This year again, local leaders gathered their neighbours, built connections, and restored nature in projects big and small. The movement continues to expand, and we're pleased to share just some of these impacts in our 2025 Impact Report.
Ready to rally your crew and make a visible difference in your local park? This guide walks you through everything you need to host a successful community clean-up in Toronto
Creative ways to connect people to nature, community, and care for ravines in Toronto.
Parc Jarry in Montreal, Toronto’s waterfront, CRAB Park in Vancouver… People are coming together to protect the places they love.
Learn more about green social prescribing, an evolving practice that encourages individuals to reestablish connections with nature and one another to enhance their mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
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In this webinar, storyteller Hillary Clermont, historian and artist Philip Cote, and Indigenous grower Isaac Crosby connect Toronto’s Indigenous history to current Indigenous-led ecology work, to help understand how we can deepen our connection to the plants and animals of our land and ravines.
The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
A Candid Conversation in Celebration of Park People’s 10 Year Anniversary
This webinar explores the barriers and opportunities for creating parks as natural places for engagement across differences.
*The webinar title comes from Jay Pitter, an award-winning placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in cities across North America.
The session is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Carolynne Crawley is a Mi’kmaw woman with mixed ancestry from the East Coast. She is dedicated to social and environmental…
Ambika is a Ph.D. candidate at the Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto. Her research is focused on recent immigrant engagement…
Proudly Franco-Albertan, Chúk’s passion lies in the interactions between culture, health and the environment. Outside of this work with Future…
Zahra is a public interest designer and strategist focused on shifting power to people who are typically underrepresented in institutions…
This webinar features a wide range of partnership models used in city parks across Canada. From community groups to conservancies, we explore the context underpinning each model and highlight its strengths and limitations. We also take a look at the differences between Canadian and American park partnership models.
Rooted in Park People’s Canadian City Parks Report and a decade of work on park governance, we share the latest opportunities and challenges emerging in Canada’s park partnerships.
Dave has decades of experience working in government on municipal and environmental issues. He excels at bringing partners together and…
Jake Tobin Garrett (he/him) is a writer, illustrator and public space policy and research consultant. He was previously Park People’s…
At Park People, we believe parks are vital to the health of Canada’s cities and our environment, and everyone—regardless of their income, identity, ability, or age—deserves equal access to the benefits of public green space.
Yet not everyone experiences parks in the same way. Systemic racism and white supremacy are prevalent and visible in our parks and public spaces where Black, Indigenous and racialized people experience suspicion, surveillance, harassment, and violence.
Our Canadian City Parks Report found Black, Indigenous, and people of colour were far more likely to report that concerns about policing, ticketing, and social judgment prevented them from visiting parks as much as they’d like.
It’s clear we must do more to address the reality that in their current form, Canada’s parks are not for everyone.
Park People is actively working with communities across Canada to disrupt and dismantle the implicit and explicit structures of power, privilege, and racism in parks and public spaces.
Here are some useful reports, articles, toolkits, and webinars that we’re reviewing to better educate ourselves in this work. We hope you’ll join us.
Racism in Canada is Ever-Present, But We Have a Long History of Denial, Maija Kappler, May 2020
Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, Robyn Maynard, 2017.
Subdivided, Ed. Jay Pitter and John Lorinc. 2016.
Why Race Matters in Planning Public Parks, Brentin Mock, March 2016
Public Space, Park Space, and Racialized Space, KangJae Lee, January 2020
Placemaking When Black Lives Matter, Annette Koh, April 2017
Being Black in Public, Jay Pitter, November 2024
Parks Need Leaders of Colour, Park People, July 2021
Urban Parks and Forests Are Missing in Racialized and Marginalized Neighbourhoods, Nature Canada, March 2022
Place Driving Equity, Reimagining the Civic Commons, November 2021
A renewed attention on environmental equity and justice, National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health, December 2022.
Five Ways Urban Planners Are Addressing a Legacy of Inequity, Jon Gorey, May 2023
Race and Nature in the City Engaging Youth of Colour in Nature-Based Activities, Jacqueline L. Scott & Ambika Tenneti, April 2021
This case study is part of the 2023 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.
In our survey, 60% of cities said that developing non-profit partnerships to co-manage parks is a high or medium priority in the next year. This strong interest is perhaps unsurprising given the benefits collaborative governance models offer, from deepening community engagement to enhancing stewardship at a time when municipal maintenance resources are strained.
Yet, the nuts and bolts of these arrangements are often opaque. Roles and responsibilities, funding sources, decision-making processes, and community involvement structures are just some of the variables that define the distinct ways these partnerships play out.
In Saskatoon, Meewasin Valley Authority offers an example of how collaborative governance can operate in a large-scale urban park. At approximately 6700 hectares, Meewasin Valley is a treasure within Saskatoon that includes land on both sides of the South Saskatchewan River, 60 kilometres of trail networks, and extensive biodiversity.
It is a rarity not only for its size, but also its unique governance structure. Meewasin Valley is managed by three core partners: the City of Saskatoon, the University of Saskatchewan and the Province of Saskatchewan.
The Meewasin Valley Authority, a non-profit organization, is the mechanism that allows the three partners to work together in managing the park. The organization was created in 1979 after the completion of a 100-year concept plan, which outlined a vision for collaborative governance to allow integrated decision-making. This is important given the park’s complicated landscape, consisting of land owned privately, and by universities, First Nations, the federal government, provincial government and multiple municipalities.
Today, the non-profit consists of a team of staff who carry out day-to-day management of the park, park programming, community engagement and park stewardship, and a Board of Directors composed of four representatives from each of the core partners. The Board focuses on policy across five committees: Development Review, Conservation Advisory, Design Advisory, Education Advisory, and Fund Development.
Establishing clearly defined roles and responsibilities through memoranda of understanding has been key to Meewasin’s success, as has refining elements of the partnership over time. The funding model, for example, has evolved over Meewasin’s history to reflect the reality of increased demands on public funds. To supplement core funding, Meewasin has expanded revenue sources through fundraising, grants, contract work within mandate areas, an endowment, paid programming and capital campaigns for larger projects.
Looking to the future, Meewasin is broadening its engagement with partners across the country and deepening its relationships with First Nations. Meewasin is currently engaging with Parks Canada in a pre-feasibility study to explore its potential as a National Urban Park. It is also part of Park People’s Cornerstone Parks network, a national community of practice that allows representatives from large urban parks with complex governance structures to exchange challenges, learnings, and engage in collective problem-solving.
Further reading:
More cities across Canada are prioritizing the naturalization of existing parkland. Converting manicured parkland into natural meadows has multiple benefits including increasing climate resilience, biodiversity, and nature connection for residents.
However, these projects have also proven controversial. For example, Vancouver’s “no-mow” pilot project, which naturalized certain sections of parks, was met with opposition by some residents who viewed the spaces as unkempt–a challenge that many other cities in Canada have reported facing.
Karley Cianchino thinks a lot about park naturalization. As City of Brampton Environmental Project Specialist, Cianchino’s job is to plan parks collaboratively with communities through the lens of nature.
Brampton prioritizes naturalization projects using its unique Eco Park Strategy–a citywide strategy that contains principles for conserving and enhancing both natural and cultural heritage. The strategy includes a helpful tool in understanding how to plan spaces, situating them on a scale from highly naturalized systems to high functioning social systems, recognizing that most places are a blend.
“If a park has a low environmental score, then we’ll look for opportunities to bring some restoration work forward.”
Karley Cianchino, City of Brampton Environmental Project Specialist
No matter how good they are, strategies have a habit of sitting on a shelf gathering dust. To ensure that doesn’t happen, Cianchino said that she does a lot of internal coordination, including a bi-monthly Eco Park meeting, as well as “casual conversations” with colleagues about new projects and discussing how to incorporate the Eco Park objectives. For example, if a park is undergoing upgrades, perhaps that’s an opportunity to incorporate naturalization work. This approach not only minimizes redundant community engagement and resource allocation but also enhances synergy between projects.
Not all of these projects go off without a hitch, however. Recently the city naturalized a large section of Dearbourne Park–the first time the city had brought its naturalization program to a busy neighbourhood park. It wasn’t received well, Cianchino said, with residents pointing out they had lost park space they used for other activities.
The city held a community meeting with residents who selected a smaller 10,000 square foot space in the park to be a programmed pollinator habitat, which would be stewarded by the community group Cianchino created with ongoing support from the city. In the future Cianchino said she wants to implement a QR code system in locations identified for potential naturalization asking residents to let the city know how they currently use the space.
Supporting community stewards will be a key part of the project’s ongoing success. Working with volunteers, Cianchino led the group’s first “bio blitz,” where residents measure the number of pollinators before the planting of native species this fall. Cianchino also works with the group to discuss what people can do in their own yards to support naturalization efforts. The core of the Eco Park Strategy, she said, is a series of linked habitats and green corridors,
“and you can’t just do that through public land. It’s critical that we educate landowners and help them build capacity to naturalize their spaces in a manner that works for them.”
Further Reading:
As cities struggle to find and pay for new park space to meet growth needs, some argue that a shift towards focusing on quality is part of the solution.
Having enough park space is critical, but the quality of park space can greatly determine its use. Quality can be about the amenities present (or missing), but it can also be about whether a space feels welcoming or safe to people.
“We have to realize that we are transitioning to a state in which securing parkland through development will incrementally become more challenging, effectively leading to a reduction in parkland per capita over time in the absence of alternative parkland acquisition tools,” said one park manager in an Ontario municipality, citing changes to provincial legislation in Ontario that affect the amount of parkland cities receive through development.
“Which means we need to look at quality and use of space rather than quantity much more effectively.”
Park Manager
This park manager noted their city is already seeing a reduction of parkland area in development applications—in some medium to high density new growth areas, the city is seeing up to a 60% reduction in the ability of securing future parks. The reduction is much more acute in high density neighbourhoods where more and more people are required to share fewer public spaces.
While quick to point out that this change is detrimental, this manager also sees a potential positive in pushing cities to look more closely at existing assets and how best to use them.
So, what does a focus on quality look like?
It might look like ensuring park spaces have amenities that a nearby community needs and that those amenities are in good repair. It might also lie in understanding the socio-cultural dimensions of a park and whether the facilities, programming, and overall design are relevant for surrounding communities.
These seem like basic measures, and yet just 43% of cities said they measure park quality at all. Even fewer collect socio-demographic data on park use to understand whether the park is meeting diverse community needs. At the same time, 100% of cities reported aging infrastructure and asset management as a challenge.
For one park manager, part of the answer lies in rethinking the intensity of use of parkland and ensuring that we’re maximizing the potential of land and amenities.
For example, the manager noted that one of the challenges that growing cities are facing is designing for large format sports facilities like soccer and baseball, which are land intensive while limited to a single use. If cities are going to need more of these facilities to meet demand, the question is then how to increase the intensity of use in existing assets for longer periods of time, rather than simply thinking about where to build new ones, this person said.
One idea might be looking at seasonal doming of sports fields so they can be used all-year regardless of weather conditions. Other cities, like North Vancouver, are turning disused infrastructure into amenities that meet current demands, like transforming an old swimming pool into a skatepark. Other cities have split uses between warmer and colder months, allowing for once single-use facilities, like tennis courts, to be used for other purposes, like off-leash dog areas in the winter months.
All show the potential of rethinking existing spaces to ensure they’re performing well and meeting current community needs.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, children and youth in grades 6 to 10 report playing outdoors for just 15 minutes per day on average.
This has serious consequences for their health and wellbeing: children spending less time outdoors has been linked to decreased appreciation of the environment, health problems including obesity and vitamin D deficiency, attention difficulties, and higher rates of emotional illnesses like anxiety and depression.
Moving youth programming outdoors to a park is a wonderful opportunity to connect kids with nature, foster creativity, and encourage physical activity. So, how can we encourage young people to leave the couch and reconnect with nature?
We spoke with Shakeera Solomon from Vision of Hope Resource Centre in Brampton—who received a TD Park People Grant in 2019—about what they learned when they brought their monthly Youth Council programming outdoors into the park.
Here are Shakeera’s tips for moving your indoor programming outside.
First up, observe your local park to see which aspects could be appealing for youth and suitable for your programs. Check for amenities like restrooms, shaded areas, picnic tables, and open spaces. Identify any potential safety hazards (such as bodies of water or uneven ground) that might require extra supervision for youth participants.
Next, take note of the surrounding area: are you near a school, convenience store, or other location that youth are already drawn to? If so, this could make your park a great spot for outreach!
When Vision of Hope chose to move their monthly Youth Council meetings from the east Brampton Resource Centre, they picked Anne Nash Park—a small, local park with just a modest play area because of its prime location beside an elementary school. This way, the Youth Council caught the attention of kids from the elementary school and those passing by on their way home from school. Their new visibility helped the Youth Council attract many more members who now regularly attend meetings and events.
Tips:
Hosting a gathering in a park is a great way to deepen relationships in your community. By involving parents, park staff, and other partner organizations in your outdoor programming, you can help create stronger community bounds.
As Shakeera explains, when youth-focused programs happened indoors, parents would wait on the sidelines and kill time on their own. But when programming moved into the park, parents interacted in a whole new way. In the small park, it became awkward for parents not to talk, and so they started chatting and getting to know one another. When parents connect, there are many benefits, particularly in an underserved community. Parents who know one another are much more likely to support each other and build resilience in times of need.
Adapting indoor activities to the outdoor environment offers incredible opportunities to get creative. For example, storytelling can become a nature scavenger hunt, and art projects can use natural materials. Think about how you’ll use the unique character of your park to inspire your youth participants, and how you might encourage them to feel a sense of ownership and responsibility towards the space.
Shakeera told us bringing programming to the park helped the youth feel that the space was truly theirs. She was even surprised when her group eagerly suggested organizing a park clean-up. That’s when she realized the park had really become “their place.”
“They were so proud of what they accomplished for their park.”
Shakeera Solomon, Vision of Hope Resource Centre
She observed their pride when they posed for a team photo with gloves and garbage bags.
Tips
At Park People, we believe that parks can play a vital role in reconciliation and decolonization.
We’re inspired by park projects across the country that are focused on rebuilding trust, sharing knowledge and developing true partnerships between First Nations and settlers, such as The City of Quesnel, BC, which restored ownership of Tingley Park to the Lhtako Dene First Nation, or the agreement between the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Metro Vancouver Regional Parks.
As a national city parks organization, Park People recognizes that when we speak of municipal parks and public land, we are obscuring the fact that, in most cases, the land that we are speaking of is traditional Indigenous territory. That’s why we share our land acknowledgement on our website and at all Park People events.
As part of our own journey, we want to share some insights from our process developing our land acknowledgement.
It’s essential that your park group undertake thoughtful research to learn about Indigenous issues globally, nationally, and in your city or region.Find out which territories your park is situated on and the treaties or covenants that were meant to peaceably govern that land. Use nativeland.ca as a starting point.You may find conflicting accounts of territorial land rights. Reach out to a local band office, municipal Indigenous Affairs Office, an Indigenous Friendship Centre, or an Indigenous university group to understand the history and rights associated with the land in question.
Set aside time for your group to discuss your land acknowledgement plan and your broader reconciliation goals.Create space for members to share meaningful land acknowledgements they’ve heard at other events, literature they’ve read, and news and ideas. This will help create a dialogue to shape your groups’ perspective and commitment. These conversations will also help you to identify champions within your group who can help guide future reconciliation efforts.
Reading a generic land acknowledgement that you don’t understand or feel connected won’t further the goals of truth and reconciliation. Work with your group to write an acknowledgement that reflects the unique history and contemporary character of your park.
Consider how your land acknowledgement can leave listeners with something informative and provocative to ruminate on, long after your event has finished.
Writing a land acknowledgement is an opportunity for your group to publicly declare its commitment to working towards allyship and working to dismantle the colonial systems that continue to oppress Indigenous peoples, denying their land-rights and way of life.Add a commitment to the land acknowledgement that articulates how your group is going to put words into action. Find tangible ways your group can impact this complex and ongoing work.
Once you feel like you have done your research and written a meaningful land acknowledgement, consider sharing it with a respected member of your local Indigenous community to get their feedback.Be respectful of their time, and don’t expect accolades for this preliminary effort. Use the opportunity to express your willingness to engage with the local Indigenous community on the subject of decolonization.
Consider inviting Indigenous-led organizations to attend and participate in your group’s events and gatherings whenever appropriate.
Plan in advance how to compensate those who participate by sharing their time, expertise and knowledge.
Parks are vibrant spaces where we can connect to nature, ecology, and sustainability—right within Canada’s urban centres.
Parks are also delicate ecosystems. As visitors, we all have a role to play in protecting plants and wildlife and ensuring that we leave no waste behind.
We’ve prepared this planning guide to help you plan a fabulous zero-waste event that leaves your park just as healthy as you found it.
Each community has different opportunities and challenges when it comes to reducing its waste at park events. For example, some parks may have fewer garbage cans and recycling facilities for people to use, while others may have residents who feel more comfortable using single-serve packaging when at public events.
Before you start planning your event, ask yourself:
Once you’ve determined what information or resources your community might need to support your zero-waste goal, it’s time to make a plan!
The exact details of your zero-waste plan will be different depending on your community’s needs, but the following checklist provides a handy template for you to start with.
To go the extra mile, combine your zero-waste event with engaging and informative waste education activities. For example, at Park People’s end-of-season potluck celebration, we invited participants to decide whether common household waste items should be put into the garbage, recycling, or food waste bins.You might choose to host eco-friendly workshops on topics like upcycling, gardening, or composting demonstrations, or incorporate nature-focused activities like guided walks or clean-ups.Your goal is to show how fun, easy, and accessible zero-waste activities can be!