As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Park People’s Executive Director, Erika Nikolai, has been honoured with the Distinguished Individual Award from World Urban Parks—an international recognition that celebrates her leadership and the growing national movement Park People has helped build here in Canada.
In East Vancouver’s Champlain Heights, we sat down with two organizations leading a grassroots effort to restore native forests and build community.
Meet the Ontario Community Changemakers and learn more about their inspiring initiatives transforming parks across the province.
A guidance and resources to measure the impact of your park work on community health and wellbeing, integrating a social equity lens.
Shakeera Solomon from the Vision of Hope Resource Centre in Brampton, a recipient of a TD Park People Grant, shares valuable tips on transitioning indoor programs to the outdoors.
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This case study is part of the 2022 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.
Residents of Canadian cities are choosing to spend more of their time in nature. In our survey of over 3,000 people, 54% said they visited natural or “wild” parks most often—an increase from 34% last year. Cities are responding to this increased interest as well, with nearly 60% reporting that they already have or plan to expand nature stewardship opportunities due to high demand.
It’s clear that we’re drawn to nature as a way to feel good in mind, body, and soul, particularly during the challenging two years of a pandemic.
While spending time in nature may conjure images of wilderness trails, it doesn’t have to mean traveling to a large park. As we note in our other story on nature connection, feeling more connected to nature can mean different things to different people. It may mean sharing stories on a walk through a park with friends. Or paying more attention to the nature in and around our homes. Or it may be volunteering to plant trees or tend a garden in our own neighbourhood.
The examples below show how leaders from across the country have developed programs that help people connect with nature in different, but equally meaningful, ways.
When Tammy Harkey noticed other women in her community struggling with their mental health early in the pandemic, she decided to do something about it. Councillor Harkey is a proud member of the Musqueam Indian Band, grandmother and mother, and currently serves as the President of the Native Education College. An avid walker herself, Harkey organized the Musqueam Road Warriors, an Indigenous women’s walking group in Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Park.
The park holds special significance to the Musqueam Nation as part of their unceded traditional territories and a place once close to their village, she said, adding that as Indigenous Peoples, these are the places they should be turning to for personal wellness.
Feeling a connection to nature means feeling a connection to the land, but also to stories shared about the park and the plants and medicines found within it. “Now there’s an entire group that are sharing the stories and memories from their families,” Harkey said. “Really powerful stories. Things I’ve never heard.”
“The Aunts in our walking group really became the teachers,” she said, highlighting the importance of intergenerational learning. In the busyness of their lives before the pandemic, they had perhaps forgotten to take the time to listen to “the things they had to teach us and the messages and stories they had to convey,” Harkey said. But in the quiet of the forest, with the cedars around them, they could be more easily present.
The group is still going strong with about 60 women and girls of all ages who come out for walks in the park. Harkey said it was important the group centered women.
When you can stabilize women—the matriarchs in their families and communities—the whole family gets healthier and happier. And that’s a clear pattern we saw emerge from our group.
Many city residents sought out nature during the pandemic as a way to cope with anxiety, but for people with disabilities it isn’t always easy or possible to visit green spaces.
“Covid has been an explosion of stressors for people with significant levels of physical disability,” Kari Krogh, EcoWisdom Forest Preserve Co-Founder, said. “Going outside, even getting on public transit, and having a vulnerable body—having people cough on you—to get to a park,” was challenging. Not to mention the potential accessibility issues once you get there, she added.
That’s why she and Paul Gauthier, Executive Director of the Individualized Funding Resource Centre, started a group offering online accessible nature wellness programming.
People of all abilities are welcome and can join from a bed, window, or nearby park.
People with disabilities have much to gain from nature connection, and to contribute, but they need options for how and when to access public parks.
Kari Krogh, EcoWisdom Forest Preserve
The program comes from a place of passion for her and Gauthier and stems from their personal lived experience, Krogh said, adding that she acquired a severe disability and lived three years between four walls. “I was in constant severe pain and basically I was immobilized,” she said. “I would have loved a program like the one we’re offering.”
They designed their program to be as flexible as possible, using nature videos and prompts informed by forest medicine and neuroscience. Facilitators lead people in mindfulness-based nature exercises, inviting people to touch, smell, and visualize.
“So much has been out of our control with Covid.” Krogh said. “It allows people with disabilities to come together as peers to support one another.”
This comes across through the words of program participants. One remarked that their pain subsided and they “became relaxed, cheerful, hopeful.” Another said they were “learning to use nature as a free resource to build [their] resilience.”
Initially started with seed funding from Park People’s TD Park People grant program, Gauthier and Krogh obtained funding from the federal government’s Healthy Communities Initiative to expand their work by creating an accessible program to train others to lead nature wellness activities.
As well as being an organizer, Gauthier has himself been able to take away some of the positive benefits of nature connection. His own stress levels have been quite high during the pandemic in his work supporting people with disabilities, he said.
“Being able to stop, to be able to focus on myself and step away from the normal life troubles that I was facing—it’s allowed me to really look at healing for myself,” he said. “And to recognize that by doing that, I can do more for others down the road.”
Riffing off the idea of emotional intelligence, City of Saanich Parks Manager Eva Riccius said her team coined the term natural intelligence when tasked with devising a program to promote nature connection in Saanich. Whether you’re new to getting out in nature or a seasoned hiker, “there’s a place for everyone along the scale,” she said.
The program was designed to encourage people to connect with nature in ways that were accessible to them, whether that was identifying birds in their own yard or getting involved in nature restoration opportunities.
Recognizing the “zoom fatigue” many were experiencing, Saanich staff marketed the campaign as reducing screen time and promoting green time. They partnered with the local news station and newspaper to share stories, organized local hikes, ran a forest bathing session, and promoted various park experiences through a hub on their website.
The result was a dramatic increase in park use, beyond what they had already seen due to the pandemic. Riccius’s team used Google data to see how many people were using parks relative to a 2019 baseline. They found a 100% increase during the campaign—over and above the pandemic-induced bump in park use seen in neighbouring municipalities in Metro Vancouver.
The program provides suggestions for how people can practice reciprocity by thinking about ways to give back to nature, such as volunteering for stewardship activities. On this last point, Riccius said they’ve had so much interest they’ve had to pause their volunteer intake.
The program has spurred more ideas about long-term changes to the city’s parks as well, many of which Riccius said are currently grass, trees, and a playground. The city is looking to strategically naturalize parts of these parks through plantings and restoration projects, which can help reduce water use as well as provide habitat—something other cities like Vancouver, Kitchener, Mississauga, and Edmonton are also doing.
Parks and public spaces are places where communities connect, imagine, and thrive. In this two-part blog series, we explore programs we champion with our partner, 8 80 Cities, that support local leaders in reimaging and activating parks across Ontario. From mentorship and funding to creative activations, these programs show how trust, support, and imagination spark meaningful change.
Walk through any city in Canada, and you’ll find them: parks and public spaces.
These spaces are the commons, the connecting space for community, the places where neighbours meet for the first time, where celebrations unfold, a place for democracy, and where we escape the hustle and bustle of city life to connect with nature. They’re where kids learn to ride bikes, where friends meet for picnics, and where you might just stumble into something unexpected.
Park People and 8 80 Cities share a simple but powerful belief: parks and public spaces are more than patches of grass or trails through trees. They are part of the city’s social fabric. They are places where belonging is practiced, where we learn to live alongside one another, and where we imagine something better together.
When people feel a sense of ownership over their parks and public spaces, everything changes.
Benches get painted, gardens take root, and lanterns are lit. Entire herds of papier-mâché giraffes parade through neighbourhoods. Parks and public spaces become mirrors, reflecting the life and creativity of the community around them.
That belief is at the heart of two programs we’re proud to lead alongside our friends at 8 80 Cities, and with the generous support of the Balsam Foundation: the Sparking Change program (Park People) and the Ontario Community Changemakers microgrant and leadership program (8 80 Cities).
Our long-standing partnership is rooted in the vision that parks are most vibrant when shaped by the people who use them. While Park People focuses on connecting and supporting community leaders to animate and care for their local parks, 8 80 Cities brings a placemaking lens and their signature principle: If a city works for an eight-year-old and an eighty-year-old, it works for everyone.
Together, we champion community-driven urbanism, supporting local community leaders who transform spaces into places of belonging. Through these programs, grassroots groups and individuals continue to animate their communities and drive local change, often well beyond the programs themselves.
Together, we’ve seen how this alignment of vision translates into real impact: Park People’s community networks and mentorship pair seamlessly with 8 80 Cities’ Ontario Community Changemakers program, which equips leaders with funding, training, and a peer network. Many participants move between both programs, carrying forward skills, ideas, and partnerships that ripple into parks and neighbourhoods and impactful change across the province.
We know that lasting change happens when cities, community members, and non-profit partners work together toward a shared vision. By combining their strengths, we can amplify the impact of our public spaces.
Park People’s Sparking Change program centres building capacity, offering mentorship, and removing barriers so those connected to their parkspaces can shape it in ways that matter most to them. Park People asks: What could this park be if it truly reflected the people who use it? Then we provide the tools, coaching, networks, and seed funding to make that vision real.
The projects that grow out of Sparking Change take many forms: story-sharing circles, cultural festivals, trauma-informed ravine hikes, community gardens, park clean-ups, environmental stewardship days, art installations, youth-led gardening programs, and neighbourhood celebrations. All are locally led. All emerge from the creativity, care, and knowledge of the people who know their park best. And all, in their way, show what is possible when communities are given the trust and support to lead in their public spaces.
8 80 Cities’ Ontario Community Changemakers (OCC) program takes a similar approach. The program gives participants a year of mentorship, peer learning, and project funding to make a big idea happen in their community.
Over 2024 and forward, 8 80 Cities recently opened the program to people of all ages, reflecting that creativity, energy, and vision aren’t bound by age. That change means more voices, perspectives, and chances for public spaces to be shaped by the people who care about them most.
Many Sparking Change leaders have also been Changemakers, with both programs playing a key role in supporting their growth and impact.
Mehedi Khan and Igor Samardzic are strong examples; through both their fellowship years, they gained tools, mentorship, and connections that helped them advance their Muslims in Public Space initiative with their co-lead, Linda Selam. These programs provided the platform to deepen their work, from making parks and plazas more inclusive for Muslim communities to celebrating Islamic culture in public spaces.
With ongoing support from Park People, 8 80 Cities, and collaborators like PlazaPOPS, they have been able to launch and sustain projects such as Tower POPS, where they are helping to transform underused spaces around high-rise towers into welcoming, active public places for people in Toronto and Mississauga.
On top of all their community and cultural leadership, Mehedi and Igor managed the 2025 city-wide Jane’s Walk Toronto Festival, inviting the city to “walk with us” and celebrate the stories of its neighbourhoods.
Read Part 2 to meet the changemakers shaping Ontario’s parks and see the creative ways they’re transforming their communities.
At the heart of every project is trust in community and the belief that amazing things can happen in public space with a little spark, a little funding, and some truly incredible changemakers.
Park People’s Sparking Change program trusts communities to lead. The 8 80 Cities Ontario Community Changemakers program trusts individuals to turn vision into action.
When people have the tools and support they need, they can transform neighbourhoods, parks, and public spaces into places of connection and belonging. It creates space for imagination, brings communities together across generations, and inspires community members to animate parks, ravines, hydro corridors, and all the spaces in between.
It allows culture to be celebrated in comfort and joy to ripple through public spaces. Most of all, it helps people build stronger and more connected communities across Ontario.
We are deeply grateful to the Balsam Foundation for believing in people, for championing ideas that don’t always fit neatly into a box, and for helping grow a network of leaders who are shaping the future of parks and public spaces across Ontario.
The 2025 Ontario Community Changemakers have officially been announced! Meet these inspiring leaders and follow their projects as they bring new ideas, energy, and creativity to parks and public spaces across Ontario. Start thinking about applying for microgrants, leadership training, and mentorship from Park People and 8 80 Cities to launch your own inclusive public space or park project in 2026.
Read Part 1 to learn more about the vision behind Park People’s Sparking Change and 8 80 Cities’ Ontario Community Changemakers (OCC) programs.
In Thunder Bay, Nancy Angus, founder of Age BIG, used her time as an Ontario Community Changemaker to create Park Your Stories. This project brought older adults and high school students together to transform city benches into painted gathering spots.
Students built portable wooden chairs and even crafted a custom metal medallion for the project. The result was a mobile, joyful story circle that has popped up in gardens, conservation areas, and senior living facilities, bringing intergenerational connection, people together, and people closer to nature.
“People of all ages talking, knitting, painting, playing. Trees. Plenty of places to sit. Clean. Safe. Free.” is how Nancy describes her vision for a welcoming park.
“Occasionally, animating a park can bring people there who have never been before, and that’s a win, because they’ll come back.”
Nancy Angus, OCC program participant
In Waterloo, another Ontario Community Changemaker, Hannah Gardiner, was inspired by the memory of zoologist Dr. Anne Innis Dagg to create a unique activation of her local park: a Giraffe Parade. Twenty-five papier-mâché giraffe heads, built by neighbours, wound through the park in a joyful procession.
It was whimsical, intensely local, and wildly inspiring. Since then, the Giraffe Parade has sparked other “microparades,” bursts of neighbourhood creativity that can be as playful as they are powerful.
This year, with a TD Park People Grant, Hannah is building on her Changemaker experience to create a bubble procession, a lantern parade, and even karaoke in the park. Proof that the skills, confidence, and connections from the OCC program carry far beyond the original funding and opportunities.
“Building off of this special parade, my goal for my Changemakers project was to show, and through showing, encourage other people to host their microparades.”
Hannah Gardiner, OCC program participant, Waterloo.
“I was thrilled when one of the Changemakers, Nithya Vijayakumar, and Angry Locals Toronto put on a parade this spring to draw attention to infrastructure in their community. A friend recently sent me a video of students hosting a Trout Parade in Vermont.”
For Hannah, inspiring people is just one part of the vision. “The other part of my project is focused on making it easier for people, anyone, to host these kinds of small, community-focused events in parks here in Waterloo Region,” she says.
Hannah is working on a mini “how-to guide” that will pull together resources the public can use to make their own events happen. She’s been meeting with the City of Waterloo, Park People, and local community groups to figure out how to break down barriers.
“I feel really lucky to live in a city with a very community-minded mayor like Mayor Dorothy McCabe, who has encouraged me during this project,” Hannah adds.
“I think Park People’s success with the City of Toronto in waiving fees for community events in parks is a really big win for community building, and I hope that the City of Waterloo can draw inspiration from that in their new park plan.”
Another project from 2024 began with a simple but powerful vision from Ontario Community Changemaker Rignam Wangkhang.
Outside the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre in Etobicoke, Toronto, he saw families and seniors gathering in parking lots or spilling into busy streets during cultural events. Across the road sat an overgrown hydro corridor, unused and full of possibility.
“I imagined a place where kids could play safely, elders could rest in the shade, and the community could celebrate without fear. It felt like the space was just waiting for us to bring it to life.”
Rignam Wangkhang, OCC program participant, Toronto.
From the very start, Rignam involved the community in shaping that vision. Local events revealed how deeply people wanted this change: a safe, welcoming space that reflects their culture, needs, and pride. What began as one person’s idea quickly became a shared mission.
Through the 8 80 Cities’ Ontario Community Changemakers program, Rignam has found a network of people who believe in bold ideas.
“It’s one thing to dream about change, but it’s another to have others trust you to make it real.”
That trust, in community and collective imagination, can help turn an empty hydro corridor into a safe, vibrant space the whole neighbourhood can call its own.
Another past ravine and hydro corridor lover, Nithursan Elamuhilan, has been heavily involved in the Park People Network and the 8 80 Cities program.
Born and raised in Scarborough, Nithursan is an emerging visual storyteller whose work blends photography, community connection, and a deep commitment to place. He first launched itsneerby with support from the Ontario Community Changemaker program, using it as a platform to document and share stories of Scarborough’s neighbourhoods.
Since then, he has become an active leader in the local arts and public space sectors, contributing to community events with NGOs, serving as a past board member of 8 80 Cities, and volunteering regularly with Park People.
Nithursan has participated in numerous Scarborough initiatives, including Scarborough Made, and has led public events such as a photowalk for a past Jane’s Walk Festival. His photography has celebrated and documented public spaces, such as The Meadoway, a major urban greenway project, and his work has been featured in exhibitions across Toronto, including group shows at the CONTACT Photography Festival.
Through his art and advocacy, Nithursan continues to highlight Scarborough’s cultural richness, resilience, and evolving landscapes, building connections between people, place, and the stories that shape them. He documents and advocates for future infrastructure reuse of a rail line into a trail for the community to readapt and reuse.
These are just a few examples of the incredible leaders behind programs that nurture grassroots initiatives, spark change, and provide vital support to community projects. Through partnerships between 8 80 Cities and Park People, these leaders have been given the tools and trust to turn creative visions into public-space reality.
Across all of these efforts, local leaders backed by a network, community and NGOs that believe in their ideas are reshaping parks and public spaces across Ontario. Together, we are building places where communities can see themselves and both people and nature can thrive.
Public areas like parks, ravines, and other greenspaces have become crucial during a growing period of isolation, inequality, and climate anxiety. They provide a space for healing, connection, and growth, in addition to a place to play, rest, and get fresh air. Parks offer a chance to reclaim space, foster a sense of community, and inspire local leadership for many groups, particularly those that are historically underrepresented in decision-making processes.
Community members are converting their local parks into vibrant hubs of connection, joy, and action; that spirit is celebrated in this report. It draws attention to the value of community-driven transformation and grassroots leadership in our common green areas.
Through an evaluation of the Sparking Change Toronto program Park People aimed to understand the impact of the program in four key areas outlined in Park People’s Theory of Change:
Discover the impact of the Sparking Change program in Toronto.
Canada’s large urban parks play a proven role in supporting the healthy ecosystems and connected communities that make for thriving cities.
From 2021 – 2025, a growing network of Cornerstone Parks – from coast to coast – tracked their shared impact on people as well as the planet. They demonstrated how caring for the land by removing invasive species and planting native species, among other activities, positively impacts community volunteers’ mental well-being and physical health.
Cornerstone Parks also proved the enormous value of their work to their cities. For the vast majority of parks departments in Canadian cities, financial and human resources are insufficient, and parks departments are being asked to address broader social issues that they feel ill equipped to handle (CCPR, 2024). Meanwhile, Cornerstone Parks and their volunteers provide significant economic value to Canada’s major municipalities, offer needed support to City staff, and lighten the load for traditional health and social services by providing community care.
The tireless work of our Cornerstone partners proves that, for people living in cities, parks are vital sites of connection – to nature, to our neighbours, and ultimately to solutions that make Canadian cities more livable.
Discover the impact of Canada’s large urban parks’ stewardship initiatives.
In Vancouver’s Champlain Heights, a powerful model of urban stewardship is taking root.
The Everett Crowley Park Committee (ECPC) and Free the Fern Stewardship Society are two grassroots organizations that work in close partnership to protect and revitalize some of the last remaining native forest ecosystems in East Vancouver.
Their largely volunteer-run teams have organized hundreds of successful nature education and stewardship events, and they seek to ground their work in shared values of reciprocity, reconciliation, and a deep commitment to place.
We sat down with Damian Assadi and Evie Osborn of ECPC, and Grace Nombrado of Free the Fern, to talk about how they’re stewarding not only land, but community.
Damian: I was actually born in this neighborhood. There’s a green space called Sparwood Park. I played in it every morning, and it’s where I first learned the values of stewardship. I loved playing among the cedar trees, the salmonberry and the cedar berry bushes. One day, I noticed a strange plant sprouting at the bottom of my favorite salmon berry bush. A decade later, I realized that the salmon berry bush was killed by invasive Himalayan blackberry. I was determined to do something, so I reached out to the ECPC and volunteered to help in whatever way I could.
Evie: We always joke that Everett Crowley Park is basically just Damian’s backyard. If you don’t know where he is, he’s probably in the park! I’m from the UK, and when I moved here a few years ago, I quickly got involved in stewardship and environmental work. For me, it’s a grounding way to get to know a place by knowing its environments, its species, and its habitats. I came along to a planting event at Everett Crowley Park, and it was so friendly and warm. I remember speaking to Damian, and feeling so encouraged to get involved. I’ve been working with the committee for over a year now, and blown away by everyone’s love and enthusiasm.
Grace: I got involved in Free the Fern very organically. After a windstorm in early 2021, I was out on the Champlain Heights trails clearing branches when I noticed invasive ivy taking over the area. Having previously volunteered at Everett Crowley Park, I recognized the damage it could cause and started removing it with a neighbour. People walking by began asking what we were doing and if they could help. That’s how Free the Fern began. I was inspired by uncovering a hidden fern while cutting back a blackberry and said, “Free the fern!”—and the name stuck. What started as a spontaneous cleanup turned into a full career shift for me, and today we’re a registered nonprofit.
Damian: Everett Crowley Park actually used to be the city landfill. Before that, it was an old growth forest stewarded by the Coast Salish peoples, near a former village called Tsukhulehmulth. That’s a very important backdrop of stewardship history that is carried on throughout time. When the landfill was closed in 1967, people were proposing extending the nearby golf course from 19 holes to 27, or building a miniature railway system. But community members and nature lovers campaigned to the parks board to protect it as natural space. That’s how ECPC was founded as a sub committee of the Champlain Heights Community Association, with a mission to steward the park as urban wilderness.
Grace: The area east of the Everett Crowley Park was still dense forest up until the 70’s. Luckily, when the city was planning to redevelop the area into the neighbourhood of Champlain Heights, they decided to keep a strip of the original forest as a pedestrian path. Stewardship along these Champlain Heights Trails are so important as the trails contain many species of native plants traditionally used for food and medicine and support habitat for eagles, owls, bats, pileated woodpeckers, and more! But, the trails also contain many invasive species that are threatening to take over the trails. Hence, why we need a dedicated community stewardship program like Free the Fern.
Damian: We’re the only East Vancouver neighborhood with over 30% tree cover. Generally, tree cover parallels income levels in neighborhoods, but our neighborhood is an anomaly—we have a good amount of tree cover alongside low-income and social housing. Unlike most of the city, the forest here was preserved during development in the 1970s. Today, only 4% of forest remains across Vancouver, and we’re part of it. This green oasis inspires people to care because it’s special.
Grace: Our neighborhood is like one large park. The Everett Crowley Park and the Champlain Heights trails are right across the road from each other.
I always say, “the birds don’t know boundaries,” so anything that benefits the park or the trail system, benefits each of us.
Grace, Free the Fern
When we look for grants, for example, we’re generous about sharing opportunities. Even if just one of us gets a grant, it benefits our whole neighborhood. There’s no need to feel competitive, as we share the same vision and values.
Damian: I like to think of ECPC and Free the Fern as cousin organizations in one big community, one big family. There’s something special about our neighbourhood in the fact that we’ve generated two grassroots environmental organizations. I think that it’s not a coincidence, and it speaks volumes about the interconnectedness of the programming and the stewardship that we’re doing.
Grace: A great example is our Light up the Night in Champlain Heights lantern festival. Free the Fern has been running the event for four years, but last winter we worked together with ECPC on it for the first time. Their team helped us with set-up, and with supporting the artists who were making lanterns. It was one of our most successful lantern festivals, thanks to this partnership.
Damian: It’s about taking the time to connect with people.
We believe every single person who comes to our events has something to learn, and every person teaches us right back.
Damian, Everett Crowley Park Committee
Thanks to the support we’ve received from Park People and others, we’re able to build in a way that is creating this collective vision. We have multiple subcommittees that suit the interests of our members, and we’ve self-organized to help those skills really shine. I like to say we’re dreamers and we’re doers.
Evie: Our committee has grown from 5 people to 11 people in the last year. We’ve also seen a real increase in diversity at our events, which is more representative of the Champlain Heights community. That’s diversity in age, as we have more younger people coming on, and in race and ethnicity. We have people bringing new skills like documentary filmmaking, ecological research, and nonprofit management, as well as more local community members getting involved. We ran 69 events last year, but we’ve already held 45 in the first few months of 2025.
People often come to us with an idea or vision they want to achieve, and we’re lucky to have the flexibility to support them. Funding from Park People helps to provide the logistics that allow volunteers to lead the programs they’re passionate about. Our bird programming is a great example: a long-time committee member teamed up with some new volunteers to launch bird-focused events. These have been hugely successful, with waitlists often oversubscribed by 200%. We now have five volunteer facilitators with bird knowledge who lead monthly walks that are beginner-friendly and social, with opportunities for everyone to share. We also run a smaller monthly bird survey to build an inventory and offer field experience for those interested in ecology, and the data is shared with the City.
Grace: As part of Free the Fern’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, which we passed in Aug 2024, we welcome diverse volunteers to take on a leadership role at each of our events. These volunteer leads support us with greeting volunteers, guiding a welcome activity, supervising our stewardship effort, and helping with clean-up. Having diverse volunteers take on leadership roles, helps those from underrepresented groups feel seen, valued, and motivated to participate, knowing that their backgrounds are represented at the leadership level.
Grace: Since our founding, we’ve made an effort to hire Indigenous knowledge sharers for workshops and walks. In 2023, the David Suzuki Foundation and the National Healing Forest Foundation recognized our Douglas Fir Teaching Garden as a healing forest, a place to acknowledge harm and support healing. Our Elder-in-Residence, Marge Wiley of the Tl’azt’en Nation, says it gives her a real sense of peace, and she visits almost every day. That’s what we hoped for—a space of healing.
Because of climate change, a lot of cedars are struggling as they aren’t used to the drying climate. With help from city forestry workers, we cut and rolled the trees down the trail with volunteers. It was a hilarious event of us trying to roll these logs! Then we hired a Squamish carver, John Spence and his son to carve the logs into a sacred circle. It’s become our gathering spot where the kids come to learn.
We have a monthly diversity committee to guide inclusive programming, including Indigenous reconciliation. I’ve been learning a lot myself and always try to cite where that knowledge comes from. When I teach students, I share the traditional uses of plants that were shared with me. Nearby, we have a food forest, inspired by Coast Salish traditions of planting edible food near villages. We installed a sign with history, plant info, and photos to help people learn.
Evie: After learning from Free the Fern’s amazing work on an equity, diversity, and inclusion policy, ECPC decided to create our own policy with a specific focus on indigenous reconciliation. We now have a dedicated budget to support this, which includes hiring Indigenous facilitators for walks, plant ID sessions, and workshops that share the park’s Indigenous history and present. Reconciliation also happens through restoration, as we plant native species and share their Indigenous names and uses where we can.
Damian: Our Healing Garden transformed an area overrun by Himalayan blackberry into a space filled with native, pollinator species that have edible and medicinal properties and which are culturally important to local Indigenous nations—hence the name “healing garden.”
We try to ensure a hands-on aspect is an underlying action to everything we’re doing, to go beyond just saying a land acknowledgement and put our values into practice. We actively offer open calls for folks that have knowledge to come forth to us. We’ve had folks who are Indigenous at our events, who’ve shared a knowledge that we don’t know about. We really appreciate that there’s this environment that is being fostered where we can have this knowledge sharing happen.
My hope is that we are achieving our mission of stewarding Everett Crowley Park as an urban wilderness, that the values of the committee are brought forward by the committee members themselves, and that programming is based on the interests of the community members.
It’s a vision that is collective, that’s based within the community. One that is modelled on stewardship: grounded in reciprocity, respect, and in allowing everyone’s qualities to best shine.
The rich ecosystems in our large urban parks not only make our cities more biodiverse and climate-resilient, but they also provide places for people to build connections to nature which are strongly linked to pro-environmental attitudes and well-being.
Nature-based programming–from environmental stewardship to species monitoring– engages communities in the valuable work of caring for large green spaces to help them thrive. It’s a virtuous cycle that can simultaneously support the well-being of people and the planet.
How can we measure and amplify the impact stewardship and restoration have on the health of ecosystems and people in our large urban parks?
This first Cornerstone Parks talk gather three experts who are evaluating the benefits of large urban parks and applying this research to secure more funding, attract partners and move the needle on large urban parks.
The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Catherine Reining is the Project Coordinator for ParkSeek, a pan-Canadian initiative to gather information about population health impacts of parks,…
With a background in landscape architecture, international development cooperation, and social impact measurement, Jia currently manages the Research and Analytics…
Ariane is the Conservation Projects Manager with Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) and is a Registered Professional Biologist. She is…
Sue Arndt is Director of Programs at Park People. Sue leads Park People’s National Network and Cornerstone Parks program, building…
A profound Indigenous saying here on Turtle Island is that Water is Life. Water is not only scientifically required for life to flourish, but it also connects people to new places; it brings people together. In Toronto, we are lucky to have many water sources – from rivers and lakes to ponds and ravines formed through thousands of years of geographical shifts.
Focusing on these waterways, the InTO the Ravines program, launched in 2020, has made quite a splash. First conceptualized on the heels of Toronto’s first-ever Ravine Strategy, the program’s multifaceted, support-focused and community-first approach has made soaring positive impacts. The InTO the Ravines program seeks to mitigate the impacts of climate change that continue to become more apparent everywhere, including in Toronto’s urban and natural spaces, while keeping communities at the centre.
As the program nears its 4-year mark, Park People has recently launched the Ravine Engagement Report, highlighting its tremendous impacts on the communities it serves across the city.
InTO the Ravines has sought to tackle the fact that despite many people living or working near them, Toronto’s ravines are often forgotten spaces in the city. InTO the Ravines consists of two main components.
First, a microgrant stream, where community-led groups are funded to host gathering and learning events in and around Toronto’s ravine system. Second, a champions training program, where pairs of community leaders are provided training, funding, and event planning support to host an event in their local ravines.
Equity-deserving community groups who face barriers, including uncertainty due to fear of getting lost or other feelings of lack of safety, in accessing ravine spaces are prioritized. As can be found throughout the Ravine Engagement Report, InTO the Ravines, through its very design, has been developed to work more closely and collaboratively with equity-deserving community members to support the Protect, Connect, and Celebrate tenets of the Ravine Strategy.
The multipronged nature of the program has had wide-reaching impacts: over 3,000 community members have actively engaged with their ravine spaces, with 50 champions receiving training and support over the course of the past three years.
Since the implementation of this unique and innovative program began three years ago, everyone involved in InTO the Ravines, whether they have played the role of champions, grantees, or program staff, has been able to experience Toronto’s ravine spaces in different, unique, and memorable ways. InTO the Ravines program also emphasizes continuing to develop relationships with the ravine spaces long after their involvement in the program ends.
InTO the Ravines centres around fostering connections between people and nature and nurturing spaces for self-connection or self-reflection.
As the program launched and the impacts of the pandemic became more pronounced, including greater feelings of isolation and sadness, the importance of these natural spaces became all the more crucial, especially for those in equity-deserving communities. As the program facilitates space for community gatherings in and around ravine spaces, community connection is a major element of this program. Over 100 events have been hosted by community members, and 15% of in-person event attendees said they had never visited a ravine before. Importantly, in a space where the impacts of climate change manifest, ravine spaces become critical to highlight the need to restore relationships and reconnect to nature.
The connection piece of InTO the Ravines is especially emphasized through the champion training program. Here, champions get to meet each other and learn from each other and speakers from the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and the City of Toronto, as well as build up their own skills in event planning and networking.
For me, it was knowing more about not just what is the Ravine Strategy, but what the city sort of looked to develop and how it grew. So meeting with park staff…that was pretty cool because I think on just our own– we had the documents, but just hearing it from the city and the work on that strategy was cool to get an inside look.
Program Participant
Park People ensures that champion alumni remain connected to the program by supporting them through various means, events and opportunities, networks, and funding to continue their activation of ravines in the years after they have completed training and that they are re-connected to other cohort members. 50% of past participants have continued to host events in their ravines after completing the program.
Finally, InTO the Ravines has also helped facilitate new connections to the land through Indigenous teachings as part of the various ravine events.
Events like this or talking to an elder, for me, was one of the first opportunities to learn about Indigenous history and parks. Otherwise, I don’t think I would have ever known where to even find information other than just reading up online.
Park and nature access are unequal across the city. For many of our programs, including InTO the Ravines, Park People prioritizes working with equity-deserving, resident-led groups who often live close to ravines but, for various reasons, both physical and sociological, do not access them.
As mentioned in our Ravine Engagement Report, several participants reported that they either didn’t know that ravines existed in their communities or that they were unaware of how to access them.
Our research found this was especially true in communities of colour.
Specifically, the Champions training program has focused on redressing some of this imbalance by working with residents from equity-deserving communities to provide them with training, funding, and support. One of InTO the Ravines’ core value is that community members are the experts on their local parks, neighbourhoods and ravines, and their nuanced and lived knowledge of their local community make them excellent leaders to take on this work.
A community member shares the impact of this focus in our Ravine Engagement Report,
In a dense city like Toronto, where few people have access to backyards or natural areas outside the city, InTO the ravines helped (me) see these spaces as shared places where (I) could get away from the daily life in the city.
Community member
Significantly, 70% of event attendees are more likely to bring friends and family to visit the ravines in the future.
Another cornerstone of the InTO the Ravines program is strong and collaborative partnerships. The InTO the Ravines Champions training program focuses on working together as a group and helps foster partnerships between sets of champions and inter-community partnerships across different city regions. As a testament to this, 125 park and ravine groups and 30 organizations worked together on the development and execution of InTO the Ravines.
Additionally, The City of Toronto and Park People developed this program collaboratively and continue to work jointly through the year to support each other’s strengths and to offer assistance or help fill in gaps. InTO the Ravines champions and microgrant recipients work collaboratively with Park People and the City through focus groups, feedback and evaluations to improve the program each year and are plugged into our wider Toronto Network. This year, Park People worked directly with past champions to provide partnership and support where groups requested it, continuing to prioritize working in trusting and collaborative relationships with community groups.
These themes also show up in a myriad of other ways through our Ravine Engagement Report.
Also, find the Ravine Strategy here to learn more about the important principles and how you can get involved.
If you are in Toronto between Saturday, September 30 and October 9, we highly encourage you to attend a Ravine Days event, including one that Park People and Evergreen are jointly supporting on Saturday, October 7, and one that STEPS Public Art is hosting with the support of Park People’s Cornerstone program.
Parks are not “nice to have,” they are critical social, health, and environmental infrastructure for Toronto. City parks are lifelines in extreme heat waves. Social connectors in an age of increasing polarization. Keepers of biodiversity despite ever fragmenting urban landscapes.
To meet the biggest challenges we face in Toronto—climate change, biodiversity loss, social polarization, rising inequality—we need whole new ways to plan, design, manage, program, and govern parks. This shift requires doing things differently. It requires ensuring proper funding, sharing decision-making power, addressing inequities head-on, and prioritizing action on truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
As Toronto faces the upcoming mayoral by-election in June, we urge candidates for Mayor to accelerate the transition to a more equitable, resilient future for city parks by working with us on the ideas presented in this platform.
All of the ideas in this platform require us to invest more time and money into city parks. In our 2022 survey of residents of Canadian cities, 87% said they support more investment in parks.
Responsible for 60% of Canada’s infrastructure, municipalities like Toronto receive only 10 cents on every tax dollar.
And, the provincial government’s drastic changes to park levies and planning rules under Bill 23 will further diminish park budgets and reduce the amount of parkland created to support new growth.
All three levels of government, each of which have responsibilities for our natural environment and human health, need to come to the table. This is easier said than done. The multiple benefits of parks—health, environmental, social, economic—actually make it harder to invest at the scale we need to. Why? Because the benefits of investing in parks are distributed across many different ministries and government departments, each of which are accountable for their own budgets and plans. That is why we need to support governments to pursue an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to investment in Toronto parks.
Investing more in city parks is not an imposition or an obligation. It is an opportunity to transform Toronto for the better.
People living in Toronto will need to adapt to hotter, wetter and more unpredictable climates. Climate change is here and is already impacting our city. With the right investment, parks can serve as climate infrastructure and provide people with critical places of refuge in hot, dense cities where a major health crisis is unfolding.
At the same time, people are seeking out nature more for its mental and physical health benefits. People want more places to experience nature close to home: 71% of survey respondents said they value visiting naturalized spaces within a 10-minute walk of home, such as a native plant garden or small meadow. In fact, 87% of respondents said they were in favour of more native plant species within parks—the second most requested amenity after public washrooms. Toronto’s Ravine Strategy offers a strong road-map for ensuring these vital, biodiverse natural habitats are safeguarded for the future and enjoyed by residents, but funding has remained limited.
Invest in the co-benefits of naturalized spaces as climate resilience infrastructure, urban biodiversity habitat and vital nature connections in Toronto.
There is a clear and growing disparity in who has access to quality green spaces in Toronto. As COVID laid bare, equity-deserving communities face complex, interrelated health crises. Toronto must recognize how race, income and the built environment conspire to make parks a pressing environmental justice issue in our city.
Usable parks are the bar for entry. Toronto’s parks maintenance and operating budget has not kept pace with use and demand. There’s an urgent need to increase park operating budgets to ensure basic amenities like bathrooms and water are standard in every single Toronto park.
Spending on park operating budgets must start to keep pace with demand. It is basic: amenities like bathrooms and water must be the standard in every single Toronto park, with a priority focus on equity-deserving and high-use parks. Investments in basic amenities that promote park use must include:
There is an urgent need for new models of Toronto Park governance rooted in shared decision-making power. We need a new way of managing city parks that are more inclusive, and community-focused, and respect the land rights of Indigenous peoples and the knowledge of communities.
Over the past several years, communities have been actively working to decentralize power in institutional spaces. It is time for Toronto to give communities more decision-making power on the park issues that affect them most, particularly in equity-deserving communities.
This article was originally published in Municipal World.
This election season, several Canadian municipalities are anticipating lower voter turnout than ever. It’s a disconcerting trend for Jacquie Newman, a political science professor at Western University. “Most of what happens at the municipality level is going to have a real impact on your life,” Newman said.
We’re also seeing startlingly few candidates running for municipal office in cities like Toronto. “This is a symptom of an ailing democracy with low social capital,” said urbanist and researcher Josh Fullan. “People are burned out to their core by the pandemic and the growing list of things that simply don’t function as they should – internet and cellular coverage, water fountains in parks, four-hour lineups for sundry services.”
These trends indicate that Canadians feel a disconcerting sense of powerlessness when it comes to the human-scale touchpoints people engage with in their daily lives. Park People’s 2022 Canadian City Parks Report surveyed more than 3,000 urban Canadians. And, while Canadians value their parks more than ever before, the vast majority of respondents reported feeling a lack of agency about influencing decisions about city parks.
The survey found a dismal 22 percent of city residents reported feeling they “have a voice” in their local parks. Further, 48 percent of respondents who say they are unsure how to get involved in their park identify as members of racialized groups, compared to 36 percent who identify as white.
Grassroots park engagement can be a powerful on-ramp to civic engagement. Want to learn about how the city council works? Host a movie night or advocate for a new skating rink in your park. Parks are the most visible and tangible places where residents directly engage with political power structures. They are also where residents can exercise agency and feel they have a meaningful stake in collective outcomes. On the flip side, complex or impenetrable bureaucratic structures undermine an individual’s sense of agency and personal power. As activist and author Dave Meslin aptly says, “It’s hard to change the world if you can’t change a municipal by-law.”
Case studies featured throughout the report demonstrate how to build positive relationships with municipal power structures, heal fractured relationships, and boost civic engagement in parks. In the report’s survey of 30 Canadian municipalities, 92 percent of cities reported that COVID-19 changed the way they engage communities on park projects, with 35 percent reporting that the pandemic sparked more intentional outreach to equity-deserving groups.
Innovative models for trust-building featured in the report demonstrate how we can repair relationships, redistribute power, and foster a greater sense of civic agency in our cities.
The report highlights how Toronto Island Park Master Plan built in a pre-engagement phase to give residents a say in the engagement process itself.
To understand what Toronto Island park engagement should look like, the master plan team met with community organizations, Indigenous partners, and several departments across the city. Meetings between the city and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) and other Indigenous partners who recognize the island as a sacred place of healing and ceremony led to important changes in the planned engagement process. For example, as a result of listening and early engagement, the city embedded ceremony into the engagement activities.
As the report highlights, Lori Ellis, Project Officer of Strategic Projects with the City of Toronto, acknowledged that the pre-engagement process took time, but added “It’s worth its weight in gold in regards to building that foundation of trust and transparency.”
Edmonton’s RECOVER Urban Wellness Initiative piloted creative models for engaging with equity-deserving communities. One of the initiative’s city-supported prototypes is based in community-driven storytelling and sense-making. This approach is a deliberate shift away from city-driven data collection toward deep listening and relationship building.
To collect community stories, the city hired a team of 10 Local Listeners – community members living in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue neighbourhood. The listeners collected over 150 stories from the community, which were then shared back at a public event called Knowsy Fest. The festival, a literal celebration of community knowledge, invited residents to interpret the stories and mine them for concrete ideas for street-level changes.
RECOVER places connection as the center its engagement process, which fundamentally changes the relationship between the City of Edmonton and the residents it serves. RECOVER’s approach is to “create environments where connections can flourish, both on the small scale, between individuals, and on the larger scale, through policy change at the institutional and systemic levels.”
Another powerful approach featured in the report is participatory budgeting, which gives residents a direct route to decision making about park investments. However, like many engagement strategies, participatory budgeting requires a nuanced understanding of community needs, contexts, and dynamics. As is a recurring topic in the report, doing this work takes time and deliberate focus.
For example, the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre*’s $10-million participatory budgeting program with the City of Montreal engages residents that are too often left out of consultation processes – namely non-citizens and youth over 12. In the end, the team found that youth and non-citizens welcomed the opportunity to be involved, representing about one-fourth of all those who directly voted for projects in their communities.
Isabelle Gaudette, the Coordinator for Participatory Processes for the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre, addressed the importance of building transparency, fairness, and inclusion into every step. For example, to avoid setting up participatory budgeting as a contest between neighbourhoods and reinforcing unequal access to power structures, Gaudette recommends prioritizing projects that activate and improve multiple parks. This way collaboration, connectivity, and equity are embedded in the selections. She also recommends processes from community development settings, such as having a diverse steering committee to build trust and ensure projects align projects with identified community needs.
Insights and lessons from the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report show how parks can play a stronger role in building and healing people’s relationships with frontline municipal power structures in cities. Taking the time to listen deeply, cultivate trust, and establish collaborative outcomes requires cities to invest time and resources to foster meaningful engagement. But this investment has implications that extend beyond our parks and can help build stronger civic and political engagement, which we need for healthy, thriving democracies.