Park People’s Executive Director, Erika Nikolai, has been honoured with the Distinguished Individual Award from World Urban Parks—an international recognition that celebrates her leadership and the growing national movement Park People has helped build here in Canada.
Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks?
The emerging stream of the Park People Nature Connect Fund provides up to $5,000 to grassroots and registered organizations across Canada that connect people with nature, foster ecological stewardship, and restore urban parks and green spaces.
The scaling stream of the Park People Nature Connect Fund offers up to $20,000 to registered organizations across Canada that connect people with nature while fostering ecological stewardship and restoring urban parks.
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.
A reflection on the BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report, exploring how Black communities experience parks and public spaces, and what fosters joy and belonging.
How do we build a healthier, greener, more joyful Toronto? We start at the park. Discover how communities across the city have transformed their green spaces over the past fifteen years. Then roll up your sleeves and help shape what comes next.
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
Like many before me, searching to understand the nuanced meaning of “land stewardship” led me to Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic essay “A Sand County Almanac.”
In it, Leopold says: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
In 1949 Leopold said, ‘the modern dogma is comfort at any cost.” Little did he know about what was to come in the form of SUVs, lunchables and fast fashion. While the culture of convenience continues to reign supreme, many are starting to understand the true costs of this “modern dogma.” As a way to preserve the earth and their own mental health, people are increasingly stepping outside ‘the matrix’ to establish deeper connections with nature. Park People’s Cornerstone Parks program, Canada’s only national network dedicated to maximizing the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks, is championing the efforts of volunteers who devote their time, energy – as well as their hearts and minds – to nurture a greener, brighter future in the face of climate change.
What appears to the untrained eye as pulling invasive species is in fact, much much more. In a recent essay, journalist and podcaster, Stephanie Foo shares her experience pulling invasives in a New York City park. The experience, as she describes it, was vital in bringing her back from the brink of profound and debilitating climate anxiety.
She begins her essay by plainly sharing that “a couple of years ago, I had a nervous breakdown over, among other things, our planet’s dark future.”
Foo was able to rebuild her life by building a sense of community that included nature.
As Foo says about her experience pulling invasives as a New York City Super Steward:
“When I’m done, I face the tree I freed from the vines and smooth my hand over the scars they left in its bark. I marvel at her branches stretching upwards where they belong, pat her trunk, and say, “You’re welcome.” It’s pretty nice to save a life or two in the morning.”
Stephanie Foo
Indeed, the work undertaken by committed volunteers in Canada’s large urban parks is life-saving work.
Let’s start with facts:
Here’s where life-saving comes in. These volunteers are bringing life back to water, soil, habitats, and more. Hands-on restoration work in Stanley Park led to an increase in the populations of barn swallows and Pacific Great Blue Herons in the park. This is a very, very good sign. Because Pacific Great Blue Herons are at the top of the food chain, their return to the park is a sign of a healthy, well-functioning ecosystem.
Research on large parks indicates that due to their size and rich biodiversity, large parks do more ecological heavy lifting than their smaller counterparts. In short, while sod and a few key tree species are found in your local park, large parks are literally teeming with life – from earthworms to deer. Their size and biodiversity mean large parks sequester more carbon, reduce the heat island effect and buffer more urban noise than their smaller counterparts.
In some circles, the work of large parks may be called “ecosystem services.” But once you’ve rewritten the relationship between humans and nature as ‘community,” this term no longer feels fitting at all.
In Foo’s essay, she cites Robin Wall Kimmerer’s incredible book, Braiding Sweetgrass, and what it taught her about building a new relationship with the natural world. In the book, Robin Wall Kimmerer brilliantly weaves together her knowledge as a botanist, mother and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation to show us the profound lessons plants can teach us. Long before Leopold, Indigenous ways of knowing framed human’s relationship with nature as one of reciprocity.
Layering Indigenous knowledge derived from Braiding Sweetgrass with her training as a New York City Parks ‘super steward’ has had a profound impact on Foo who says:
“I was astonished to learn how impactful fighting for trees really is. According to this New York City treemap, one London plane tree near me saves 2,500-kilowatt-hours with its shade, intercepts 6,100 gallons of stormwater (keeping our oceans and rivers sewage-free), and removes four pounds of pollutants and a whopping 10,500 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. People who live in areas with more trees experience better mental health and have lower crime rates and higher property values, whereas the areas with the fewest trees have the highest rates of respiratory illness. Protecting trees isn’t altruism. It’s a form of self-care.”
This simple, yet profound articulation of land stewardship as self-care is one of the central reasons why Park People wants to ensure there is an ecologically and socially vibrant Cornerstone park within reach of every urban Canadian. As Leopold reminds us: “We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.”
Park People, High Park Nature Centre, Stanley Park Ecology Society and Les amis de la montagne are all-in on Cornerstone Parks. We’re deeply grateful for the dedication of volunteers who are redefining our concept of community.
To step up for your community, connect to the following NGOs leading the charge in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
One of the vignettes in Alan Zweig’s beautiful documentary 15 Reasons to Live features a Toronto musician who falls madly, head over heels in love with birds. He goes from disinterested to virtually obsessed with his bird brethren. In the doc, Jack Breakfast explains his obsession with birds saying something like:
“If the birds only came once a year, on bird day everyone would stop what they’re doing and just marvel at the birds.”
It’s true. Because they’re so ubiquitous, we take the birds that surround us for granted. Turns out, winter is the ideal time to start your love affair with birds. Here’s what Kazeem Kuteyi, lead organizer of Flock Together Toronto, an urban birding collective for people of colour, and Andrés Jiménez Urban Program Coordinator at Birds Canada advise for kicking off your winter bird adventures-no khakis required.
The first bit of advice Andrés is adamant about is to avoid labels. ‘Birder’ is cumbersome terminology that seems to be generally reserved for seniors in khakis with binoculars strung around their necks. And, frankly, it ups the intimidation factor and inhibits curiosity about birdlife.
Drop the moniker and instead, think of birds as curious outdoor companions you can become more familiar with overtime.
Kazeem has very similar advice based on the intimidation factor that comes with the ‘birder’ handle. Pre COVID, you’d find Kazeem DJing and promoting music events to 20-somethings who see him as an insider on Toronto’s club scene. He was the furthest thing from a birder.
When COVID hit and the clubs closed, Kazeem pursued his latent curiosity about birds and invited his community for a walk to check out the birds in Toronto’s High Park. He embraced the fact that he and his community didn’t look like typical birders:
“The idea is to take up space in a place where a lot of us have been conditioned to not feel comfortable in or feel like we belonged,” he said.
Flock Together embraced a decidedly ‘freestyle’ approach to birding. The members of the collective didn’t know a single bird name and had ten-dollar binoculars that they shared among themselves. They didn’t take any particular path to watch the birds. Rather, they meandered to their hearts’ content. Most of the 15 or so people who gathered in High Park that day just used their eyes and ears to experience the birds. Most importantly, Kazeem and his community ditched perceived notions of what a birder was to embrace their version of birding.
As Kazeem said in a recent interview:
“We did talk about birds, but also about music, art, life. The same conversation that might happen in a loud club or over dinner. This way you get to be in this beautiful, peaceful setting. And it’s free.”
Andrés echoes this sentiment. He firmly believes that when you first try connecting with birds, your goal should simply be to become more attentive to your surroundings and let your curiosity guide you. You may end up photographing birds or sketching them, you may just listen to their sounds and not bother investing in binoculars until later. The point is to ditch the idea that you need to be an expert and instead just build a relationship with the birds that are around you. If that leads you to a deeper interest in birding, then so be it.
Andrés Jiménez, Urban Program Coordinator at Birds Canada tells me:
“We should stop calling the people who go south for the winter ‘snowbirds.’ The real snowbirds are the birds from the Arctic who usually hang out with the polar bears and come to Southern Canada once a year for warmer habitat and easier access to food.”
In other words, every winter, Canadians can get a fascinating view of birds that are just temporary visitors to Canada. Imagine, you can participate in a wondrous travelling exhibit of birds that descend from the Boreal like snow buntings, redpolls, snowy owls, and rough-legged hawks, just by stepping out your door.
Kazeem says he was looking forward to hosting Flock Together events this winter because “I honestly hate winter” and birding gave him a reason to go outside. Flock Together events were postponed due to COVID, but Kazeem’s point stands. Having a bird focus can take the dread out of winter walks.
Also, Kazeem says, winter birding is a particularly tranquil way to enjoy the quiet buffer that snow provides. It allows you to slow down and be more attuned to your surroundings on a wintery walk.
And, there’s an added benefit because the birds are more visible without all the leaves on the trees.
Andrés encourages new birders to take the opportunity to build a reciprocal relationship with birds.
Install a small bird feeder outdoors and use this as a start to a long term relationship with birds. Observing birds can be a gateway to looking out for their protection and well-being. Once you fall for birds you’re much less likely to let your cat roam free and more likely to put bird decals on your windows to prevent birds from crashing into them or turn the lights off during the night to avoid collisions. You may decide to plant native species in your backyard to provide food and habitat for winter bird-visitors that travel all the way from their arctic homes for a brief visit to your town. Bird Canada’s Great Backyard Bird Count taking place February 12-14 and is an ideal way for you to demonstrate your reciprocal relationship with birds. All you need to do is watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days. Then, enter your data on the ebird.ca. Additionally, you can get a bird guide tailored for your neighbourhood using Birds Canada’s ID Tool. You can use Merlin Bird App to get a field guide to the birds of the region with photos, sounds, and helpful ID text for bird species likely to land in your backyard. Then, add your bird sitings to a super-cool live map and see the little flashes of light that show the findings of other backyard bird counters. Your local citizen science adds up to more knowledge about birds, globally. How cool is that?
Community park groups have created brilliant safe, socially distanced birding activities that can be replicated by your group.
For example, this year, through a TD Park People Grant, Still Moon Arts Society invited Vancouverites to tune into nature and create a virtual symphony of bird songs.
The creative chorus was a way for Vancouverites to celebrate birds.
“Bird watching and listening are valuable on your own because you can do it anytime anyplace and it helps you connect to our other-than-human neighbours with whom we share the habitat.”
Carmen Rosen, Artistic Director of Still Moon Arts.
The creation of the community and bird collaboration began with an online talk facilitated by environmental educator Sara Ross (RedSara). Participants learned about the birds they might encounter in the early dawn and what birds are singing about as the sun starts to rise.In Toronto, Friends of Sam Smith Park received a TD Park People Winter Grant for a Facebook-based photography contest where the winners are selected by the online community. The contest runs until the end of February.
“I think my favourite part is the original Scarborough Centre Butterfly Trail,” says Katie Turnbull, referring to the initial pilot project that launched The Meadoway in Toronto.
“That portion has been established since 2013. There’s wildflowers and grasses, a couple of allotment gardens, as well as shrub nodes, and the grass buffers are all nicely mowed. To me, that’s the spot that I just love to walk with family and friends. But I also love taking them through the sections that we haven’t restored yet and showing the difference between the mown grass and what could be there.”
Turnbull has been working on The Meadoway since the beginning, as a Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) Senior Project Manager. She’s witnessed it grow from that butterfly trail into a plan to turn 16 kilometres of the Gatineau Hydro Corridor into a linear park of continuous greenspace and meadowlands, along with a walking and cycling trail, that cuts across Toronto’s eastern suburb of Scarborough to connect downtown Toronto to the Rouge National Urban Park on the eastern edge of the city.
Hydro corridors are ubiquitous in cities, and The Meadoway is a new way of thinking about them as sites of recreation, connectivity, wildlife habitat, animal migration and a unique melding of human and natural landscape. “It’s an industrial reuse project,” says Corey Wells, also a Senior Project Manager at TRCA.
“We’ve taken what has been typically viewed as not a place that someone would want to ride their bike or hang out, and flipped it on its side.” Wells points out there are more than 500 kilometres of hydro corridors in Toronto, and the Scarborough project is something that can serve as a blueprint for how they can create new space for parks and wildlife.
The Meadoway is big sky country. At some of the higher points, there are vistas many kilometres long piercing all the way to the downtown, unencumbered by trees or buildings. Toronto is known for its ravines, wild fissures that weave their way from north of the city down to the lake, generally running from north to south but not connecting laterally. The hydro corridors that cross Toronto are like human-made ravines, portage routes over the tablelands between one ravine system and another. As Wells says, “It’s the backbone of Scarborough.”
The Gatineau corridor climbs out of the Don Valley at what will be the Bermondsey Road “Western Gateway” to The Meadoway, connecting from the East Don Trail that will lead right to downtown Toronto. From here the corridor runs east, linking seven rivers, 15 parks, 13 neighbourhoods and what will be more than 200 hectares of cultivated meadows on its way to Rouge National Urban Park. Though not yet completed, much of The Meadoway can now be followed on foot or by bike to experience the various stages of this seven-year project. It takes the traveller along a series of long and gentle grades rising from and lowering to, the watersheds. Cycling the trail is a meditative experience as it meanders through the hydro towers, passing dozens of “no mow” signs along the way that protect what Turnbull calls this “central habitat.” There’s much more to The Meadoway than simply letting the grass grow, though.
Before The Meadoway, the Gatineau corridor would typically be mowed six times a year.
“It’s pretty in-depth, what needs to be done,” says Turnbull. “We look at it as a three-to-five-year process. In year one we start off doing farming practices and actually use farm equipment to remove the turf.”
After the existing turf is taken care of by mowing and tilling, a cover crop of oats is planted. Its role is to reveal what other seeds are in the soil and might grow in place of the turf. The oats allow invasive species like dog-strangling vine and Canada thistle to grow, but also keep them in check, making them easier to remove. That crop will be mowed, and the process repeated four times throughout the summer until they are satisfied they have suppressed all the non-desired and invasive species.
Then it will be seeded in the fall to allow natural stratification – a process by which a period of cold and moist weather breaks seed dormancy through freezing and thawing, cracking the seed shell to allow it to absorb moisture – and then subsequent germination in the spring.
“We use a variety of seed mixes depending on the moisture regime in the soils and where we are within the 16 kilometres,” says Turnbull. “All seeds used are from local nurseries that provide native species sourced within Southern Ontario. We try and pick species that will help to increase species diversity, improve ecosystem health, provide a variety of bloom times throughout spring to fall, provide plant host species for pollinators and birds, have long root depths to help stabilize soils, be resilient to drought and provide food sources in the winter for birds.”
There are dozens of different species planted, and the choice depends on the particular landscape, such as butterfly meadow, wet meadow, dry grass mix, upland slopes, and so on. The most seeded species are: big bluestem, New England aster, oxeye, wild bergamot, evening primrose, switchgrass, black-eyed Susan, cup plant, blue vervain, common milkweed – and there are many more.
At this point, TRCA moves to an adaptive management and monitoring phase, watching for more invasive species, monitoring how the meadow is coming up and doing infill seeding where necessary. While this is happening, the City of Toronto mows a three-and-a-quarter metre grass buffer along the trail, as well as a five-metre buffer edge along homes that back onto The Meadoway. Ongoing maintenance is needed because, as Turnbull explains, every meadow will want to turn into a shrub thicket and then a forest.
“A big thing I always find in talking to residents along the path is that they are hearing pollinators, a lot of residents hadn’t seen a lot of these insects or heard birds calling before, and all of a sudden the meadow brings a whole new habitat.”
Katie Turnbull
This effect is part of what Turnbull calls enhanced ecological services: increasing the biodiversity and ecosystem resilience along the corridor. With taller meadow plants, birds, along with butterflies and other pollinators, now find a home there. For those staying through the winter, the meadow can now help them through the cold season; for migratory birds and butterflies, it provides a feeding and resting ground as they pass through. Deer and other larger wildlife can travel between ravine systems.
There’s also the mitigation of pollution, as having a more robust flora cover provides air filtration. The larger root systems of the native meadow plants, some more than two metres long, mean the landscape can now hold more water, which also helps with flood attenuation by slowing down water runoff. Less mowing means reduced maintenance costs and lower emissions. And the addition of more meadows could also have a cooling effect.
“We’re looking to see what the temperature differences between turf and meadow is right now,” says Turnbull. “It’s just preliminary but results are showing almost a nine-degree difference in temperature.”
“For me, its power lies in its connectivity,” says Nina-Marie Lister, a professor at Ryerson’s School of Urban and Regional Planning and Director of the Ecological Design Lab, which ran a design workshop for The Meadoway.
“It’s a space of connection across communities but it’s also a space across landscapes and topography.” Because a meadow has so much open sky, Lister says there’s opportunity to see birds in ways we can’t in the forest, and the open quality allows for sunlight that is good for growing things both for human consumption, through urban agriculture, and for enjoyment. “I would describe it as a very different landscape experience,” she says. “On the one hand it’s physical, about connectivity, but visually it’s about openness. The Meadoway is a kind of counterpoint to the ravines, which are folds in the landscape, whereas this provides a view across the tablelands.”
“A lot of the classic industrial reuse projects globally are ones where there was a historical industrial usage which has now stopped and it’s been converted into a public space, like the High Line in New York,” says Wells. “The Meadoway is unique in that it’s still functioning for its primary purpose.”
Wells points to Hydro One’s “Provincial Secondary Land Use Program,” which provides opportunities for other uses in the corridors as long as the primary one – transmitting electricity – can still function. These could include, for example, an adjacent developer building a parking lot, or the city maintaining playing fields under the wires. A spokesperson for Hydro One says that while the primary use of corridors is to deliver safe and reliable power, they welcome the opportunity to work with local municipalities and organizations as a community partner to create additional safe uses of hydro corridors.
“I think Hydro One is learning a lot, just as much as we are, about becoming a little bit more comfortable about what has typically been seen as a place where no people really spend any time,” says Wells.
Apart from not planting trees that could interfere with the wires, Wells says the locations of plantings and trails are designed to be in harmony with maintenance needs, and that a meadow is a perfect in-between landscape that is compatible with all these uses.
That learning curve has been shared by a number of agencies and groups including TRCA, Hydro One and the City of Toronto’s various departments, as each group, with their own mandates and core interests, have found a way to work together on this common project.
The Meadoway is also an example of a public-private partnership – a concept more common in US parks than in Canada. This public-private partnership was first created through the Weston Family Parks Challenge, a city parks initiative that funded the Scarborough Centre Butterfly Trail pilot. The success of that first revitalization led to a pledge of up to $25 million from the Foundation to revitalize the entire 200 hectares.
“As soon as we saw the enthusiastic community response to the Scarborough Centre Butterfly Trail, we knew this pilot project had the potential to expand,” says Emma Adamo, Chair, Weston Family Foundation. “The Meadoway really has it all – from environmental benefits, to research and education, to promoting active transportation. It has the potential to have a significant impact on the mental and physical well-being of the surrounding community members.”
The project is even more complex when considering how much ongoing public consultation goes into it.
“We developed something called the community liaison committee, reaching out to a number of local organizations, residents, NGOs, groups like WalkTO and BikeTO, and Scarborough bike repair groups,” says Wells. “Like-minded individuals with different perspectives on how they might be able to utilize the space. We used them sort of as an initial sounding board.”
This kind of feedback was critical to how trails and connections were planned, as locals know the space and know-how they use it, and plans were adapted in response before introducing them to the broader public in open houses and public information centres. TRCA developed a “visualization toolkit” with lively and engaging renderings, virtual-reality experiences and even a twenty-four-foot-long scale map of the entire corridor, which was brought out to public meetings so people could put stickers and notes on it. TRCA also reached out specifically to new Canadians among Scarborough’s diverse population to engage them with The Meadoway initiative, and students at local schools were given seeds so they could learn about what was being planted. All of this outreach produced buy-in and a sense of ownership from residents.
After The Meadoway’s designers digested the input they had received, details were sorted out: benches, bike lock-ups, litter bins, and the design of trail intersections, where The Meadoway crosses north-south trails, to include ample seating, play areas and more manicured garden sections. A wayfinding system is still in the planning stages. It will include educational signage telling people where they are and where they can go, but also informing them of the natural and Indigenous heritage of the area, as well as the geomorphology of the waterways The Meadoway traverses.
There are some big obstacles in the way of creating a seamless natural corridor through a crowded city. Lister notes there are more than 30 road crossings along The Meadoway that pose challenges, not just for humans but for wildlife. “If we prioritize pedestrians, and we prioritize the creatures who are most vulnerable to traffic, it’s done by slowing the traffic,” says Lister.
“If The Meadoway is a priority, we need to think really big about what it means to have a healthy, accessible green space for the safe movement of people and wildlife and that it’s worthy of capital investment, as important as sewers and railways.”
While tunnels under roads are not a preferred solution, bridges are expensive. A smaller but useful example of the traffic slowing Lister mentions can be seen where The Meadoway crosses Crockford Boulevard in the Golden Mile neighbourhood. Rather than a signalized crossing, the road is “pinched,” or narrowed, and the usual asphalt replaced with bricks, all of which push drivers to slow down.
Highway 401, with its expanse of express and collector lanes, is perhaps the biggest barrier to a continuous Meadoway. It crosses the hydro corridor just north of the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, as the corridor nears its terminus at Rouge National Urban Park. TRCA may route active transportation users through the campus, in harmony with the that are part of the school’s masterplan, including the completed switchback path that leads from the ravine floor up to the campus, and onto Conlins Road, where protected bike lanes were recently installed to provide a route over the highway.
TRCA has been contacted by a number of municipalities and organizations who are looking at their inventory of these kinds of corridors in their jurisdiction and thinking about what other purposes and uses could be envisioned.
However, TRCA is also hoping The Meadoway takes on a life of its own and becomes a catalyst for other changes along its path. “In 10 or 15 years, I’d like to see a fully connected and seamless trail system from east to west,” says Wells. “When new developments are being planned and parks are being enhanced, I hope they’re all thinking of ways to connect to The Meadoway. I’m really hoping it becomes the veins of a leaf right across Scarborough.”
Lister calls it the “ultimate teaching garden,” one that will influence not just other cities, but individuals and their private property. “If the City and TRCA can do this, we can all do it.” She sees it as a literal, and metaphorical, seedbed for natural gardens. As for Turnbull, she hopes it will inspire people. “I’m hopeful it will be a place where the community and the public can come and enjoy nature and biodiversity,” she says. “I hope it will help them visualize that a different type of habitat in cities is possible.
About Shawn Micallef
Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and Full Frontal TO (nominated for the 2013 Toronto Book Award), a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize-winning magazine Spacing.Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded , the location-based mobile phone documentary project that spread to over two dozen cities globally. Shawn’s latest book is Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness.
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.