks, recognizing unhoused people as legitimate park users in planning, programming and engagement processes can help us build more inclusive parks and learn how to better co-exist together. We can learn from the work of organizations across Canada that are showcasing possibilities for more inclusive approaches: from hiring a park-based social worker to facilitating outdoor art workshops that build bridges between housed and unhoused neighbours, to employing homeless community members at a park cafe that celebrates Indigenous cuisine.
These strategies not only protect unhoused park users from violence but serve to support their basic needs. In addition, programs like these help establish community-based bonds between housed and unhoused park users—cultivating greater empathy and understanding that is difficult to foster in other settings.
Strengthening relationships and communication channels between city staff and community groups is a recommendation offered in both the ombudsman’s report and our own Canadian City Parks Report. As the ombudsman writes, the city is “missing a critically important opportunity to listen to voices from Toronto’s communities when designing and evaluating its enforcement activities. This should be a priority, especially with vulnerable and marginalized communities.” Rather than relying on punitive bylaw enforcement, cities should instead prioritize building relationships with local community park groups—over 1,000 of which exist across Canada—and partner organizations. These groups can provide valuable information about on-the-ground needs and realities, help spread information about safe gathering practices, and collaborate on programming that gets people back to enjoying the park together.
On an early spring day in Calgary, Flyover Park buzzes with activity and playful laughter. Surrounded by friends, a couple of teens sway off a face-to-face swing, while tweens leap through a bamboo jungle (a three-dimensional climbing course not for the faint of heart).
Sheltered by the shade of a flyover above, a family competes in a fierce ping-pong game while, behind them, a mother helps her youngest go up the hillside playground. An assortment of languages fills the air: English, French, Spanish.
In this context, it can be hard to believe that just three years ago this space was a dingy field of gravel. “It was full of litter, graffiti, needles, people’s clothes—it was just not safe,” says Ali McMillan, planning director at the Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association (BRCA).
Built in 2020 with funds sourced by Calgary’s Parks Foundation, a non-profit whose mandate is to support the creation of new parks for the enjoyment of all Calgarians, Flyover Park materializes the vision of a group of engaged residents who dared to think outside the box and reclaim an underutilized space full of potential.
“We didn’t really have an idea where it was going to go,” McMillan says about the group’s initial vision. “We wanted to do some tactical urbanism to basically get people’s minds thinking differently about the area,” she explains.
Launched by residents as a small intervention, the project would morph into a lasting change for the community—and the first project of its kind in Alberta.
Located at the south end of Bridgeland, between the neighbourhood and the Bow River, Flyover Park sits under an overpass known as the 4th Avenue flyover. It’s part of a complicated interchange of roads and bridges that connects Calgary’s northeast across the river to the city’s downtown and East Village.
The site where Flyover Park is today sat empty for nearly two decades. “A lot of us didn’t know that the flyover was even there,” says Miles Bazay, a student who used to go to Langevin School, a K-9 school located just 300 metres north of the site.Year after year, thousands of Bridgeland-Riverside residents would drive, walk, or cycle by this derelict space.
“This is the first thing a lot of people see when they come from downtown into our community, and the impression was not good because it was just basically a dirt patch. This unsightly welcome didn’t reflect the unique character of the neighbourhood”.
Ali McMillan, Planning Director at the Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association (BRCA).
Filled with homes that predate the 1960s, modern multi-family buildings, and an assortment of locally-owned shops and restaurants, Bridgeland-Riverside is one of Calgary’s most vibrant inner-city communities. These characteristics have attracted a young and diverse population to the neighbourhood.
Improving the condition of the empty space under the flyover would connect the neighbourhood’s parks, community gardens, sports fields, and bike lanes to Calgary’s Bow River Pathway system, a 48-km long network of multi-use trails. Nearly a quarter of the community’s residents walk or cycle to work, many of whom use this network.
Despite this connectivity potential, the City of Calgary had no plans to activate the space. But in 2016, inspired by the work of Jason Roberts’s Better Block Foundation, McMillan decided to spearhead her own tactical urbanism intervention.
“It opens your eyes to how you see your community and that your voice matters,” she says.
Tactical urbanism is a citizen-led movement that gained force in the 2010s. The movement encourages residents to test ideas that reclaim and transform forgotten public places into vibrant community hubs—one temporary intervention at a time.
Installing pop-up parks in neglected spaces is a common tactic used by residents to test their ideas, and many of these projects lead to permanent upgrades. Flyover Park would become Calgary’s first tactical intervention to become permanent.
Under McMillan’s direction, the BRCA created a task force to put together a plan to enhance the space.
The goal of this plan was “to design an enjoyable public environment” and “to create a gateway into the community of Bridgeland-Riverside.” This thorough document outlined the design considerations and aesthetics that would guide the project through completion.
To improve the public realm, the task force drew ideas from projects in cities around the world such as Superkilen Park in Copenhagen and Drapers Field in London.
But despite the successful precedents, getting the project off the ground was no easy feat.
“It’s a really unique site there—we have not done an urban park in the ‘left-over’ transportation infrastructure anywhere in Alberta,” McMillan says, emphasizing the initial skepticism from a number of stakeholders, including the neighbours themselves.
“A lot of people couldn’t see past what the area actually was… It was a lot of fighting perception and trying to show people it could be different.”
In 2017, McMillan and the task force carried out the first tactical intervention in the space.
“The first thing we did was a windmill garden. We put like 20 windmills—just stuck them in the ground in the middle of winter,” McMillan recalls. It helped catch the attention of future partners.Over the course of a year, these kinds of small interventions led the BRCA to partnerships with the City of Calgary, Bridgeland’s Langevin School Grade 6 students, and the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. The inclusion of the Grade 6 students in the project would prove to be integral to the development of the project—and an educational opportunity not just for the children, but for everyone involved.
In 2017, the transportation department at the City of Calgary had just completed the city’s pedestrian strategy, but while the council hadn’t yet allocated any funding to it, the department was keen to support a low-budget grassroots initiative.
When Jen Malzer, a transportation engineer at the City of Calgary, learned about the BRCA’s efforts to transform the space under the 4th Avenue flyover and connect Bridgeland to the river pathway, she and her team seized the opportunity.
“We didn’t have funding to hire consultants, which is normally how we might approach a project,” Malzer says. Having the Langevin School Grade 6 students and the University of Calgary landscape architecture master’s degree students on board, Malzer’s team took a different approach. “We could just enable students to dream about the parts of the project and give expertise where we could,” she says—an unusual role for city staff.
Accustomed to the back-and-forth of stakeholder engagement sessions, for Malzer’s team this project was an opportunity to “give up some of the control.”
Furthermore, as part of the pedestrian strategy, the city was developing a tactical urbanism program; participating in the flyover project helped city staff gain an in-depth understanding of the process.
“This really gave us a good insight into what the city’s role should be when we’re working with communities. We learned about the power of elevating different voices.”
Jen Malzer, Transportation Engineer at the City of Calgary.
And in this case, it was the voices of the Grade 6 students. While children are always welcome to join engagement activities led by the city, Malzer says, they rarely actually do so. The Grade 6 students would become front and centre for the project. “It was a really cool experience. I never thought that we could get to do something like that,” says Bazay, who was part of the class.
Sixty Langevin School Grade 6 students were able to take part in this project thanks to the foresight of their teachers. “ was looking for some students to be involved in working with the city and just talking about areas of Bridgeland that are a little bit neglected,” recalls Kate Logan, one of the teachers. She and Elaine Hordo, her partner teacher, jumped at the opportunity. “We were looking for something to get these kids involved in some kind of action project, something to make a difference in the community,” Logan adds.
Excited about the potential of the space and the learning opportunities for the students, Malzer helped coordinate educational sessions with an assortment of city departments, giving students a solid background that would inform their vision for the space. “I was able to bring in a lot of different experts: urban foresters, designers, water engineers, to give students a little bit of context about what are some of the things to think about,” Malzer says.
This experience enabled the children to think about the possibilities for the space.
“We spent a lot of time at the flyover site, just looking around,” Logan says. They also visited other parts of the city and observed the different uses a vacant space could be given to revitalize it and build community.“Our class decided to do something with that space,” Bazay says. “It was a really good space, it just wasn’t being used in the right way.”
When the University of Calgary graduate students led a design charrette in the spring of 2017, the children were more than ready to provide their input. During the initial design session, Ben Hettinga, then one of the University of Calgary students, recalls being impressed by the ideas of the Grade 6 students. “There were normal kid things like playgrounds and fun pieces, but their focus also seemed to be on making the space welcoming and safe for everyone.” This sentiment is echoed by Malzer, “the students were really clear that the project should make play fun for everyone, not just kids.”
Integrating all of the students’ knowledge and ideas, the design produced by the landscape architecture students went on to earn an honourable mention at Calgary’s Mayor Urban Design Awards and win a National Urban Design Award. “We were just having fun with it—ideas that we thought would just brighten up the space,” Bazay says humbly. “We never really thought that it would get built but then we got funding and it was really exciting for our class.”
Through this experience, the Grade 6 students learned valuable lessons on city building, an opportunity few Calgarians get to experience at such a young age. According to Logan, this project taught her students about the importance of civic engagement, “knowing that as a citizen you have a responsibility for yourself and others and that the decisions you make impact others.”
The involvement of the Langevin School was also key to gaining momentum, McMillan says, as the participation of the Grade 6 students led to project seed funding from the Calgary Foundation. “With this funding, we painted the road and bought chairs and picnic tables; we built planters and that sort of thing,” she says.
And this action was key, as it was an opportunity to test their ideas and to prove the community’s interest in such a space. The success of the temporary improvements in the summer of 2017 solidified the partnership with the Parks Foundation and led to further improvements such as the painting of a mural and the installation of a ping-pong table.
In the spring of 2019, Calgary’s Parks Foundation announced the construction of a permanent urban park was moving forward thanks to a donation from the Alberta government.
“I never thought that we could have such a big impact in the community,” Bazay says.
Although the design of the space went through several subsequent iterations, and a number of features were scrapped at the construction stage, Flyover Park does capture the essence of the youth who helped propel the project.
“It’s not your typical playground. We tried to design something for everyone in some of those groups that didn’t have a place to be.”
Ali McMillan
Besides playground equipment for all ages, the design layout includes an esplanade to accommodate food trucks and outdoor events, providing recreation opportunities for adults and kids alike and reflecting the spirit of inclusiveness shown by the Langevin School students.
The tactical nature of the project also helped it move forward swiftly. By contrast, the Bow to Bluff corridor in Sunnyside, a similar project in Calgary’s inner-city also spearheaded by community residents but taking a more conventional approach, has taken nearly a decade to materialize.
These tactical interventions have also helped inform other city-led improvements for the community’s main streets, such as the 1st Avenue NE Streetscape Master Plan, which aims to improve the pedestrian and cycling experience and connect Bridgeland’s amenities, including Flyover Park, with the Bow River Pathway.
But ultimately, the BRCA did more than transform an empty space into a vibrant community hub—the efforts of the community also helped empower a young generation of city-builders.
“I think we definitely learned a lot about what we can actually do to change our communities,” Bazay says. “And if more students could get involved with projects like this, I think that would be really great for the community.”
About Ximena González
Ximena González is a freelance writer and editor based in Calgary. Her work has appeared in The Sprawl, The Tyee and The Globe and Mail.