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 InTO the Ravines Champions program offers people living near ravines training and support to learn, explore, and celebrate Toronto's one-of-a-kind ravines system.
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.
For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the…
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For years, Geri and Gary James drove an hour outside Toronto to find nature — not realizing one of the largest urban ravine systems in North America was in their backyard. In Flemingdon Park, 60,000 residents in high-rise towers can see the ravine from their windows. Most had never entered it. Not because they didn’t care. Because no one had invited them in.
The InTO the Ravines program changed that. A City of Toronto and Park People partnership program that brings the principles of the City’s Ravine Strategy – Protect, Connect, Celebrate, Invest, Partner – to life, InTO the Ravines has trained more than 100 ravine champions, and welcomed over 7000 people to participate in hands-on ravines activities. Nearly 2000 of them were visiting the ravines for the first time.
This post is about what happens after Torontonians take part in the program — how champions like Gary and Geri and Nawal Ateeq are making the case for continued investment in community-led nature programming and in the ravines that make it all possible.
Time in nature is critical to our mental and physical health. But for communities living in high-density tower neighbourhoods with little private green space, access to nature is not guaranteed. Ravines aren’t just recreational infrastructure. For many residents, they are health infrastructure.
Nawal Ateeq from Flemingdon Community Support Services put it plainly:
“For us, the ravines mean health in a tower community. They mean climate resilience where heat vulnerability is real.”
InTO the Ravines creates structured access — not just to the physical space, but to the knowledge, confidence, and sense of ownership that make that space usable. Geri describes watching participants’ “initial uncertainty transform into curiosity, confidence, and appreciation.”
Geri and Gary now run a restoration site, organize turtle protection efforts, and have personally walked their MP, MPP, and City Councillor through their local ravine. Nawal’s organization trains new Ravine Champions who guide their own neighbours.
7000 ravine program participants are seven thousand potential constituents who understand why ravines matter. They are a new political constituency poised to support sustained investment in these critical natural spaces.
“What began as a personal shift—from leaving the city to find nature, to discovering it close to home—has become ongoing community engagement. The Park People program didn’t just teach us about ravines; it empowered us to become ambassadors for them.”
Geri James
“Environmental engagement cannot be abstract. It must be local, inclusive, and community-led.”
Nawal Ateeq
Limited wayfinding, steep paths, entrances that aren’t obvious or welcoming. The Ravine Strategy is designed to address these challenges so that the people who need our ravines the most face fewer barriers to visiting them.
inTO the Ravines supports these physical changes by adding the social infrastructure that is key to making people feel welcome.
In Flemingdon Park, Nawal shares, “the program began with stay-at-home mothers who had never worked in Canada and had never entered the ravine visible from their homes. Four park events gathered eighty residents for a first visit to the ravine. Those events built confidence, leadership, and belonging.”
What looks like a simple nature walk is a starting point towards building environmental leaders, strengthening social infrastructure, and advancing climate equity, all at the same time.
Community programming is an effective way to maximize the social value of every dollar of infrastructure investment — but without full funding, both the ravines and the communities that rely on them are not able to realize their full potential.
We currently face over $50 million in unmet capital investment needs in Priority Investment Areas alone, across a 300-kilometre system absorbing increasing climate stress every year. The 2026 update on the Ravine Strategy painted a picture of the joint contributions of City staff, councillors, community leaders and non-profits in advancing the strategy’s goals since 2017.
But with municipalities responsible for maintaining over 60% of Canada’s infrastructure on 10 cents of every tax dollar, Toronto can’t do it alone.
The case for intergovernmental investment is clear. Seven thousand constituents. Trained community advocates. Champions prepared to walk their elected officials through the ecosystems they helped restore.
The future that InTO the Ravines is trying to grow is already here in small ways: newcomers discovering that the green space outside their window is for them. Seniors on trails they once hesitated to enter. Community organizations with the capacity and confidence to shape the places they steward.
Nawal, Geri and Gary are sharing an invitation to our provincial and federal partners to invest with us in bringing this future to life for all Torontonians.
This past year, parks have been used more than ever, but their benefits have not been equally enjoyed—a point highlighted in our 2021 Canadian City Parks Report.
The onset of COVID regulations and their enforcement have given rise to a growing culture of surveillance, policing, and fear that could easily become part of our “new normal” if not recognized and resisted. A new report by Toronto’s ombudsman provides insight into these realities and offers lessons for moving forward. The report, released earlier this month, found that COVID-related rules in Toronto’s parks were unfairly communicated and enforced during April and May 2020.
We know city resources have been stretched throughout the pandemic. Staff have had to deal with fast-changing situations and public health recommendations—all while under-resourced. For example, 60% of cities in our Canadian City Parks Report said COVID has impacted park operation budgets, making it even more challenging to do more with less. There is an opportunity, however, to look at past and present actions, as the ombudsman has done, to understand a new way forward.
The ombudsman report’s findings include that Toronto’s guidelines on use of certain park amenities were unclear—for example, benches were not listed on the city’s website as a closed amenity, yet people were issued tickets for using them. The ombudsman concludes that:
“Because of confusing and inconsistent messaging, some people were afraid to use our public parks at all, for fear of being ticketed. This was unfair.”
The report also found that bylaw officers were directed to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to enforcement—an approach described by the ombudsman as “unacceptable, unclear, and unfair”—leaving some officers feeling that they had to abandon their usual discretion in favour of ticketing in all cases.
This enforcement had a disproportionate impact on poor, marginalized, and unhoused park users, the report found. Independent investigations confirmed two serious incidents of racial discrimination in enforcement between May and June 2020.We’ve seen similar cases play out across Canada. In Montreal, for example, a group of five women of colour were singled out and fined in a busy Jeanne Mance Park. In Ottawa, a Black man was assaulted by a bylaw officer while out in a park with his seven-year-old daughter. A report by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association found that similar instances of discriminatory enforcement were widespread, often taking place in parks.
Findings from our 2021 Canadian City Parks Report confirm that these issues extend across Canada and beyond the early stages of the pandemic. Of the 32 cities we surveyed for the report, 84% said that they increased by-law enforcement in response to COVID-19 physical distancing measures.
This increase in enforcement has coincided with increased barriers to park use—barriers that are not evenly experienced.
In our survey of nearly 3,500 Canadians, respondents who identified as Black, Indigenous, or a person of colour (BIPOC) were more likely to report experiencing social judgement from other park users (28%), fear of ticketing/policing (24%) and harassment/discrimination from other park users (22%). The response from white Canadians was lower on all counts at 17%, 15%, and 8%, respectively.
Given these barriers, it is perhaps unsurprising that we also found BIPOC Canadians were less likely to experience health benefits of parks during the pandemic. For example, 88% of respondents who identified as white said that parks had a positive impact on their mental health, compared to 69% and 72% for those who identified as Black and Indigenous, respectively.
These findings highlight the concerning impacts of the growing securitization of parks—a trend that existed before the pandemic but has since accelerated. Sometimes, this plays out subtly. Consider benches with middle armrests that prevent people from lying down—a classic example of defensive design. This can also manifest in “ghost amenities”—a term coined by scholar Cara Chellew that refers to the absence of features like washrooms or sheltered gathering areas that are thought to attract “undesirable” behaviour. As some cities closed park washrooms during the pandemic or removed group seating to support physical distancing, it will be essential to ensure these amenities return to parks as restrictions are lifted.
Or consider the culture of interpersonal policing (i.e. neighbours watching neighbours) that has crept into parks, fuelled by COVID “snitch lines.” Since April 2020, Toronto has received over 30,000 complaints related to COVID rules in parks. Not only does this strain staff resources, but also comes with “considerable risk of unfounded complaints, overfocus on marginalized people, and discriminatory enforcement by police and by-law officers,” experts argue.
Although outside the scope of the ombudsman’s enquiry, few examples illustrate the securitization of parks more clearly than last month’s eviction of encampment residents in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park—a brutal show of force that involved hundreds of police officers, private security guards, and city staff overseeing the eviction of only a couple dozen encampment residents.
The city repeated this again on July 20 in Alexandra Park when it surrounded the park with police and security to evict encampment residents, including arresting nine people and barring journalists from entering the area.
This type of enforcement causes direct harm to encampment residents. As we explored in our 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, research shows that encampment clearances often uproot support networks, push people into more isolated locations where they are subject to increased safety risks, and violate the rights of Indigenous peoples, among other damaging consequences.
Actions like these also contribute profoundly to the stigmatization of homelessness. As part of the Trinity Bellwoods eviction, the city erected fencing, patrolled by security guards, around the perimeter of the former encampment to allow for “environmental remediation,” effectively barring people from using the space.
Similar fences have been put in place at other former encampment parks, including Toronto’s George Hislop Park and Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park. While surely the grass in these parks would benefit from some TLC, the same can be said of many other parks across the city that remain fence-free. It’s hard not to imagine there are ulterior motives—namely, keeping unhoused people out of the parks.
The fences have not only a functional role in preventing access to the park, but a symbolic one—they deepen existing hostilities by contributing to a blame dynamic where housed people attribute the “loss” of their park to environmental damage caused by their unhoused neighbours.It’s not uncommon for homeless communities and the environment to be pitted against each other in parks conversations, but we need to keep things in perspective: the environmental impact of a person experiencing homelessness is likely much less significant than any housed person with more disposable income to participate in consumption (just witness the environmental impact caused by the hundreds of partiers in Trinity Bellwoods over several weekends). These cruel actions frame homeless communities as destructive to the environment, positioning them as scapegoats when the real attention should be on our collective failure to realize the right to housing for all.
The ombudsman’s report offers 14 systemic recommendations that the city has committed to implementing, including directing the Municipal Licensing & Standards (MLS) division to develop an anti-racism strategy, as well as a plan “to hear directly from community organizations, particularly organizations serving vulnerable and marginalized people,” to ensure their feedback informs enforcement activities.
Building on these recommendations and drawing on past Park People research, we offer the following advice to help create parks that do not rely on enforcement and securitization:
Park rules can be helpful—even outside the context of a public health crisis. Past Park People research has found that a lack of clear rules can create anxiety about whether certain uses are welcome, inhibiting people from engaging with a park. By contrast, positive rules—those that are framed in terms of what you can do—can be enabling, by helping to remove the guesswork. In other words, rules can be freeing—as long as they are clear, reasonable, and culturally appropriate. For example, placing a sign in the grass that says “have a picnic here” rather than wrapping picnic tables in caution tape.
But rules need not be coupled with punitive enforcement. A McGill University report exploring COVID-related enforcement highlights that there is weak empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of monetary fines as a strategy for gaining compliance. Moreover, as the report authors argue, such measures “can be reasonably believed to cause greater harm than good, especially for marginalized populations.”
Rather than aiming to push homeless communities out of parks, recognizing unhoused people as legitimate park users in planning, programming and engagement processes can help us build more inclusive parks and learn how to better co-exist together. We can learn from the work of organizations across Canada that are showcasing possibilities for more inclusive approaches: from hiring a park-based social worker to facilitating outdoor art workshops that build bridges between housed and unhoused neighbours, to employing homeless community members at a park cafe that celebrates Indigenous cuisine.
These strategies not only protect unhoused park users from violence but serve to support their basic needs. In addition, programs like these help establish community-based bonds between housed and unhoused park users—cultivating greater empathy and understanding that is difficult to foster in other settings.
Strengthening relationships and communication channels between city staff and community groups is a recommendation offered in both the ombudsman’s report and our own Canadian City Parks Report. As the ombudsman writes, the city is “missing a critically important opportunity to listen to voices from Toronto’s communities when designing and evaluating its enforcement activities. This should be a priority, especially with vulnerable and marginalized communities.” Rather than relying on punitive bylaw enforcement, cities should instead prioritize building relationships with local community park groups—over 1,000 of which exist across Canada—and partner organizations. These groups can provide valuable information about on-the-ground needs and realities, help spread information about safe gathering practices, and collaborate on programming that gets people back to enjoying the park together.
Tasmeen Syed was five years old, walking down Mabelle Avenue with her cousins when she came across people painting in the park that sits between seven large residential towers in central Etobicoke.
Previously just a neglected space with broken fences, an out-of-order water fountain and eroded slopes that people cut across to get to the Islington subway station, Mabelle Park is now a vibrant park whose lush art gardens, log seating, ice hut, wooden shed and colourful camper trailer bring together the residents within the surrounding Toronto Community Housing buildings, many of them newcomers to Canada, low-income families, and seniors.
“I wanted to paint on rocks and spray paint canvases and wear a funny giant shirt that makes me look like a tiny mad scientist covered in paint, and I’m doing all these fun things and they said, ‘come back tomorrow, we’re gonna do something even crazier’,” recalls Syed of that first encounter with MABELLEArts, an initiative that aims to bring together the Mabelle Avenue community through the creative arts.
She spent that entire summer with the MABELLEarts team and has spent every year since with them. She’s currently wrapping up a role with them as a community mobilizer before she heads off to university.
Her experience seems indicative of the way many of the residents of Mabelle Avenue, the 4,000 people who live in the towers belonging to Toronto Community Housing, have come to encounter MABELLEArts: an initial sense of curiosity that leads to committing many days and nights enjoying activities with the dedicated MABELLEarts team.
Nicolette Felix, the director of community mobilization at MABELLEarts, says that the area is an underserved pocket that nobody really knew existed. It’s a drop of density in the largely low-rise suburban west end of Toronto, and although tucked between fairly busy streets it only has walkable access to a small number of amenities, including a dollar store, a middle school, and a smattering of restaurants.
It’s surprisingly small considering how much happens.”
Leah Houston, MABELLEarts Artistic Director
“It’s quite hard to find, if you’re driving by you may not even see it,” adds Felix. But, she adds, MABELLEarts “really put Mabelle on the map.”
That attention, in turn, generated funding opportunities, which help to sustain the programming. The additional funding “allows us to serve more people in our community, and we’ve been able to create employment, because, as our programs expand, we need more hands-on-deck,” says Felix. “There are no better people to hire than folks who live on the block, who understand the needs.”
The park itself is owned by Toronto Community Housing, and its support enabled the opportunity to work directly with the residents of Mabelle Avenue. “We’ve been able to co-imagine and make real the kind of park we want to have in a way that could be more challenging if it was a City of Toronto park,” says Houston.Houston founded the organization in 2007, born out of working with Jumblies Theatre, which brings theatre into urban neighbourhoods. Houston brought the spirit of Jumblies to Mabelle Avenue, with a focus on bringing art into places where it normally doesn’t exist and bringing people together in public spaces.
Children and their families who are involved with the Arab Community Center of Toronto (ACCT), a non-profit that helps in the settlement of newcomers to Canada, are among those who have benefited greatly from participating in MABELLEarts events.
“When it comes to newcomer families that we serve – and ours is not an area that is paid attention to for many reasons – where they come from, art is a luxury type of thing,” says Dima Amad, the executive director of ACCT. “Children, youth and families don’t get to really participate in art-based activities that will contribute to their mental health and well-being, that will bring them together in a space where they are learning new things, but also to know other people.”
Despite the pandemic pause on many of the activities in the MABELLEarts calendar, you’ll still find their stamp everywhere on the grounds, with colourful flags, engraved art, and gardens and planters filled with brightly coloured flowers and native species. Comfortable spots with benches and hand-carved wooden stools invite passers-by to sit. A signature fire pit with a MABELLEarts cover on it is dormant, waiting for the time when it can be fired up for cooking once again.
Setting up a presence in that space was integral to building trust among MABELLEarts’ community.
“ comes from being in the same place for so long and publicly visible because we’re out in a park,” says Houston. “Even people who don’t participate know us, and they see a kind of tangible outcome of our presence.”
A number of temporary outbuildings include a trailer that serves as a mobile café, a woodshed, and a former ice fishing hut, all of which have been “Mabelle-ized,” meaning artfully decorated with brightly coloured paints. The organization plans to open a permanent space in Mabelle Park through the Mabelle Arts Project (MAP), a community centre that will be a clubhouse for MABELLEarts programming and serve food via its community kitchen.
“My interest as an artist was really in land-based work, public space, working outdoors, fusing food and gardening and outdoor activity with art,” says Houston. “More of ceremony, ritual, and events rather than a classic theatre piece with a script and actors.”
That philosophy has resulted in years of activating a space that would have otherwise been unused and encouraging the community of Mabelle Avenue residents to come together through performances, workshops, events, and activities like smashing watermelons to mark the end of the school year. For that event, the youngest or newest child in the community smashes the first watermelon on the ground, while a marauding chorus of trolls yells and shakes their fists in the direction of the local school.
The focus on every age being engaged is a core part of what MABELLEarts does, including a range of youth and elder events. “Working intergenerationally was really important because it was an opportunity for whole families to do something together, which is often missing in our society,” says Houston. “You sign up for a program for your son or your grandma,” she adds, pointing out that not many full-family activities exist in the city.
ust as many other organizations had to rethink how they could operate during the COVID-19 pandemic, MABELLEarts had to pivot as well, temporarily putting aside much of its in-person arts programming, which required gathering in large groups.
“Being there every day was something powerful about us as an organization,” says Houston. “We’re not there every day anymore, but in some ways, we’re even more connected to people with wellness calls, and that initiative continues to this day.”
The pandemic also brought out the launch of the MABELLEpantry, after the discovery that Mabelle Avenue was in a food desert. The program is dedicated to getting food to those who need it. It takes place every Wednesday in the park, which is set up to look and feel like a farmer’s market, with bales of hay stacked near tables full of fresh produce.
Houston began driving to the grocery store and buying food for 10 households, “hoping that people didn’t think I was a hoarder.” Now the pantry assists 550 households, with volunteers bringing food to building lobbies for those who can’t travel to the park.
There are no plans to close up the pantry once the pandemic is over. “No matter what phase we were in, or what reopening, we realized that this was something that needed to continue,” says Felix.
A core mission of MABELLEarts is infusing all activities with art, theatre and design, and Houston admits that finding a way to incorporate that into food security was hard. They decided to have two therapeutic clowns play with people in line at the pantry, while at the same time ensuring everyone stayed safe and six feet apart.
“On the one hand, it encourages and actually enforces people to social distance, but it’s also like bringing a kind of black humour into what is a very serious situation,” says Houston. “I’ve loved watching them play with people in the pantry, and defuse anger and conflict with their silliness.”
Houston participates as well, as the emcee, in an eye-catching outfit. “I try to be really funny, silly, and warm with people,” she says. “The premise is that we’re playing with the pantry as if it’s a party or rock and roll. But what it is, is a food bank.”
“Most people in the food bank business care a lot about human dignity and privacy, and they want people to leave feeling good, but not a lot of food banks are concerned with humour and beauty. And we really are,” she adds.
Focusing on food security during the pandemic has also brought in more participants than usual, in particularly isolated seniors.
“People who might not have necessarily been comfortable coming out to sit and listen to some music if they didn’t know people, or just that it was too much work with their walker, those people are all coming down now,” says Claudine Crangle, MABELLEarts fundraising lead. “There’s a broader group of people who, I’m positive, will be even more involved in the arts and culture pieces as they’re starting to really ramp back up.”
“What people tell us over and over again is, you are my family. I’m here from another place, I don’t know a lot of people and I see you as my family,” says Houston, recalling a common refrain she hears at the pantry. “Between us as a staff, I would say we know everyone unless someone is new …. We can greet them almost all by name between us.”
For senior Bernadette Shulman, participating in MABELLEarts has eased her loneliness and introduced her to new things, like drawing, sewing, beadwork, and even some dances.
“It makes life more enjoyable,” she says. “When I walk down Mabelle Avenue, people are calling my name and sometimes I don’t even know them. But I smile because they have to know me from MABELLEarts because it’s only MABELLEarts in this community where everyone actually knows each other.”
The future of Mabelle Park is all about doubling down and creating permanent infrastructure that will enable the organization to invest even more time with the residents.
“We’ve been in the neighbourhood for so long, and because our work was so deeply collaborative, we built a profound amount of trust and eagerness to do things,” says Houston. “Imagine 100 households who are just really keen to do stuff with us, and we realized that that was a really unusual opportunity, so we started to think about what we might be able to do with that level of trust and willingness to collaborate.”
That brought them to create MAP, the multi-year strategy to really solidify MABELLEarts’ position in the community with a permanent clubhouse, a more official role as an intermediary between TCH and the tenants, and a plan to work together for more community improvements.
MAP is moving forward, and Houston says they’re busy working on the final design for the permanent community centre and securing funding.
Felix says that having a permanent space dedicated to MABELLEarts will allow for the expansion of arts programming, provide a community kitchen, and enable the seeding of micro-businesses that would be run by community members.
The social enterprise projects are in the planning phase, and Felix says there are many untapped potential business ideas waiting for an opportunity.
“There are a lot of folks who live on Mabelle that have prior experience in the food industry and we’re seeing people coming into the pantry and telling us about things that they’ve done in the past, and all their hidden talents, and we’re hoping that we can harness that and develop some programming that trains people how to run their own business and then cycle it through the MABELLEpantry and sell back to the community while keeping many of our other initiatives going,” she says.
For the moment, the team of youth summer staff is working on beautifying the park, with a lot of gardening and planting, for the community that’s slowly emerging from their towers. The MABELLEarts team is putting down seeds for what they hope will be more beautiful community engagement for years to come.
The people behind this community arts organization are passionate about the work they do, and it’s that commitment that truly unifies the Mabelle Avenue residents in unexpected ways, from smashing watermelons together to intercultural Iftar nights, with food, ceremony and arts that activate the park during the month-long Ramadan observance. It’s a bright, joyful spot in a pocket of Etobicoke that could have remained dark and unused.
“I’ve never even heard of anything else like this,” says Syed. “It surprises me that other people don’t have a weird organization in their park.”
About Kelly Boutsalis
Kelly Boutsalis is a writer and journalist, based in Toronto. She is Mohawk, and from the Six Nations reserve. Her words have appeared in The Toronto Star, Spacing, The Globe and Mail and The Walrus.
With the arrival of fresh snow, I find myself heading into nature. Today’s walk was along Toronto’s Humber River, through the ravine, and down to Jean Augustine Park – this route combines my love of outdoor adventure with my search for Black history in natural spaces.
Leaving Old Mill subway station, I turned left, down the hill, crossed the bridge, and in about three minutes I was in the river valley. I paused under the bridge and checked if any salmon were in the river, swimming upstream to spawn. It was not the mating season, but still, I looked just in case there were any stragglers. They might have got confused by the unpredictable weather caused by the climate crises.
With the sun kissing my lips, I headed south in the valley and followed the river. A few cyclists were in the ravine, sharing the paved path with walkers, runners and strollers. Everyone kept their social distance.The timeless and endless flow of the river allows the mind to wander and imagine this same place at other times – I can almost see Daddy John Hall canoeing that river in the early 1800s. In the winters he would have snowshoed in the ravine. Hall was Black-Indigenous and lived in the Humber Valley, fishing, hunting and trading with Indigenous people. When the USA invaded Canada in the War of 1812, Hall became a scout in the Canadian militia. He was just one among the many Black Canadians who fought in the war. They enlisted because they wanted to remain free. Hall was captured, and instead of being treated as a prisoner of war, he was taken and enslaved in the USA, in Virginia and Kentucky. He escaped after about 12 years and made the long trek home. Nothing was going to keep this man down! Hall later moved to Owen Sound where he is still a local legend due to his exceptionally long and storied life.
I wandered slowly, with no need to go fast on this sunny winter afternoon. A family played football over on the right. Dogs and their owners meandered along other trails in the park. Snow makes the ravine pretty. Yes, it was cold, but dressed in layers of clothes I was cozy. My hat was big enough to cover my dreadlocks and keep my head warm. Two layers of socks and boots with grips kept my feet toasty. And I had a flask of hot spice tea to sip.
There need to be more stories about Black people in nature. We have always been there, but so often our stories and our histories are erased. Knowing our nature stories, and walking with a friend, can make us feel safe when exploring the ravines. Being in nature is calming, it revives the body and the spirit. A walk in nature is one of the best ways of beating the winter blues and reducing the Covid-19 stress. Of course, we have to do so while following the lockdown guidelines. There are lots of stories about the white stuff and the Great Outdoors in Canada, it’s time to add stories about the black stuff too.
Wandering south, to the mouth of the river I’m awed by the expanse of Lake Ontario as I drift over to Jean Augustine Park. In 1993 Jean Augustine became the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada. It is thanks to her efforts that February is now officially recognized as Black History Month in Canada. You can Listen to Sheldon Pitt, AKA Solitair Jean Augustine’s nephew on Metro Morning talking about how his aunt Jean Augustine inspires him. Every year we find more stories about our 400 years of history in this enchanting land of summer heat, and winter ice and snow.
I found a sunny bench overlooking the lake – I was physically tired, but mentally revived. I drained the last of the still-hot sweet spiced tea, with ginger and cinnamon. It hit the right spot. Mallards, swans and Canada geese bobbled in the water; ring-bill gulls circled overhead. Birdwatching and daydreaming, the minutes and the coronavirus stress floated away on the waves.
Parks, sidewalks, transit, and streets are meant to be places of connection and everyday life. Yet the BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report reminds us that public space is experienced very differently depending on who is moving through it.
Led by urban planner and placemaker Jay Pitter, the research fills critical gaps in understanding the Black experience in parks and other public spaces in Canada and the United States. It centres joy, mental wellness, access to opportunity, and the everyday conditions that shape belonging in public life—while also examining how factors such as racism, safety concerns and other challenges influence these experiences.
Jay Pitter extends the research beyond data, grounding it in lived experience and challenging how public spaces are traditionally designed, measured, and governed.
This reflection sits with what the research reveals, not as a technical analysis, but as an invitation to think deeper about joy, belonging, and what it truly means to feel at ease in shared spaces.
Think about the last time you wore culturally inspired clothing without fear, played music loudly in the park, inviting a listener or two, or rested quietly on a shaded bench. Joy is movement without constraint, expression without judgement. In Pitter’s report, joy is described as quiet yet powerful.
That said, you’ll be surprised by how much the little details matter. A clean washroom, a well-maintained trash can, or accessible facilities can turn a simple outing into a space where people feel cared for and safe – a point recognized by 85% of respondents of the survey. Green touches like street trees, gardens, and flowers, along with good lighting and clear sight lines, were highlighted by 84% of respondents as features that invite comfort and presence. Comfortable seating, or even spaces that visibly celebrate Black contributions, were valued by 79% of respondents.
Together, these elements do more than improve infrastructure. They signal that people are respected, seen, acknowledged, and welcome. A bench bathed in sunlight, a well-lit walkway, or a plaque honouring a local Black artist are not merely amenities. They create moments of joy in spaces that might otherwise feel ordinary or unwelcoming.
Joy is also relational. Being around other Black people, or in spaces with diverse communities, was identified by 88% of respondents as a key factor in feeling safe and welcome. Warm greetings from staff or community members (74%) and visible recognition of Black history (70%) further reinforced a sense of belonging. Clear expectations for how people share and interact in these spaces, noted by 65%, also contributed to comfort and safety. Joy grows not just from physical surroundings, but from feeling acknowledged, reflected, and included in the community.
When Black people are able to exist, express themselves, and occupy these spaces freely, the park becomes more than a collection of physical amenities. It transforms into a living, breathing affirmation of presence, belonging, and humanity. Joy emerges in the freedom to inhabit a space fully, to move without constant vigilance, and to feel truly acknowledged and welcome.
While public spaces carry the patterns and routines of daily life, they vary depending on who is walking through them. Waiting for a bus at dawn, walking along a sidewalk after dark, or sitting on a park bench during a weekend morning can feel ordinary for some, but for others, these same activities require careful navigation. The research highlights the absence of comfort that a number of black people feel in these areas that were meant for tranquillity.
The reason for this is that these everyday spaces can carry subtle reminders of surveillance, judgment, and caution for black people. Even spaces designed for leisure, recreation, or daily routines can carry invisible pressures, requiring awareness, vigilance, and sometimes restraint. Streets, sidewalks, parks, and transit that others may take for granted can carry a quiet signal that someone is being observed, scrutinized, or treated differently.
The survey shows that nearly half of respondents, 49%, said buses and subways felt unsafe. A third reported unease on streets, sidewalks, and front stoops, while 27% described discomfort on urban hiking trails or other green spaces. Even outdoor arts venues and concert stadiums were flagged by 21%. These numbers reflect the quiet calculations that Black people make every day – deciding how to move, when to speak, wherever to linger, or if it might be safer to avoid a space altogether. Many respondents also shared that when they witness something harmful or unsafe in public, they often feel powerless to act. This feeling of helplessness adds another layer of emotional weight to navigating public spaces, highlighting how the experience of BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report extends beyond personal safety to affect social and emotional well-being. These numbers are not just statistics; they are stories of lived experience.
Yet even where discomfort exists, people continue to seek out spaces that bring life. Outdoor sport fields and urban hiking trails, for example, were still heavily used by Black people despite being ranked among the least safe public spaces. This highlights how important these areas are: they are chosen for play, movement, and connection, not just as thoroughfares. Public spaces support overall wellness – the survey found that spending time in green spaces, walking trails, and parks improved respondents’ sense of physical health, mental well-being, and community connection. These spaces allow people to bond with others, engage in physical activity, and connect with the rhythms of community life, even when they don’t always feel safe or welcoming.
Structural inequities add another layer to these challenges. Many neighbourhoods with predominantly racialized residents are systemically underfunded, leaving public spaces, parks, trails, and recreational areas poorly maintained, scarce, or lacking amenities. The very spaces that could support health, play, and community connection often receive the least investment, while better-resourced neighbourhoods benefit from ample green space and amenities. This inequity reinforces disparities in access, safety, and opportunity, meaning that Black people must navigate both the social and structural barriers of public life.
Representation and visibility also shape experiences of comfort and unease. Public spaces that fail to reflect Black histories, stories, or contributions can leave people feeling unseen or excluded. A mural, plaque, or place name, however insignificant it may seem to the eye, can signal recognition, belonging, inclusion, and consideration for those who inhabit and contribute to the space. Their absence can leave people feeling excluded and make public spaces feel indifferent.
Challenges in public spaces are therefore not only about physical safety but also about cultural, social and emotional navigation. It is the unspoken rules, the historical weight of surveillance, and the anticipation of judgment that shape how Black people move through these environments. Safety in public space is not simply the absence of harm – it is the freedom to occupy space authentically, to be oneself without restraint. The research captures these everyday realities, highlighting the delicate balance between caution and the desire for connection, movement, and joy. This underscores that creating comfort goes beyond design – it is also shaped by culture, history and how people perceive the space.
After moving through these challenges, public spaces reveal their potential to be more than just physical environments. When care and intention come together, they can become a place of safety, joy, and connection. The research pays attention to small moments – the way a space feels when you arrive, the ease or tension in your body, the quiet signals that tell you whether you can stay. For Black people, these moments are rarely unmarked. They are shaped by how care is shown, by who is acknowledged, and by whether presence feels welcomed or merely tolerated.
When public spaces are designed with attention to who uses them, they transform into places of recognition, connection, and belonging. According to the survey respondents, simple gestures make a meaningful difference: acts that demonstrate openness and the effort to make people feel safe, welcome and like they belong. In these moments, design and culture combine to create outdoor spaces where presence is acknowledged, comfort is tangible, and joy can flourish.
Sports fields, walking trails, plazas, and parks can be more than places to pass through. When care and intention shape them, they become spaces to linger, play, gather, and connect. The report highlights cases where outdoor trails, recreation areas, and plazas have been intentionally shaped with input from Black residents, showing that even modest investments in design programming and signage can make a big difference.
Community programs that invite participation, spaces that celebrate the diversity of cultures present in a place, and thoughtful design and practices that consider the different ways that people use the space all help Black people occupy public spaces fully and authentically.
Beyond design and programming, the research points to the importance of policy, governance, and leadership representation. Inclusive policies that prioritize safety, accessibility, and recognition of Black histories and contributions ensure that outdoor spaces are not only well-intentioned but structurally supportive.
Equitable investment in public spaces, particularly in neighbourhoods that have historically received less funding, is critical to making these benefits tangible. Governance that engages community members – particularly Black residents – in decision-making signals that public spaces are shaped with people who use them in mind. Representation in leadership matters as well: when Black voices are included in shaping policies, programs, and decisions about public spaces, it ensures that outdoor spaces reflect lived experiences and respond to real community needs. It also helps residents see themselves in the decisions that shape their public spaces, fostering trust and a sense that their presence, safety, and voices are valued.
Pitter emphasizes that a public space is never neutral. Thoughtful design, community co-creation, supportive policy, inclusive governance and leadership representation can work together with relational and cultural awareness to transform even ordinary outdoor parks, plazas, or streets from sites of caution into spaces of belonging.
Public space is or should be a mirror of how communities value one another. The inverse remains true in everyday life. Joy, ease, and belonging in public life are not accidental; they are fostered by places shaped by care, recognition, and responsibility.
Creating public spaces where people feel free to rest, express themselves, and move without fear requires more than policy or design alone. It calls for attention, empathy, and willingness to understand experiences different from one’s own. When communities open themselves to listening, dialogue, and shared responsibility, public spaces begin to reflect the people who use them – not just in form, but in the way they are lived and felt.
This reflection invites consideration of our design process itself: what would it look like to design public spaces with lived experience, cultural awareness, and community knowledge and care at the center – and how does this approach foster a sense of belonging, care, and shared ownership among the people who use and bring these spaces to life?
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Jay Pitter has just released her latest book, Black Public Joy. Building on the research in BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report, the book calls on all of us to become better stewards of each other’s public joy, while claiming our own.
Further reading on these themes:
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.
This case study is part of the 2021 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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Note: This story discusses the racial uprisings and attacks of the past year, including the murder of George Floyd, Wet’sutwet’en land defense struggles and attacks on people of Asian descent.
This past year was marked by an unprecedented wave of racial justice movements that fostered hope and resilience in the middle of a global pandemic (no small task). Across Canada and the world, Black, Indigenous and people of colour demanded justice in all its forms.
Wet’sutwet’en hereditary chiefs asserted their rights to ancestral lands in opposition to an oil pipeline that highlighted how colonization continues to play out in the present day. Months later, the murder of George Floyd prompted a similar reckoning, one that focused on the livelihoods of Black people in America and beyond. These movements forced us to engage in uncomfortable dialogues about the ongoing effects of racism and colonization.
It is no surprise then that the response to these struggles have taken place in public space. Professional fields such as urban planning have traditionally promoted the importance of public space for its ability to stay “neutral” in the face of politics and oppression, presuming everyone to have the same access and interactions with their surroundings, regardless of their identities.
So, when Christian Cooper, an African-American man birding in Central Park, and Justine Abigail Yu, a Filipina-Canadian relaxing in a public park, were both subjected to racial attacks in public spaces, it forced this “neutrality” into question. Over the past year, the Chinese Canadian National Council collected instances of anti-Asian hate crimes online. Of the hundreds of records collected, over 50% occurred in public spaces.
Amid the solidarity actions that shut down streets, railways, and other public spaces in response, prominent thinkers such as Jay Pitter addressed this directly: “urban design either perpetuates urban inequity or it can actually resolve urban inequity,” she stated in a news segment.
These stories and numbers confirmed what many Black, Indigenous, and people of colour already knew about this “neutrality.” In short: it wasn’t real. Not for those whose racial identities shaped their experiences in public space as much as the amenities or maintenance. The right to exist in public space, freely, was just as important to make these experiences enjoyable. And the recognition that it should be those very same communities to make the necessary changes was finally taking hold.
Through research, advocacy, and municipal positions, people of colour have been asserting the right to exist as thought leaders in urban space circles. As grassroots movements forced a critical eye on all the ways we are complicit in racism, people working in parks and public space were forced to do the same.
Jacqueline L. Scott noted the huge uptake in her work as a result. Scott is a PhD Student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto whose research focuses on the experiences of Black people in the outdoors. Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, she’s had an unprecedented number of webinar and media requests to talk about her work. She credited this interest to a better understanding that “the same racial hierarchies operate in the outdoor or environmental sectors as everywhere else.” In our April 2021 survey of Canadians, 77% of respondents said they thought people experienced parks differently based on aspects of their identity. Creating a “bridge” between environmental and social justice work is also critical in building relationships with communities that are predominantly racialized.
Scott sees those same hierarchies in the parks and recreation departments she has worked with. A “white wall” evident in staffing is a barrier to departments having the internal capacity to make meaningful changes. For example, in the Greater Montreal Area, the Diversity Institute recorded only 2.2% of public sector senior leadership positions were filled by racialized people in 2019.
It’s something Minaz Asani-Kanji, Manager of Outreach at Park People, has also noticed. “You don’t often see Black people or people of color in these positions. From the park supervisors to even the people that are hired for the summer.”
Some cities have hired specialized staff members to bring in new perspectives and lead equity-related initiatives. In Thunder Bay, the Indigenous Inclusion and Relations Manager and Indigenous Liaison have begun discussions on how to decolonize and Indigenize public space. Projects such as the Northwood Splash Pad have benefitted from such targeted engagement. And in Edmonton, the Indigenous Framework is a result of a co-creation process with Indigenous communities that includes commitments such as removing barriers to employment for Indigenous people.
While these are important steps, Asani-Kanji pointed out it may still not reach people who don’t realize working in parks or urban green spaces is even an option for them. Jacqueline Scott described these as “information barriers” or “privileged knowledge.” Not only are certain communities less likely to see themselves working in parks departments, they may not also have access to existing connections to staff and necessary information that would make them successful in obtaining those positions. Building those relationships is part of the critical work Asani-Kanji does at Park People. Doing intentional outreach to underserved communities through Park People’s Sparking Change program, she supports leaders in these communities to bring their park project to life by giving them the tools to navigate parks departments.
Crucial works that build capacity and relationships hint at the heart of these issues: power imbalances.
Lourdenie Jean, founder of “L’environnement, c’est intersectionnel” (“The Environment, It’s Intersectional”) aims to address this directly. In her work, Lourdenie applies an intersectional lens to better understand which communities are marginalized and how.
“We see these power dynamics everywhere, even in parks and green spaces. Racism, sexism and capitalism are always present.” This is true at every level, affecting neighbourhoods, community organizations, and municipalities alike. These are the uncomfortable conversations that may invoke fear but should be met with bravery instead. From them, we see bold ideas arise.
Urban planner Lena Philips offers some ideas for the community organizations ready to allocate resources more intentionally. She writes a necessary first step is to compensate leaders who step up for their labour. In seeking to support their communities, Philips writes that organizations should rethink the criteria they use in funding and program applications to recognize the wealth of expertise BIPOC communities have.
Communities have also been organizing to organically build power from outside of formal institutions. This has taken many forms, though often through empowering community members to lead.
In Halifax, the social enterprise Hope Blooms provides diverse programming to youth centered around agriculture that tends to the lack of food security among its residents and enables youth to become leaders in their community.
The Ethọ́s Lab directly engages Black youth in Vancouver through mentorship opportunities so they can design and create spaces that feel safe for them. In both of these initiatives, emerging leaders are soon able to name and advocate against the power structures that marginalize their communities. Ultimately, Lourdenie Jean reminds people that sharing power should be everyone’s goal as “centering those on the margins is beneficial for everyone”.
As the protests and barricades happen less frequently, it can be easy for people not directly affected by these issues to think the work is over. Of 32 parks departments surveyed for this year’s report, only five (17%) said addressing systemic inequities and discrimination in parks was a major challenge, while eight (27%) said it was a minor challenge.
This is where policymakers and organizations such as Park People have a responsibility to contribute. In June 2020, we released our statement committing to internal processes responding to racism in all of its forms. Since then, Park People has been undertaking work on this, documenting our progress here.
Through these more formal and informal coalitions of changemakers, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour continue to remain louder than ever. Scott summarized this sentiment brilliantly: “And so for me, for these organizations: you have an opportunity now. Or are you hoping that it will go away? Because my sense is that we are not going to go away.”
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