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TD Park People Grants support local leaders to organize environmental education, sustainability or stewardship events that bring people together across Canada.
A guidance and resources to measure the impact of your park work on community health and wellbeing, integrating a social equity lens.
Learn more about green social prescribing, an evolving practice that encourages individuals to reestablish connections with nature and one another to enhance their mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
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City parks staff steward some of our most vital yet undervalued public assets: urban parks and green spaces. These areas are far more than patches of grass, they are dynamic community hubs, crucial environmental infrastructure, and essential public health resources.
The annual Canadian City Parks Report (CCPR) equips municipal park staff, community advocates, non-profits, and the public with data and stories that make the case for parks. Between 2019 and 2024, the annually released report illuminated trends, challenges, and opportunities in how we plan, manage, and experience our shared green spaces. Forty-six municipalities participated over these years, collectively representing 48% of Canada’s population.
This report synthesizes the major findings from the CCPR over these pivotal years. It serves as a curated and thematically organized index of data and stories from across the years, with comments on the trends we witnessed through that time.
1- Health Imperative: Parks as Essential Public Health Investment
One of the most consistent trends across the CCPR data is the growing use and recognition of city parks as essential public spaces, a shift dramatically accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. What were once considered amenities are now firmly recognized as critical spaces that support the mental and physical health and well-being of city residents.
2- The Funding Gap: Resources and Capacity Constraints
Despite documented increases in park use and public valuing of parks, municipalities report ongoing financial and staffing constraints that limit their capacity to maintain and enhance park systems.
3- Environmental Function: Climate Adaptation and Biodiversity
Urban parks serve important environmental functions, particularly in climate adaptation and supporting urban biodiversity, roles that have gained increased attention as climate impacts intensify. Parks are more and more understood as ‘upstream solutions’ for the environmental and economic impacts of extreme weather events.
4- Equity and Access: Addressing Systemic Barriers
Participating municipalities reported on their efforts to address equity, inclusion, and reconciliation in park planning and management, reflecting broader societal reckonings with systemic barriers to park access and enjoyment.
5- Evolving Practice: Community Engagement and Complex Operations
Park management now encompasses complex social dimensions beyond traditional maintenance, including community engagement strategies and navigation of challenging urban issues that intersect with public space.
How the park sector can meet today’s complex challenges through partnerships and collaboration.
How Addressing Conflict and Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Can Create More Equitable and Sustainable Parks.
How collaboration, mindfulness, and power-sharing in parks can help nurture and repair relationships between ourselves, our communities, and the wider natural world.
How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
Park People launches the first Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting park trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities.
The Canadian City Parks Report finds tight parks budgets, increasingly extreme weather events, and changing use of parks by residents are challenging cities across the country. But it also finds many cities are leading the way on solutions through an increasing focus on collaborative partnerships, proactive parks planning, and inclusive engagement practices.
In the report, we share:
Budgets tight while populations grow
Cities across Canada are experiencing budget constraints at the same time as growing populations and changing demographics create demand for more parks, amenities, and programming.Resilience must be scaled up. As instances of extreme weather increase, additional pressure is placed on park systems to absorb effects, like flooding. While cities are piloting green infrastructure in parks, there is a need to scale up and standardize these efforts. We found only 48% of cities have citywide green infrastructure strategies that includes parks.
The future is connected
Population growth and urban development is necessitating a focus on proactive parks planning and creative methods to expand and connect parks. Currently 70% cities have updated park system master plans.
Partnerships are powerful
Cities are developing non-profit partnerships and collaborations with resident groups to bring creative programming, alternative funding, and specialized knowledge to help meet new demands on city parks. We found 74% of cities currently have at least one non-profit park partnership.
Inclusion means going deeper
Cities are beginning the work of ensuring parks foster inclusion by exploring their own policies and practices, increasing accessibility, and developing programs for newcomers.
Happy reading!
Park People launches the second annual Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting the trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
As we worked on stories about biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and homelessness, the world changed around us. But it quickly became apparent that these stories were not made irrelevant, but more urgent than ever.
This year, the report highlights new city park insights to shape the future of biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and approaches to homelessness in city parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 27 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
How urban biodiversity improves our well-being and why that matters even more during COVID-19.
How we can both deepen the conversation about biodiversity and broaden it to include more people
Why habitat corridors are important for urban biodiversity and what cities are doing to make sure parks large and small are connected
As populations and development boom in many cities, finding space for new parks is creating challenges—and spurring innovation
How creative community groups and city support are growing connections through food in parks.
Park People launches the third annual Canadian City Parks Report on Centring Equity and Resilience: How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Park use during the pandemic spiked across the country as people flooded into outdoor spaces to seek safe ways to connect with others, experience nature, and get some exercise. Parks became more important to Canadians in their daily lives, but cities also faced new challenges with rising demands and public health considerations.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 32 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
How climate change is impacting how we plan, design, and maintain parks.
Whether converting streets to cool green oases, designing parks that celebrate water, or re-naturalizing the mouths of entire rivers, these eight Canadian projects point a way forward to more climate resilient cities.
How using an environmental justice lens can help tackle climate change resilience and inequity in parks.
Moving more towards nature-based solutions that view parks as key pieces of green infrastructure.
How Canadian cities can harness the power of park philanthropy—and address some of its challenges
How BIPOC park leaders are centring conversations of justice and power in parks
Park People launches the fourth annual Canadian City Parks Report on Nurturing Relationships & Reciprocity: How collaboration, mindfulness, and power-sharing in parks can help nurture and repair relationships between ourselves, our communities, and the wider natural world.
This year’s report begins to move beyond the impacts of the pandemic to explore how the lessons we’ve learned over the last two years can point the way toward more equitable and creative ways of planning, designing, and programming parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 30 municipalities and over 3,000 residents of Canadian cities.
How leaders from across the country are using different methods to promote a sense of connection to nature by meeting people where they’re at
How we can foster a greater sense of connection to nature through awareness, reciprocity, and gratitude—and why that matters.
How the pandemic has impacted park budgets and sparked a heightened focus on the importance of equity-led investment.
How park engagement can lay the foundation for relationships that last well beyond the end of a consultation period
How investing in ongoing trust-building beyond one-off consultations can help to repair relationships, redistribute power, and reimagine parks.
The unique opportunity of parks departments to play a positive role in addressing houselessness
Examining Prairie cities’ efforts to decolonize park spaces and honour the Indigenous histories of the land they are built upon
How collaborative funding approaches, and investment from other levels of government, are opening up new ways to support parks.
In exploring the research on nature connectedness and health, many strategies are identified to facilitate human-nature connections, including stewardship activities, nature mindfulness, preserving natural wooded areas, embedding sports into nature programs, and embracing diverse cultural knowledge and practices into park maintenance and events. But how do these strategies work on the ground with actual urban residents? We turned to our new Cornerstone partner, Meewasin Valley Authority, to understand how they foster nature connectedness in their urban park.
The Cornerstone Parks program, which works to maximize the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks, underwent two years of research with large urban park users and stewards to better understand the connection between parks and health. The recently published results suggested something we were already keenly aware of through conversations with communities and from our passions for spending time in parks – park use is associated with better health and well-being. But what really stood out from the research was that the most predictive factor of better health and well-being was park users’ feeling of nature connectedness.
Our Cornerstone Parks survey of park users found a significant relationship between feeling connected with nature and higher reported mental health, physical health and general well-being. This means that as large urban park users feel more connected to nature, they rate their mental, physical, and wellbeing higher.
However, most park users (67%) who visit Cornerstone parks primarily spend their time engaging in social activities, sports or recreational activities rather than enriching nature-based activities (33% of park users). And we see that park users who engage primarily in nature-based activities in Cornerstone parks report stronger nature connections and higher well-being scores.
So how do we, as park users, park professionals and community members, ensure that people are getting the greatest benefit from visiting large urban parks? In exploring the research on nature connectedness and health, many strategies are identified to facilitate human-nature connections, including stewardship activities, nature mindfulness, preserving natural wooded areas, embedding sports into nature programs, and embracing diverse cultural knowledge and practices into park maintenance and events. But how do these strategies work on the ground with actual urban residents? We turned to our new Cornerstone partner, Meewasin Valley Authority, to understand how they foster nature connectedness in their urban park.
Meewasin Valley is a 6700-hectare park that spans the South Saskatchewan River for 75 km through and beyond the city of Saskatoon. The park is an ecological treasure composed of a prairie landscape with several unique ecosystems not found throughout the rest of the country. Grasslands, like those found in Meewasin, are one of the most imperilled ecosystems on the planet. They are incredibly rich in biodiversity and have been one of the most affected by human activity.
Due to Meewasin’s central location and massive trail system, the park welcomes over 2 million visits annually! The accessibility of the park allows city residents and tourists to easily explore nature without leaving the city.
Meewasin Valley Authority is a leader in innovative nature programming. They host curriculum-connected programs for children, an app sharing Indigenous stories of the Valley, pollinator walks, dark skies stargazing, and sheep grazing demonstrations.
So what can we learn from Meewasin’s diverse nature programming, and how can those learnings, along with what the research tells us, be leveraged to optimize the health benefits of large urban parks?
At Meewasin, stewardship is a major part of park programming. Meewasin has over 1,000 volunteers who work on various stewardship activities throughout the Meewasin Valley, including wrapping trees with wire to mitigate beaver damage, removing invasive species, replanting of native vegetation, engaging in wildlife inventory and litter clean-up in the park.
One way Meewasin ensures that stewardship activities are accessible and encouraging to diverse users is by offering various volunteer opportunities. This ensures that people can be involved in ways that most pique their interests or needs. For example, those looking to contribute to conservation efforts in the park that are not physically able to do plantings and invasive species control can help with wildlife inventory projects, public education and nature interpretation at events or join the marketing and public programming team.
There is a growing body of research around the benefits of nature mindfulness and ecotherapy activities, increasing their popularity. Nature mindfulness and ecotherapy are broad terms that refer to activities involving mediation, bringing awareness of the natural world around us, yoga, deep breathing and raising consciousness of our place in the natural world. Not surprisingly, the research on these types of activities suggests that they deepen people’s connection to nature.
Research has also found that nature mindfulness activities have significant implications for children specifically. Engaging in nature mindfulness activities improves children’s sense of connection to nature, motivation for pro-environmental behaviours, and overall mood. Meewasin seems to be well aware of the benefits of mindfulness as their school education programs include nature mindfulness activities to help ground students in the park and strengthen their connection to nature.
In a time where we are inundated with negative news, specifically climate and environmental disasters, it can be hard not to feel overwhelmed and disempowered. This can lead to disengagement with nature and nature programs as people try to avoid feelings of eco-grief and climate anxiety.
Meewasin looks to provide relief from climate anxiety and negative environmental news with their more lighthearted programs like Naughty by Nature, which looks at the dating and mating strategies of the animals in the park. The program allows people to engage in joyful activities in nature and appeals to those who may not already be interested in conservation.
By offering different types of programs and focusing on fun, Meewasin can engage new populations in conservation and connect people to nature and conservation in a joyful way.
We often think of sport and park recreation as directly conflicting with nature conservation. In the past, we’ve seen nature spaces cleared to make way for new sports facilities.
However, the health of nature and sports are directly intertwined. As the climate changes, certain winter sports may become obsolete, and summer sports may become dangerous in extreme heat. So, it only makes sense that those passionate about sports also feel a sense of responsibility to the environment.
Many research institutions and policymakers have picked up on this connection and have started to make the case for using sports and recreation as a gateway to nature education. Using sports as an entry point, we can engage a whole different group of people in nature conservation and fuel their sense of connection to nature.The Sip and Skate program at Meewasin is a great example of how to put this approach into practice. Meewasin attracts visitors to join an evening of skating in the river valley with food and drinks and then provides opportunities for conservation education throughout the event. The brilliance of these events is that the Meewasin team inspires a passion for conservation by emphasizing the need to care for the planet to ensure that outdoor skating rinks can continue to exist.
Biocultural diversity refers to the idea that the way we think about nature is based on our culture and heritage. For example, humans have evolved alongside the unique biodiversity in their native regions, have different languages and cultures, and therefore have different names, knowledge and practices relating to the land. This is biocultural diversity.
One explanation for why people feel disconnected from nature is due to a lack of cultural ties to their current environment. In Canada, we see this through the erasure of Indigenous cultures and Indigenous traditional knowledge and practices of caring for the land. This creates a disconnect between Indigenous peoples and nature.
To combat this, Meewasin, alongside other Cornerstone parks, is working towards building strong partnerships with Indigenous groups and ensuring stewardship practices are informed by the traditional caretakers of the land. Meewasin is currently working with many partners to expand access to traditional medicines and plants, provide urban ceremonial space and host fire ceremonies. This allows Indigenous populations to connect with nature in the park in ways that are most meaningful to them.
Now that we better understand the pathways to improved health through park use, wherein the key is nature connectedness, we must optimize these benefits for everyone! Cornerstone parks have demonstrated their ability to foster nature connections for city residents and are leaders in finding innovative approaches to bring nature to more people.
As we advocate for more nature spaces, we also need to advocate for more nature programs that appeal to diverse users and incorporate many ways to connect with the land. Follow Park People, Meewasin and the rest of our Cornerstone partners online as we unpack more innovative nature programs and design strategies to optimize the interconnected health of our people, parks and cities.
Parks are not “nice to haves,” 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 upcoming municipal elections, we urge candidates for Mayor and Council 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. That means our three levels of government, each of which has responsibilities for our natural environment and human health, all 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 is accountable for its 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.
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.
Park Policy Directions:
Usable parks are the bar for entry. Toronto’s parks maintenance and operating budget have 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 the 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:
Further reading:
Towards equitable parks, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
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 looming.
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 homes, 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 biodiversity and natural habitats are safeguarded for the future and enjoyed by residents, but funding has remained limited.
Policy Directions:
Invest in the co-benefits of naturalized spaces as climate resilience infrastructure, urban biodiversity habitat and vital nature connections in Toronto.
Further reading
Deepening the conservation conversation, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
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, community-focused, and respects the land rights of Indigenous peoples and the knowledge of communities.
Park planning and design practices
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.
Abundance, the theme of Park People’s 2022 Conference, is an invitation to radically reimagine city parks. For three days, September 21-23, the virtual event will focus our collective attention on the transformational park work charting a new path forward in cities.
Community park groups, park non-profits and park professionals are recognizing parks as essential urban infrastructure and building new approaches to collaboration, community engagement and nature connections. The Park People Conference is an invitation to engage with the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in our city parks.
We’ve identified 4 key pathways to generating abundance in parks: decolonizing practices and narratives, engaging in power sharing, recognizing parks as sites of healing and justice, and cultivating human/nature connections.
Indigenous leaders and allies are calling for settlers to reckon with colonialism and decentre settler approaches in park work. We’re hosting numerous sessions during the Park People Conference that feature people and organizations that are leading the movement to collectively decolonize Canada’s city parks.
How can municipalities, community groups, non-profits and residents meaningfully work together to create spaces that address community needs in parks? The Park People Conference features several sessions that approach collaboration as an act of power-sharing where the process is just as important as the project itself.
What would parks look like if we saw everyone as equally worthy of having their needs met in shared spaces? Inclusion and access look much different from the perspective of those who are too often viewed as outsiders. But, their experience in parks tells us much about our communities, our cities and ourselves.
Several Park People Conference presenters demonstrate how centring nature builds both community and ecological resilience.
Check out the whole agenda, and 100+ speakers bringing together the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in city parks.
See you at the Park People Conference!
“We might get interrupted. I might get a call. I’m monitoring the hotline.”
This is how my conversation with Carolynne Crawley begins.
The hotline Carolynne is referring to belongs to the Turtle Protectors High Park: a volunteer-run phone line that park-goers use to report sightings of nesting turtles in Toronto’s High Park.
Carolynne, one of the two founders of Turtle Protectors High Park is a Mi’kmaw woman with mixed ancestry from the East Coast. She is the Founder of Msit No’kmaq, which means “All My Relations” in Mi’kmaq. Importantly, Carolynne is also Turtle Clan and a member of the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle.
Typically, when we feature stories of TD Park People Grant recipients, we profile park-based events that showcase the vital connections between people and nature.
However, the origin story of Turtle Protectors High Park is particularly meaningful because it manifests two important Indigenous knowledge principles that can shape how we engage with nature and one another:
One morning in June 2021, Carolynne was strolling through High Park when she saw a large snapping turtle walking in circles. Even though Carolynne didn’t know what was happening, she sensed it was something important. She also understood that what looked like harmless summer park goers and off-leash dogs to humans could easily interrupt whatever was happening and cause harm to the snapping turtle, whose life is no less important than her own.Park People’s 2022 Canadian City Parks Report addresses the concept of nature connectedness, and profiles Carolynne’s highly respected work helping others cultivate a reciprocal relationship with the Earth and other beings. As the report highlights, settlers have historically had an extractive relationship with nature. One example of this extractive orientation is our tendency to only value parks in terms of how they benefit human lives. A reciprocal relationship would invite us to consider how we can contribute to natural spaces, such as those we encounter in parks.
“I always invite people to think about our relationships with people. If you’re always giving, giving, giving, and someone’s taking, taking, taking without respect and gratitude, then there’s an imbalance there.” Adding, “As people, we have an individual and collective responsibility to be in a good relationship with the Earth, just as well as being in a good relationship with ourselves and each other.”
Carolynne Crawley
Speaking to Carolynne, it’s clear that this orientation shapes her daily experiences of High Park. Carolynne is attuned to noticing nature and demonstrating love and respect for all beings that she shares the park with. This is why Carolynne took the time to pause, pay attention and move into action on the snapping turtle’s behalf.
Hearing the story, I wonder if I would’ve noticed the turtle at all. Or, whether I would’ve had the inclination to stop and reflect on the turtle’s behaviour. I ask myself whether, like Carolynne, I would’ve made the time and space to address a turtle’s needs.
It’s somewhat ironic that the turtle at the centre of this important origin story highlights the importance of slowing down and taking the time to cultivate relationships with the natural world. If I behaved less like a hare on the run and more like a slowly meandering turtle in the park, perhaps I would take the time to pause, notice and demonstrate reciprocity.
Turns out this is only one of many lessons we can learn from turtles.
Upon encountering the turtle, Carolynne called Jenny Davis, who was the Event and Volunteer Coordinator at the High Park Nature Centre. Jenny’s expertise is collaboration. In fact, in her biography for the 2022 Park People Conference, she describes herself as uniquely adept at “bringing people together to get things done in a good way and fast.”
Both those qualities were key to protecting the snapping turtle.
Together, the two women made a series of phone calls with many experts they had existing relationships with, including in High Park staff, as well as biologist Marc Dupuis-Desormeaux, who specializes in turtles at York University. In fact, it was Marc who connected Carolynne and Jenny to another community park group dedicated to turtles: Brampton’s Heart Lake Turtle Troopers, also a current TD Park People Grants recipient.
Through these conversations, Carolynee and Jenny established several things:
Before Carolynne and Jenny even laid down the first turtle protector built by High Park Acting Foreperson Kyle Moffit, other park-goers came over to share their accounts of turtles laying eggs throughout the park.
Inspired by the Snapping Turtle she encountered, Carolynne and Jenny decided to create a turtle nest protection program in High Park that would:
The protection of the first nest set the course for the project.
To launch a program like this, Carolynne and Jenny would need support from the City, volunteers who would be their active eyes and ears in the park, and a whole lot of materials and people-power to build nest protectors.
Helen Sousa, the General Park Supervisor took the first positive step by reducing barriers to protecting turtles in High Park. While securing support for a project like this would typically require a complicated and bureaucratic process, Helen responded to Jenny and Carolynne’s concept for Turtle Protectors High Park with, “yeah, let’s do it, let’s try it.” And with that, the construction of several more turtle protectors was underway.
As Jenny and Carolynne underscore, the City’s orientation toward collaborating in “a good way” centered relationship-building and trust. The simple act of saying ‘yes,’ unlocked numerous other positive relationships and collaborations that ultimately led to a robust program to protect turtles and their eggs in High Park.
These relationships include:
Throughout my conversations with Jenny and Carolynne it’s clear that it took a tremendous amount of collaboration to get the Turtle Protectors High Park project off the ground. In fact, it almost feels like this project needs a credit reel to capture all of the many people who have contributed to its success (wait for that at the end of the post).
Indigenous artist Catherine Tammaro, a seated Spotted Turtle Clan FaithKeeper and multi-disciplinary artist, designed the turtle image that is featured on the brightly coloured signs that Animal Services manufactured to engage the community in turtle protection. Jenny highlights why this gesture means so much:
“Now you have the city following the lead of Indigenous people. That’s hopefully a model we can move forward with.”
The leadership of Indigenous people has laid the groundwork for a new kind of collaboration.
For example, the project officially started with a Clan Feast on May 1, 2022.
And when a small construction project was slated for a section of the park known to be a snapping turtle nesting site, the park’s General Supervisor reached out to Turtle Protectors High Park for advice and guidance. As a result of this relationship, the City will now consider turtle nesting season when planning future construction projects.
The Turtle Protectors High Park will make their map of turtle nesting sites available to Animal Services, High Park staff, and the local Councillor. Because turtles tend to return to the same nesting sites year in and year out (a practice called ‘site fidelity,”) the map can help city staff be on the lookout for nesting turtles to avoid damaging or destroying their nests.
The City has also agreed to pause mowing when the snapping turtle hatchling emerge in September/October and when the Midland Painted Hatchlings emerge in May/June
In the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report, Carolynne Crawley refers to her work as helping people “return home to the relationship with the Earth” and creating space for people to slow down and notice the world around them.
The Turtle Protectors High Park owes its start to the two founders’ respect, gratitude, and love for all beings. This approach opened the door to a series of valuable collaborations that truly embody what it means to work together in a good way, where trust and relationships come first.
Carolynne and Jenny would like to credit the following people who have worked closely with them to bring Turtle Protectors High Park to fruition:
What to do if you spot a nesting turtle from late May to mid-July:
This case study is part of the 2020 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.
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With climate change and biodiversity loss increasing stress on ecosystems, engaging residents in urban conservation is more important now than ever.
The question becomes how to reach people in their busy lives, respect traditional knowledge, and bring more people into the conversation about conservation.
In order to reach people, we need to articulate biodiversity in a way that is meaningful for them, said Jennifer Pierce, a biodiversity researcher at the University of British Columbia.
She recommended starting from questions such as “how does biodiversity relate to their lives. To what they value?” This may mean dropping the solely environmentally focused arguments and connecting biodiversity to other top-of-mind issues for people.
As we noted in our story on neighbourhood-scale urban biodiversity projects, one of the benefits of local initiatives is how they can make biodiversity tangible and relevant. Recent research has also shown how people’s exposure to local nature can positively impact their involvement in wider environmental issues.
By leveraging people’s attachment to their own home or neighbourhood—and by showing them how native plant gardens and rain gardens could, for example, save them money like Guelph’s rebate program does—more people can be brought into the conversation.
Another way to reach people is by working with youth. Schools are a great cross-section of society, Ryerson University Associate Professor Nina-Marie Lister said. Students can bring back messages of the importance of biodiversity to their parents, the same way that they did with recycling in the 1980s. “It was kids that pressured their parents to recycle,” Lister said. “They led by example.”
Joce Two Crows Tremblay is an Earth Worker with the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle in Toronto who works directly with street-involved youth and urban Indigenous populations planting and tending Indigenous species in local parks and public spaces.
These gardens are an important way of connecting with the land, traditions and ceremony—ties which have been severed through the colonization process.
“For the 50% of Indigenous populations that are now living in urban settings, parks are often our only place to connect with the land,” explained Tremblay. “A lot of healing happens by just getting your hand in the ground.”
Tremblay’s work extends to compiling research and educating about less-invasive management practices with a keen awareness of how colonial thinking is often re-enacted in how we manage species and landscapes.
Introducing new ways of thinking needs constant effort, and reinforcement of intentions through all layers of staff, as Tremblay learned when one of their Three Sisters gardens was accidentally mowed down. It is as important for the staff cutting the grass as it is for management to understand efforts to increase biodiversity and reconciliation work in parks.
How little we embed Indigenous knowledge and land management practices into our biodiversity work “is an enormous gap, and it’s also an irresponsible gap,” Lister argued.
She pointed out that while city staff have good intentions with biodiversity strategies and are aware of the need for more Indigenous involvement, they also recognize that many Indigenous organizations and communities are often stretched to capacity.
“It’s long been recognized that patterns of colonization and colonial history are repeated and entrenched through the way we build our landscape,” Lister said. “And we know that there needs to be, in Lorraine Johnson’s words, an unsettling of the garden.”
While not looking specifically at city parks, the importance of Indigenous land stewardship practices was highlighted by a 2019 University of British Columbia study which found biodiversity was highest on Indigenous-managed lands—finding a 40% greater number of unique species.
Getting to a place of collective care can be challenging. Some people may “love a place to death” while others may be ignorant of sensitive ecosystems, dumping trash or allowing their dog to run around.
However, as research by Mount Royal University’s Don Carruthers Den Hoed has found, how a place is framed—the name we give it and the narrative we embed in it—can impact people’s understanding of its importance. Humans are constantly looking for cues that suggest how we should act or what a place is for.
Carruthers Den Hoed pointed to one study where by telling people they were going to a park, people perceived it as a restorative place before they even got there. Even by naming something a “park” or a “sensitive landscape” we frame it in such a way that it affects how people relate to it.
Another research study set up by Carruthers Den Hoed included a “blind taste test” of nature. He brought participants to the same place through different ways: one group saw a park sign, one saw no sign, and another connected with Indigenous elders who talked about the place’s spiritual significance.
Carruthers Den Hoed found that people’s perception of the space—the importance and the level of care needed—was affected by the narrative of the place they were presented with, whether through signage or story. As a result, he noted it’s important to think about what the amenities, signage, and management of a park says about its significance and purpose.
Here are some of the creative practices that cities and communities are using to involve people in the preservation and enhancement of urban biodiversity.
LEVERAGE THE POWER OF ART.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE QUIRKY.
TURN NATURE INTO A LEARNING LABORATORY.
DEMYSTIFY WILDLIFE.
MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE.