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.
For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the…
In 2026, 72 community groups and organizations across the country are receiving TD Park People Grants. They’ll be bringing people together in parks and green spaces through creative, inclusive, and environmentally focused events.
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
Explore key findings from five years of the Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting significant trends, issues, and practices shaping urban parks across the country.
Connect, Support, Influence and Inspire your community parks - Get our newsletter and email updates!
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
At Park People, we often say that big change starts small.
It starts with a connection between neighbours at the splashpad. A shared moment of awe when a cardinal crosses your path. A conversation about what you would like to see change in your neighbourhood.
More often than not, these moments start at the park. With the right support in place, they become the origin story of the community groups and local leaders who bring our cities to life. And what starts at the park carries outward, influencing how people engage in civic life. Local leadership, connected to place and to nature, is the scaffold we use to rebuild our social connections and reclaim our political voices at a moment of great instability and uncertainty.
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.
Park People’s future is rooted in connection. We’ll continue to support the people and ideas that help public spaces thrive.
Learn how you can host free, community-led park activities in Toronto this summer — no booking fee required!
The No-Fee Community Activations Booking makes it easier for individuals, community groups, and not-for-profit organizations to book free space in parks to host fun activities and community programming, such as guided ravine walks, family fun days with games and story time, or wellness days featuring yoga, meditation or tai chi.
The system was built in direct response to barriers communities had flagged — including removing booking fees, reducing insurance requirements, removing trustee requirements, and more.
The result is a free way with reduced barriers to bring people together in parks.
Alexandra Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkAmos Waites Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkAshbridges Bay Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontBaird Park (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkBeaches Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontBellbury Park (Park) – North YorkBroadacres Park (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkBudapest Park (Park) – WaterfrontCedarbrook Park (Park) – ScarboroughCherry Beach Park (Park) – WaterfrontChristie Pits (Picnic Site Only) – Toronto-East YorkCliff Lumsdon Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkClydesdale Park (Park) – North YorkColonel Samuel Smith Park *excluding southern headlands due to construction work (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkConfederation Park (Park) – ScarboroughCoronation Park (Park) – WaterfrontDells Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkDentonia Park (Picnic Site Only) – Toronto-East YorkDovercourt Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkDufferin Grove (Park) – Toronto-East YorkDunlop Park (Park) – ScarboroughEarl Bales Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkEarlscourt Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkEast Toronto Athletic Field (Park) – Toronto-East YorkEdithvale Park (Park) – North YorkET Seton Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkEtobicoke Valley Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkG. Ross Lord Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkGlen Long Park (Park) – North YorkGord & Irene Risk Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkGrand Avenue Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkGrandravine Park (Park) – North YorkGreenwood Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkHarbour Square (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontHavenbrook Park (Park) – North YorkHome Smith Park (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkHTO East & West (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontHumber Bay Park East (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkHumber Bay Park West (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkHumberline Park (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkInukshuk Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontJonathan Ashbridges Park (Park) – WaterfrontKew Gardens (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontLa Rose Park (Park) – Etobicoke-YorkLakeshore Parklands (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontLeaside Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkLittle Norway Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontLove Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontMaple Leaf Forever Park (Park) – WaterfrontMarie Curtis Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkMarilyn Bell Park (Park) – WaterfrontMilliken Park (Park) – ScarboroughNeilson Park (Park) – ScarboroughOakridge Park (Picnic Site Only) – ScarboroughOwen Park (Park) – North YorkPort Union Village Common (Park) – ScarboroughRees Street Parkette (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontRoding Park (Park) – North YorkRoundhouse Park (Picnic Site Only) – Toronto-East YorkRowntree Mills Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkRV Burgess Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkSanwood Park (Park) – ScarboroughScarborough Villages Park (Picnic Site Only) – ScarboroughScarden Park (Park) – ScarboroughSherbourne Common (Park) – WaterfrontSir Casimir Gzowski (Park) – WaterfrontSorauren Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkStanley Greene Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkSunnybrook Park (Picnic Site Only) – North YorkSunnyside Park (Park) – WaterfrontTom Riley Park (Picnic Site Only) – Etobicoke-YorkToronto Music Garden (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontTrinity Bellwoods (Picnic Site Only) – Toronto-East YorkWallace Emerson Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkWarner Park (Park) – North YorkWest Rouge Walking Trail *for walks (Park) – ScarboroughWexford Park *for walks (Park) – ScarboroughWithrow Park (Park) – Toronto-East YorkWoodbine Beach Park (Picnic Site Only) – WaterfrontWoodbine Park (Picnic Site Only) – Waterfront
We are pleased to introduce the new participants of our Montreal Urban Park Champions program!
This year, the program is taking a new direction: rather than activating existing parks, the Champions are reimagining underused spaces—paved areas, wastelands, or vacant lots—transforming them into green places that support biodiversity, climate resilience, and connections and exchanges among residents.
Discover the 2026 Champions and their projects.
In partnership with the Saint-Leonard Eco-Quartier, Claudia and Benfares aim to revitalize a traffic island located in a residential area.
The site already includes a tree and a partially grassed surface, but it is degraded by winter snow storage. The Champions hope to turn it into a small biodiversity hub through new plantings, making it a more visible, welcoming space rooted in everyday neighbourhood life.
Beyond the transformation, Claudia and Benfares want to raise awareness about the importance of greening practices. Saint-Leonard is a neighbourhood particularly affected by urban heat islands and flood risks, due to limited tree canopy and green space.
Site: Traffic island at the corner of Gauvreau and Périnault streets
A community group led by Louise is continuing the greening and maintenance of a 50-metre planting strip located between a sidewalk and a parking lot.
Since 2022, the site has revealed significant ecological value, including milkweed, essential to monarch butterflies, and a toad that has made it its home. Some plantings have already been completed, but parts of the site remain fragile due to foot traffic and vehicle movement. The Champions aim to continue their efforts to protect biodiversity, enhance the area’s appearance, and help reduce urban heat islands. A key challenge is encouraging greater involvement from surrounding communities.
Connected to the Falaise St. Jacques woodland, this area is part of a longer-term vision for an ecological corridor that supports east–west connectivity for pollinators and north–south connectivity with other green spaces.
Site: Banquette 2342, along Saint-Jacques Street
Xavier and Chantal are working on a project to green a corner space next to a building along the edge of the highway. The site, currently paved and unused, sits at the base of a building that houses artist and woodworking studios.
The Champions aim to transform this space into a greener, more welcoming place that encourages interaction and community gathering, which could also feature works by local artists. This project would be the first step in a broader series of revitalization efforts around Highway 40.
Site: 3333 Crémazie Boulevard
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 — from choosing your site to what to bring, what to avoid, and how to report your impact.
Follow the steps, gear up, and turn a simple clean-up into a shared moment of care for green spaces and your neighbourhood.
Plan a successful community park clean-up.
For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the largest urban ravine systems in North America was in their backyard. In Flemingdon Park, 60,000 residents in high-rise towers can see the ravine from their windows. Most had never entered it. Not because they didn’t care. Because no one had invited them in.
The InTO the Ravines program changed that. A City of Toronto and Park People partnership program that brings the principles of the City’s Ravine Strategy – Protect, Connect, Celebrate, Invest, Partner – to life, InTO the Ravines has trained more than 100 ravine champions, and welcomed over 7000 people to participate in hands-on ravines activities. Nearly 2000 of them were visiting the ravines for the first time.
This post is about what happens after Torontonians take part in the program — how champions like Gary and Geri and Nawal Ateeq are making the case for continued investment in community-led nature programming and in the ravines that make it all possible.
Time in nature is critical to our mental and physical health. But for communities living in high-density tower neighbourhoods with little private green space, access to nature is not guaranteed. Ravines aren’t just recreational infrastructure. For many residents, they are health infrastructure.
Nawal Ateeq from Flemingdon Community Support Services put it plainly:
“For us, the ravines mean health in a tower community. They mean climate resilience where heat vulnerability is real.”
InTO the Ravines creates structured access — not just to the physical space, but to the knowledge, confidence, and sense of ownership that make that space usable. Geri describes watching participants’ “initial uncertainty transform into curiosity, confidence, and appreciation.”
Geri and Gary now run a restoration site, organize turtle protection efforts, and have personally walked their MP, MPP, and City Councillor through their local ravine. Nawal’s organization trains new Ravine Champions who guide their own neighbours.
7000 ravine program participants are seven thousand potential constituents who understand why ravines matter. They are a new political constituency poised to support sustained investment in these critical natural spaces.
“What began as a personal shift—from leaving the city to find nature, to discovering it close to home—has become ongoing community engagement. The Park People program didn’t just teach us about ravines; it empowered us to become ambassadors for them.”
Geri James
“Environmental engagement cannot be abstract. It must be local, inclusive, and community-led.”
Nawal Ateeq
Limited wayfinding, steep paths, entrances that aren’t obvious or welcoming. The Ravine Strategy is designed to address these challenges so that the people who need our ravines the most face fewer barriers to visiting them.
inTO the Ravines supports these physical changes by adding the social infrastructure that is key to making people feel welcome.
In Flemingdon Park, Nawal shares, “the program began with stay-at-home mothers who had never worked in Canada and had never entered the ravine visible from their homes. Four park events gathered eighty residents for a first visit to the ravine. Those events built confidence, leadership, and belonging.”
What looks like a simple nature walk is a starting point towards building environmental leaders, strengthening social infrastructure, and advancing climate equity, all at the same time.
Community programming is an effective way to maximize the social value of every dollar of infrastructure investment — but without full funding, both the ravines and the communities that rely on them are not able to realize their full potential.
We currently face over $50 million in unmet capital investment needs in Priority Investment Areas alone, across a 300-kilometre system absorbing increasing climate stress every year. The 2026 update on the Ravine Strategy painted a picture of the joint contributions of City staff, councillors, community leaders and non-profits in advancing the strategy’s goals since 2017.
But with municipalities responsible for maintaining over 60% of Canada’s infrastructure on 10 cents of every tax dollar, Toronto can’t do it alone.
The case for intergovernmental investment is clear. Seven thousand constituents. Trained community advocates. Champions prepared to walk their elected officials through the ecosystems they helped restore.
The future that InTO the Ravines is trying to grow is already here in small ways: newcomers discovering that the green space outside their window is for them. Seniors on trails they once hesitated to enter. Community organizations with the capacity and confidence to shape the places they steward.
Nawal, Geri and Gary are sharing an invitation to our provincial and federal partners to invest with us in bringing this future to life for all Torontonians.
The plot of former agricultural land next to the Parc nature de l’Anse-à-l’Orme, on the western edge of Montreal, is fascinating in many ways. For one thing, it’s home to 270 species of flora and fauna that thrive within a mix of wetlands, woods and meadows. It occupies 365 hectares of land, making it one of the largest undeveloped—and until recently unprotected—swathes of natural territory on this island that more than two million people call home. But perhaps the most surprising thing about it is how few people seem to know it exists.
“At so many of the doors we knocked on, people didn’t even know that right beside them was this massive former agricultural land that was regenerating,” says Sue Stacho, Co-founder of Sauvons L’Anse-à -L’Orme*. In 2015, when a huge new residential project called Cap Nature was announced for this parcel of land, she helped start a group to protect it from development.
“We worked really hard – blood, sweat and tears,” she says. “We had to do so much to communicate why spaces like that are so important.” They knocked on doors, and hosted events like a Mother’s Day walk through the woods and evening stroll to appreciate the frog population: “any type of exposure to the area that we could bring to it.”
It worked. In 2019, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante announced the creation of the Grand parc de l’Ouest*, which will protect the area around l’Anse-à-l’Orme from development. But it goes much further than that: the new green space will be the largest municipal park in Canada, with a 30-square-kilometre expanse that includes active farmland, McGill University’s Morgan Arboretum, existing nature parks and previously unprotected natural areas that were vulnerable to development.
It’s a lesson in how grassroots activism can achieve tangible results. And it’s an opportunity to boost the amount of green space in Montreal, which has only 24 square metres per person, one of the lowest rates among Canada’s cities. But the Grand parc de l’Ouest is also a project of staggering scope, complexity and ambition. Not only does it span an area that is 15 times larger than Mount Royal Park, Montreal’s largest and most recognizable urban green space, it is a hodgepodge of different spaces crisscrossed by roads, railways and watercourses. It spans two Montreal boroughs and three independent towns, encompassing five existing nature parks and lands owned by McGill University.
The Grand parc de l’Ouest brings to mind other large, edge-of-city parks, such as the Rouge National Urban Park near Toronto, Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary and the Blue Mountain Wilderness Connector in Halifax. Like these, the Grand parc de l’Ouest has the dual mission of protecting biodiversity while giving urban dwellers access to nature. Those goals are not always easy to reconcile. In 2019, Parks Canada developed a detailed management plan for Rouge Park with the goal of balancing the needs of agriculture, recreation and conservation. The Nova Scotia Nature Trust, a charity that manages land across the province, is taking a similar approach in its stewardship of Blue Mountain.
For the Grand parc de l’Ouest, the challenge becomes particularly obvious when you look at its location on a map. Autoroute 40, one of Canada’s busiest highways, runs straight through the park, and in 2023 the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) metro system will open with a station at l’Anse à l’Orme, with trains arriving from downtown Montreal every 10 minutes. That will make the park very easy to access but could pose a problem when it comes to managing human impact on sensitive natural areas. On top of everything, the Grand parc de l’Ouest will be run not by Parks Canada or a provincial authority, but by the City of Montreal, which has more limited experience in managing natural areas.
All of that adds up to something with extraordinary potential – and no shortage of pitfalls.
“It’s been a long time in Montreal since we’ve seen the willingness to make these big gestures,” says Jonathan Cha, a landscape architect, urbanist and heritage consultant. “The challenge will be grouping all of these different natural spaces together. It’s a project that will require a lot of time, a lot of money – a very long-term project. But it’s a grand vision. There’s almost no space leftover on Montreal Island and this secures it for the benefit and well-being of the population.”
That this natural space came to be left undeveloped in one of Canada’s largest and most densely populated cities is the result of a half-century of effort by environmentalists and community activists. As with other parts of Montreal, the western third of the island – a dangling apostrophe of land buffeted by Lake St. Louis, the Lake of Two Mountains and the Rivière des Prairies – was once a lush broadleaf woodland frequented by people of the Haudenosaunee nations that lived in the region. After the arrival of French colonists in the middle of the 17th century, the colonial administration gave control of the land to the priests of the Sulpician Order, who divided it into strips of property to be farmed by colonists.
Aside from a handful of villages and early railroad suburbs, the West Island remained largely rural until after the Second World War.
“Even the tree-lined seigneurial property boundaries were still in place,” recalls historian George Vassiadis, who moved to the West Island as a child in 1968. Things changed quickly with Montreal’s postwar suburban expansion. “For the first few years after we moved into our new duplex on Spring Garden Road, the view across the street was of fields which had only recently ceased to be cultivated,” Vassiadis wrote in the arts journal Montréal Serai. “By the mid-1970s the fields had been replaced with houses.”
As bungalows and strip malls quickly ate away at farmland, developers turned their attention to some of the area’s last pockets of woodland. In 1977, plans were drawn up to raze the Bois-de-Saraguay, a biodiverse pocket of forest next to an old village, and replace it with apartment blocks, single-family houses, two shopping centres and a marina. Nearby residents successfully fought the plans, leading to the creation of Montreal’s first nature park. In 1979, Quebec’s government gave the regional council, the Montreal Urban Community, the power to develop a whole network of nature parks, including several that will now be part of the Grand parc de l’Ouest: Rapides-du-Cheval-Blanc, Bois-de-l’Île-Bizard, Cap-Saint-Jacques and l’Anse-à-l’Orme.
Conservation is the focus in each of these parks, but they are also popular recreational spots for people from across Greater Montreal. The largest of the parks is Cap-Saint-Jacques, which every weekend attracts thousands of people, most of them arriving by car, although that could change when the REM offers rapid transit access. In the winter, they rent fat bikes or snowshoes and head off into the woods. In the spring, they drizzle maple syrup onto oreilles de crisse – crispy pork rinds – at the park’s sugar shack. And in the summer, a broad, sandy beach beckons with views across the Lake of the Two Mountains.
Although these nature parks already cover a significant amount of land, they were broken up by private property that was long coveted by developers. For decades, much of that land had been protected by special agricultural zoning, but when the zoning was lifted in 1991, a resulting tax increase forced many farmers out of business. Over the years, the now-abandoned lands steadily returned to a more natural state. “There’s a whole range of wildlife that had been returning to these lands that had now been left fallow waiting for a development project to come along,” says David Fletcher, who co-founded the Green Coalition, a West Island environmental watchdog, in 1988. “All these animals that are iconic in eastern Canada, like the fisher and the white-tailed deer, were finding their way back to Montreal.”
Sue Stacho, who has been involved with the Green Coalition since the early 2000s, came across the abandoned farmland next to l’Anse-à-l’Orme one day while riding her bike.
“It’s this amazing place. Natural,” she says. “It wasn’t managed with trails and park benches everywhere. There are thermal pools in the spring. There are wetlands. Every time I went, if I went in a new way, I would find something new to learn about. If you know your way around, you can be out there all day.”
In 2015, a proposal to develop the land was announced. Known as Cap Nature and billed by its developer as “an environmentally responsible neighbourhood,” it would have preserved 180 hectares of the old farmland, but the remaining 185 hectares would be replaced by 5,500 housing units. Stacho and other members of the Green Coalition decided to fight it. Banding together to form a pressure group called Sauvons l’Anse-à-l’Orme, they succeeded in recruiting a host of other environmental organizations – including the Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS Quebec and the Sierra Club – to join their cause.
Citizen support was particularly crucial to their effort, which drew the attention of Projet Montréal, a municipal political party with a focus on sustainable development. “Once they learned about the space and realized there was real momentum growing for the protection of it, they were always around,” says Stacho. When Projet Montréal won a surprise victory in the 2017 Montreal elections, the wheels for the Grand parc de l’Ouest were set in motion.
The announcement of the park in September 2019 was greeted by the threat of lawsuits from landowners, including the developers of Cap Nature. By the end of that year, however, the city had managed to negotiate the purchase of most of the privately-held land in question. “There’s still about 40 to 45 hectares in private hands, but there’s no way a viable project could work,” says Fletcher. He considers the park a victory. “It’s been a very long haul. Quite a tumultuous three decades. We’ve been on guard with those lands for all that time.”
Fletcher gives special credit to Stacho, whose ability to raise public awareness of the old farmland is what opened the door to the new park.
“She’s a very energetic woman and her team did a remarkable job in bringing that to a conclusion,” he says. Now the conclusion of one chapter is leading to the beginning of another: the process of actually developing the Grand parc de l’Ouest.
Public consultations began last year, with most activities taking place online due to the pandemic. The challenge now will be to balance different visions of what the park should be. Stacho wants to see an emphasis on conservation, but some West Island residents are eager for more recreational opportunities, with some even raising the possibility of motocross trails in a recent online roundtable discussion. The green space is also used for hunting deer and trapping beavers, which the province recently declined to ban despite pressure from Montreal. “I’ve gone out and seen signs of activity there like shotgun shells and rifle cartridges left on the ground,” says Fletcher. “The kind of trapping taking place there is wire snare – it’s brutal. Absolutely horrific.”
Jonathan Cha points out that, beyond its natural spaces, the Grand parc de l’Ouest includes plenty of built heritage, including stone walls and houses from the French colonial era. “You need a very fine-grained knowledge of the territory to come up with a plan for it,” he says. There’s also the question of active agricultural lands, which make up a significant proportion of the new park. “Who will manage those lands?” asks Cha. “Farmer-proprietors? Co-ops? The city will need to create a new model to manage a park like this. There will need to be an additional layer of expertise on top of what they’re already used to.”
It will be a generational process, he says. “You need to have people around the table who are going to be there for a long time. There has to be a continuity in the process. The challenges are so big and numerous and the area is so vast and complicated there isn’t anyone person who can grasp everything that is going to be happening.”
What it comes down to is something Sue Stacho realized in her fight to save l’Anse-à-l’Orme: parks need people. It was the local community that rallied to protect this land from development, and it was through the collective action of many different people that the Grand parc de l’Ouest was created. Now those same people—and many others—will be needed to shape, sustain and nurture the park for decades to come.
About Christopher Dewolf
Christopher DeWolf is a Montreal-based journalist who focuses on cities and culture. Previously based in Hong Kong, he is the managing editor of Zolima CityMag and a regular contributor to the South China Morning Post, Eater and other publications. His book “Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong” examines the tension between grassroots and top-down views of urban life.
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.
As a child growing up on the westside of Vancouver, the railroad track along the Arbutus Corridor ran behind the tall hedges of our backyard. My sister and I would play along the tracks with neighbourhood kids, often leaving pennies behind to discover them flattened by passing trains the next day. Children have a way of turning any space, even an industrial rail line, into a place for social gathering and play. Almost 40 years later, many cities around the world have adopted out-of-the-box thinking, converting underused industrial land into public spaces. This innovative approach to park design includes the Arbutus Corridor, which the City of Vancouver purchased in 2016 and is working to transform into the Arbutus Greenway, a ribbon of pathways and parks through the heart of Vancouver’s westside.
“The Arbutus Corridor has a history and it runs through parts of the city that in everyone’s minds are already developed. Converting it to a greenway was an act of tenacity and creativity, working with the community to see the world in a different way, and to see a park there waiting to be discovered.”
Antonio Gómez-Palacio, a partner at DIALOG, the urban planning firm that led the design and engagement process for the project.
The Greenway’s history spans over 100 years – from its beginnings as a railway for passengers and local industry, to contentious negotiations between the City of Vancouver and CP rail for its purchase. Today, it is an active transportation pathway that runs from the tourist destination of Granville Island to Vancouver’s southern edge, overlooking the Fraser River. In the future, it will become a multimodal corridor linking a series of destination parks and public spaces, and in the meantime, the local community has found creative ways to bring people together along its path.
The Arbutus Corridor, originally called the Vancouver & Lulu Island Railway, was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1902 to connect Vancouver to the Richmond community of Steveston, home to a bustling fishing and canning industry. In 1905, the BC Electric Company leased the line from the CPR, electrified it, and began running a passenger rail service called the Interurban. It departed from the north end of the Granville Bridge, travelled through the westside neighbourhoods of Vancouver, and ended in Richmond. Interurban trains ceased operation in 1952, but short freight trains continued to use the Arbutus Corridor until 2001 (one of its last customers was the Molson Brewery). After that, the tracks remained dormant for 15 years.
Throughout that time, the idea of developing a greenway along the corridor was part of Vancouver’s future plans. Council passed the Arbutus Corridor Official Development Plan in 2000, which proposed turning it into a multi-use transportation greenway. In 2014, the City of Vancouver was finally in negotiations with Canadian Pacific (CP) to purchase the land, which runs through some of the most valuable property in North America; however, they couldn’t agree on a price. As a result, Canadian Pacific threatened to run trains along the line and started tearing out adjacent community gardens in preparation. This action hastened negotiations and an agreement was reached in March 2016, with the City buying the Arbutus Corridor for $55 million. At the time, then-mayor Gregor Robertson said the 42 acres would be used as a greenway with the possibility of light passenger rail in the future.
The City didn’t wait for those plans to be finalized before making the corridor available to the public. Within a year, Vancouver built a temporary 9.5 km asphalt path along the rail line that connected six communities on the city’s westside. The interim design for the Arbutus Greenway has been in place for over four years and is widely used and embraced by the local community. It now attracts thousands of people every day, providing an opportunity to walk, bike, and roll from False Creek to the Fraser River. According to a health study of the Greenway conducted by INTERACT from 2016-2019, the usage grows exponentially every year and, overall, it is seen by the community as a safe natural oasis in the city where you can go for an uninterrupted, smooth stroll and have informal social interactions.
“It has opened up a new avenue of meeting and greeting people and getting to know neighbours.”
Study participant from the Marpole neighbourhood.
“It just feels spacious and open. I feel like I’m suddenly in the midst of nature in the middle of a very busy city, and it’s just peaceful.”
Study participant from Kerrisdale.
In 2018, Vancouver City Council endorsed enhancing the path to give people more places to gather, rest, and enjoy the surrounding landscape. This decision kicked off the planning process to create the Arbutus Greenway. The Greenway’s ambitious plans are not expected to be completed until 2034, but in the meantime, many local organizations have worked to activate the existing space with grassroots projects that demonstrate its potential.
The Arbutus Greenway Neighbour Hub dubbed a local “lending library of things,” was created by Neighbour Lab, a design and urban planning cooperative, in collaboration with the Thingery. A seating area and a bulletin board were set up to enable the community to share information. The showpiece installation was a hand crank that passersby could use to produce kinetic energy to charge cell phones.
“We launched the Neighbour Hub to create a community hub and gathering spot along the Arbutus Greenway,” says Stephanie Koenig, Content Developer for Neighbour Lab. “We designed and built the project together with a neighbourhood stewardship team. We also had a neighbour passing by as we were installing who ended up helping build a free library on the side!”
The next step in the Greenway’s evolution will be to implement the permanent transformation of this space, so that it becomes not just a pathway but a multifaceted destination both for the many neighbourhoods along the route and for people across Vancouver.
In the words of the City of Vancouver, “The Arbutus Greenway is a defining element of Vancouver’s urban landscape. It is envisioned to be a destination inspired by nature and stories of the places it connects.”
Greenways are linear parks for pedestrians and cyclists that connect nature reserves, cultural features, historic sites, neighbourhoods, and retail areas. Vancouver’s most popular greenways have typically been purpose-built and along the waterfront, like the Stanley Park and False Creek seawalls. The Arbutus Greenway is the first greenway connecting the north and south side of Vancouver through an existing built-up area, using repurposed industrial land. The plan for the Arbutus corridor is part of a growing urbanism trend toward transforming obsolete infrastructure into public space. One of the most famous examples is the High Line in New York City, a 2.33 km-long elevated linear park created on a former New York Central Railroad spur. Since opening in June 2009, the High Line has become a tourist attraction that, by 2019, had eight million visitors per year. Projects like the High Line and Vancouver’s Arbutus Greenway exemplify the challenge of finding park space in the built-up city. When there isn’t a parking lot to convert into a park, cities get creative to find other underused pockets of land. In Canada, Toronto’s Meadoway is turning a hydro corridor in Scarborough into a 16-kilometre stretch of urban greenspace and meadowlands. The city also launched the Bentway to turn previously unused space under the Gardiner Expressway near the lakefront into a linear park. In 2020, the need for more urban parks like these reached a fever pitch as cities struggled with citizens in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic demanding more access to nature. It became clear that parks aren’t just “a nice to have,” they are necessary to our wellbeing.
According to a Park People survey in June 2020, 80% of Canadians said parks had become more important to their mental health during the pandemic. As one respondent wrote, “Living alone has meant that walks and outside visits are the only social contact I have had for 4 months. I would have been a mess without access to parks, ravines, trails, and the waterfront.”
In 2017, the City of Vancouver worked with DIALOG, a Canadian urban planning and design firm, to kick off a large public engagement campaign on the future design for the Arbutus Greenway Before the City launched the official public engagement process, there was already buzz and excitement at the community level. City staff initially put out markers along the Arbutus Corridor to start the conversation on its future and received a large volume of responses from local residents. Overall, people wanted the Greenway to be a safe, accessible transportation route with opportunities to socialize and connect with nature:
“It should be a car-free corridor with plenty of opportunities for people to slowly travel its length, stop and enjoy nature, have a bite to eat at nearby restaurants. Parks and open spaces to relax.”
“I would like to see re-introduction of local wildlife if it all possible, more birds, more pollinators. I want to feel like I’m out in nature while in the middle of the city.”
“That is why making the Greenway a people place, instead of just a multimodal corridor, became such a priority,” says Mr. Gómez-Palacio. “There was already so much grassroots involvement and it kept that spirit of park and placemaking front and centre throughout the design process.”
As part of the planning and design process, the Arbutus Greenway project team had 7,000 touchpoints with members of the public at over 50 events, including a multi-day design workshop, numerous stakeholder workshops, open houses, and online surveys. Community organizations such as the Vancouver Public Space Network were involved in the public engagement process from the start, to ensure that the Greenway would include vibrant public spaces and meet the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.
“We advocated for a design that had a strong pedestrian-primary focus, consistently separated ‘all ages and abilities’ bike routing, clear routing for the future streetcar – and, yes, lots of greenery for the greenway.”
Naomi Wittes Reichstein, Arbutus Greenway project lead for the Vancouver Public Space Network.
Reichstein’s mention of a streetcar references a major factor in the design for The Arbutus Greenway: future plans for a light rail transit (LRT) line. Although plans for an LRT remain part of the overall vision for the Greenway, the project’s focus has always been people.
“We have been involved in many designs like this and the biggest vehicle always wins. The Arbutus Greenway project was flipped, the first priority was making it a people place, not the streetcar. I have not seen this before or since,” says Gómez-Palacio. “We’ve made sure that any community programs are not lost when the streetcar is eventually built.”
The City of Vancouver summarized the consultation process in this way:
“The vision for the Arbutus Greenway was born out of significant public engagement on both what people’s aspirations for the greenway were and what they valued in terms of uses, activities and experiences. A number of overarching themes emerged over the course of the planning process. These include a desire for: safe, comfortable, and accessible design; places for social interaction, play, and relaxation; and opportunities for urban ecology and urban agriculture.”
The Arbutus Greenway connects several Vancouver neighbourhoods including Kitsilano, Arbutus Ridge, Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, and Marpole. Reflecting this diversity, the long-term vision for the greenway is divided into eight distinct character zones that offer respite and reflect the look and feel of these surrounding neighbourhoods. This vision includes activated spaces that create a place for movement and a place to linger.
One zone in a retail section of Arbutus Ridge will become an “Electric Alley,” referring to the presence of utility poles and its adjacency to Broadway, a busy retail and movement corridor. This zone will provide an urban backdrop with two plaza areas that eventually connect to SkyTrain’s underground Broadway extension, as well as large overhead frames for public art, lighting, and weather protection.
“We wanted to build on the existing character of these communities,” says Lindsey Fryett-Jerke, urban designer at DIALOG. “At the future Electric Alley, we observed kids selling lemonade and people selling clothing, so a theme of informal commerce emerged and we designed long, wide benches where people could display things.”
“At the Greenway’s southernmost point,” says Fryett-Jerke, “people watch planes landing at the airport, so we created a lookout tower.” That final zone, dubbed “The Lookout,” will boast a multi-storey viewing platform that provides views of the Fraser River Delta, Vancouver International Airport, and the San Juan Islands.
The other 6 zones will feature spaces to socialize and commune with nature. The “Harvest Table,” themed around food, will feature edible landscaping, long community tables for dining al fresco with neighbours, and a flexible space for pop-up activities. “The Ridge” and “Woodland Bend” will create nature sanctuaries, while the “Garden Path” will provide a wetland, boardwalk, and community kiosk. Gathering and activation areas will be created through large plaza spaces at “Kerrydale Pass,” the largest retail and civic hub on the greenway, and at the “Marpole Meander,” with a large community garden, ping pong and game board tables, a giant chessboard, hammocks, a bike skills course, a community “sharing” shed, and overhead frames for lights and public art. It is anticipated that Greenway construction will occur across four successive capital plans (developing two-character zones with each plan).
“The Arbutus Corridor was always considered the backside of the neighbourhoods it ran through,” says Gómez-Palacio. “With this new design, we are flipping it to the front and converting it 180 degrees to make it safe, welcome, and open for everyone.”
Over thirty years later, this hidden play space from my childhood will be transformed into a destination that spans the entire city for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy.
About Jillian Glover
Jillian is an accredited communications professional specializing in transportation and urban issues. She is a former Vancouver City Planning Commissioner and holds a Master of Urban Studies degree from Simon Fraser University. She was born and raised in Vancouver and writes about urban issues at This City Life —named one of the best city blogs by The Guardian.
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