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…
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.
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This case study is part of the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
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As encampments grow across the country, parks departments face a unique challenge: parks have become a highly visible site of the housing crisis, but permanent housing solutions lie outside the scope of what parks can offer.
However, as convenors, land stewards, and providers of public amenities, parks departments can lean into their strengths to play a positive role in addressing houselessness—from adopting a human rights approach to service provision, to deepening relationships with encampment residents.
“Since the start of Covid-19, encampments have proliferated and increased in size,” said Dr. Alexandra Flynn, a University of British Columbia professor who has studied cities’ responses to encampments during the pandemic. “It’s put more pressure on Canadian cities to have to engage with encampments.”
In our survey of municipalities, 90% said houselessness is a challenge—one unlikely to end anytime soon.
Experts including frontline workers, people with lived experience of houselessness, and public health professionals all emphasize the urgency of planning for these realities.
“Hopefully it’ll be an ending problem, but for the foreseeable future I can still see there being people sleeping in parks. And it’s sad, but it’s a reality we have to face,” said Matthew Huxley, an advocate with lived experience.
Diana Chan McNally of Toronto Drop-In Network agreed, noting “Even when the intentions are good, there’s always the push to move unhoused people out of parks. You have to abandon that altogether. You just do, because I think the reality is that… there’s absolutely nowhere else for people to go.”
Public health experts echo this advice. Experts urge cities to plan for encampments to enhance the resiliency of parks systems, as unsheltered houselessness is projected to grow in light of climate change, including more people turning to green spaces for relief during heatwaves.
As we wrote about in the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, displacement-oriented approaches—ranging from defensive design to encampment evictions—cause harm in a number of ways. Pushing unhoused people out of parks can force them to seek shelter in more isolated spaces where they are subject to increased safety risks, and make it more difficult for outreach workers to stay connected with people they’re supporting.
Further, in a context where Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately affected by housing insecurity—representing 28-34% of the unhoused population despite accounting for just over 4% of the Canadian population—displacing people from parks represents ongoing colonial violence and land dispossession, undermining reconciliation efforts.
While there is a widespread perception that encampments prevent others from enjoying parks, our survey of over 3,000 Canadian city residents suggest this is not the case for most.
62% of respondents who noticed encampments in local parks said they had not negatively impacted their park use, pointing to an openness among park goers to share space with unhoused neighbours.
Encampments are often managed through an operational lens, with a focus on park upkeep. While this work is important, it is insufficient to address the complex needs of people sheltering in parks.
Vancouver is deepening their approach through the creation of a new position within the Park Board called the Director of Urban Relationships. A first-of-its-kind role in Canada, the position will focus on building relationships with encampment residents and community partners.
Donnie Rosa, General Manager of the Vancouver Park Board, said that the new position sends a clear message that “this is a line of business that we have” as city park professionals. Having this dedicated staff with appropriate expertise will alleviate pressures on the parks operations team, who often are tasked with responding to houselessness issues.
The new position comes after the Park Board led a process in partnership with the City of Vancouver and BC Housing to move residents of a large encampment at Strathcona Park to indoor accommodations in spring of 2021. However, new encampments that have arisen since then highlight the ongoing need for this work.
In engaging with the Strathcona Park encampment, the Park Board’s approach was guided by four key values: harm reduction, trauma-informed response, reconciliation, and collaboration. In practice, these values looked like relying on social workers rather than police officers, having Park Board staff participate in a ceremonial fire protocol led by Indigenous Elders when entering the encampment, and being mindful of language—for instance, recognizing objects in the park as people’s belongings rather than garbage.
Staying true to these values was not easy within colonial systems, Rosa acknowledged. Meetings with encampment residents could run for several hours on some days, as people had important stories to share with parks staff.
“That’s not how we work. We go from meeting to meeting to meeting,” Rosa said, but these moments were critically important for them and their team.
“As colonizers, but also as the institutions we represented, and we needed to hear it, we needed to spend that time.”
Rosa emphasized that in order to do this work thoughtfully, it’s necessary to be flexible with structure and timelines. “We need to support each other in saying, it’s okay to take this approach, it’s okay to put somebody’s wellness ahead of a deadline.”
Many cities are beginning to adopt a human rights-based approach to houselessness, which focuses on ensuring unhoused people have access to essential amenities and services in parks. For example:
Parks staff, who are often trained in areas like recreation, natural resource management, or landscape architecture rather than social work or community development, may feel ill-equipped to respond to houselessness, Rosa noted.
Indeed, through our survey of 30 municipalities, 56% identified a lack of knowledge or training about houselessness among parks staff as a barrier. Some cities, like Gatineau and Toronto, mentioned recent initiatives to train parks staff in understanding houselessness.
However, Rosa encourages parks staff to recognize the strengths that they do bring: “we’re community developers, we’re community connectors, and we need to use that in this setting to bring people together, create space for that dialogue.”
Fostering a culture of humility, dialogue, and collective learning has been crucial for the Vancouver Park Board in upholding these guiding values. “I learned more … through this process than I could ever have learned going to any sort of course or training,” Rosa said. “Just living those values and making mistakes. And then holding those mistakes up and saying, how can we be better?”
One of the Park Board’s missteps, Rosa noted, is that after campers moved out of Strathcona Park, staff cleared the remaining tents and belongings, thinking they were abandoned. In retrospect, Rosa wishes they had allowed more time for the process to consult with campers and ensure they were only removing items campers were ready to part with.
Taking the opportunity to involve campers in the park remediation process through a peer employment model was another learning for next time. Former encampment residents wanted to be a part of healing the park after their departure, Rosa noted.
A recent York University report highlights that cities have two sets of powers to address encampments: formal legal powers, like bylaws, and soft powers, like city messaging that shapes how the public thinks about encampments.
Parks departments are well positioned to leverage these soft powers to reframe the narrative on encampments. This work is especially important given that 70% of cities reported managing public complaints as a challenge they encounter in responding to houselessness. By cultivating parks as places of public education, cities can not only increase awareness and comfort around sharing space, but also help curb public complaints and alleviate the burden they place on parks staff.
In Gatineau, for example, the city’s recent houselessness action plan identifies “Improving the way we share space and facilitating cohabitation in public space” as a key area of focus. Their efforts so far have included forming neighbourhood-based ‘cohabitation committees’ that work with local stakeholders including social service organizations, residents, and businesses to promote public education on issues related to houselessness.
“What we do on the cohabitation committee is destigmatization,” said Julie Sénéchal, Community Development Coordinator in the Recreation, Sports and Community Development Department at the City of Gatineau. This focus came from unhoused people who participate in the committee, who identified “the issue of prejudice and how they experience it” as an important priority, Sénéchal said.
The first committee was formed in the Île de Hull neighbourhood where a green space co-managed by the National Capital Commission, ministère des Transports du Québec, and City of Gatineau is used as a campsite for unhoused residents. A high school adjacent to the green space was one of the key partners on the committee. The students surveyed their peers to understand their questions and concerns about houselessness. Based on the students’ input, the cohabitation committee is creating informative video clips to educate neighbours to increase their comfort in sharing space.
Public space programs are also helping to support inclusion. The city hosts clean-up activities in partnership with community organizations and residents of the campsite. They are also planning an urban agriculture work program that would hire unhoused people as gardeners in partnership with a local service organization.
The plan is still in its early stages of implementation, and Sénéchal noted that meaningful, ongoing engagement with unhoused communities will be crucial to its success.
“You have to meet people where they are, that’s my working method,” Sénéchal said. She is optimistic that the plan will help to lay the groundwork for stronger collaboration with unhoused communities, noting that it “allows [the city] to put in place tools that will promote real participation and to include people experiencing houselessness in the planning process.”
“[Unhoused people] know the city from a different perspective than us,” Sénéchal said. “[They] have things to say and we want to be sure to hear them.”
In Montreal, the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough is moving in a similar direction with its new plan for social cohabitation and sharing of public space*. The plan includes an accompanying information tool that outlines realities of houselessness and encourages residents to form friendly relationships with their unhoused neighbours by saying hello or sharing a coffee.
Community-led programs can also help reshape public perspective. In Montreal’s Martin-Luther-King Park, community organization Exeko hosted a photo expo* featuring portraits of unhoused residents to help spark conversation among park goers.
Park programs can be especially helpful in addressing controversial issues related to encampments. Initiatives like a stigma reduction event hosted in honour of International Overdose Awareness Day in Thunder Bay’s Kaministiquia River Heritage Park can help community members develop a more compassionate outlook on the issue of discarded needles in parks, for example.
Programs like these offer inspiration in moving toward a future where parks, and parks departments, are seen as part of the solution to houselessness. For Donnie Rosa, the challenge moving forward is to think about “How do we make this [park] something that is enjoyable and not just a respite? How can we make your stay, your time, your life here one that works for you the best way possible?” of people who care very deeply and passionately about these issues.” When communities and cities commit to working together better, it’s a powerful pairing for parks.
Key points:
As we wrote about in the 2021 Canadian City Parks Report, Covid-related closures of indoor spaces like restaurants, libraries, and gyms, pushed people to take their usual “indoor” activities outdoors to the park. Eating, using the washroom, and socializing with friends are just a few examples of basic everyday needs that people have increasingly looked to parks to fill throughout the pandemic.
With these changing uses has come a culture shift in how people view the purpose of parks. As Sara Udow, Co-Founder and Principal at engagement firm PROCESS put it, “Parks are used for basic human needs, not just recreation.” In our survey of over 3,000 residents of Canadian cities, 93% agreed that allowing people to meet basic needs is an important benefit parks provide.
Yet narrowly defined ideas of “acceptable uses” of parks, rooted in stigma and inequities along the lines of race, class, ability, and more, mean that not everyone is able to enjoy the benefits of parks in supporting everyday needs. Often those who rely on parks most—such as those experiencing housing precarity and other forms of marginalization—are those whose needs are overlooked or actively denied.
For example, while parks are used by many as a place for rest and relaxation, unhoused residents are often met with enforcement and displacement when this rest extends overnight. And despite growing interest in planning parks with a public health lens, people who use substances are often excluded through hostile design features, like blue lighting in washrooms, that go against public health guidance.
However, cities and communities are beginning to recognize and address these inequities through programs that centre the well-being of those most often excluded. By challenging orthodoxies around service provision, enforcement, and environmental design, these initiatives point a way forward in creating parks that better care for all.
While addressing basic needs through features like washrooms is necessary, a focus on “meeting needs” can sometimes obscure what people experiencing marginalization have to offer to the community, said Azkaa Rahman, Strategic Planning Analyst at the City of Edmonton.
“There’s huge deficit thinking and [a focus on] managing needs rather than seeing the gifts, assets, resources and strengths that people have to give, share and exchange.”
Azkaa Rahman, Strategic Planning Analyst at the City of Edmonton
Rahman works with RECOVER Urban Wellbeing, a city-led initiative that aims to create the conditions for well-being for all people, especially people experiencing houselessness or marginalization in Edmonton. The framework that underpins RECOVER’s work is rooted in social ethnographic research with 59 street-involved Edmontonians that uncovered the elements that they consider most important to their sense of wellness.
Their research found that social and psychological needs—respect, family and connection, and purpose—were more important to participants’ idea of wellness than material needs. As a result, the well-being framework centres relationships: nurturing healthy connections to people, land, self, culture, the human project, and the sacred.
Each year, RECOVER launches and evaluates a series of ‘social prototypes’ to test different approaches to enhancing well-being, many of which take place in parks and outdoor spaces.
The 2021 projects include The Gallery, a public art project spotlighting the work of Indigenous artists with lived experience of houselessness with an explicit goal of building relationships between business owners and street-involved Edmontonians. Another example is Soloss, a prototype which hired and trained community members as ‘Losstenders’ to help peers work through grief. In developing the idea for the Losstender role, the project team hosted pop-up events in Churchill Square and Camp Pekiwewin, an Indigenous-led encampment, to seek community members’ input. Through the resulting program, Losstenders guide peers through healing using art, music, breathwork, dance or storytelling, addressing a gap as “professional services cannot replace the value of community care and support.”
Across Canada, 48% of cities said they had initiated at least one program to provide social services in parks. New park programs have popped up to meet basic needs such as food security, healthcare, and survival gear, while bringing a community focus:
Amid growing concerns around the role of police and enforcement in parks, care-centred models can provide an alternative form of community safety.
Vancouver’s Sweetgrass Clan runs a grassroots, Indigenous-led community safety patrol in the city’s Downtown Eastside. Modelled after Winnipeg’s Bear Clan Patrol, the group aims to provide a positive presence in the neighbourhood’s public spaces, offering de-escalation and conflict resolution rooted in traditional teachings.
Robbie Epp, the group’s Founder, sees this model as an alternative to policing that will “take the violence out of our situation, and de-stress a lot of people on the streets.”
“A big thing in our teachings is … that the best way for us to take care of our children is to have patience and respect, to try to teach them by talking to them and being examples,” Epp said, “so I knew there was another approach.”
In addition to crisis intervention, Sweetgrass Clan hosts events that help bring the community together, like a BBQ in Strathcona Park hosted in partnership with the East Van Skate Crows. Epp said that these types of events can be important in helping to foster awareness and understanding among neighbours, noting that “the toughest [part of his work] is actually communicating with residents” to help them understand the realities of Indigenous people who are street involved.
At the same time, green spaces can be healing for vulnerable people, Epp said. “Where people feel safest is when we come together in a park,” he said, “you can see people are just sitting on grass and they’re relaxed, wiggling their feet and toes around … and that’s what we need.”
Other cities are also beginning to experiment with non-police public space patrols. In Montreal, a pilot project in the Ville-Marie borough has seen a mobile team of eight psychosocial responders created to support mediation, de-escalation, and conflict resolution in public spaces.
In implementing these types of programs, it’s important to make sure that the precise duties of these staff are made clear to the public, including encampment residents, said UBC Professor Dr. Alexandra Flynn. A recent report Dr. Flynn co-authored on encampments in Toronto found that the city’s parks ambassadors are described on the city’s website as “an authorized messenger or representative… of goodwill,” when in fact, they are trained to work closely with enforcement officials to monitor and report encampment-related issues. “If that is the purpose of these positions,” Dr. Flynn said, “then that needs to be more clearly stated as the goal by municipalities.”
In a recent research project Park People undertook in partnership with students at University of Toronto’s School of Cities, we found that designing parks that support the well-being and inclusion of unhoused communities requires ‘unlearning’ common design approaches.
For example, we heard from people with lived experience of houselessness that the idea of ‘eyes on the street’ popularized by urbanist Jane Jacobs is problematic for people who live out their private lives in parks. Also known as ‘natural surveillance’, creating clear sightlines to minimize privacy in parks is often thought of as a ‘best practice’ from the perspective of design philosophies like crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED)—a strategy which 76% of cities we surveyed said they use.
But for people who are denied access to private spaces like homes, having visual protection, like bushes or shrubs, is necessary. “To be constantly in the public eye … is so humiliating—to be constantly ignored, but also constantly surveilled,” said Diana Chan McNally, Training and Engagement Coordinator at Toronto Drop-In Network.
Daniela Mergarten, an advocate with lived experience, agreed that people need privacy in order to have “some autonomy” as well. Racial justice experts have similarly challenged the use of surveillance-based design strategies. As Amina Yasin wrote, CPTED has “historically criminalized Black, Indigenous, and poor people in public space.”
Instead of inherently untrusting approaches to design that promote surveillance between neighbours or attempt to control behaviours, we heard that park design should centre trust, care, and dignity.
This includes taking a harm reduction approach to supporting the well-being of people who use substances. Hannah Leyland, an Intern Architect in Vancouver with expertise in the design of drug consumption spaces, said that purpose-built amenities like sharps containers and safer public washrooms can not only save lives but also help to destigmatize addiction. Having these features in parks “sends a message to the neighbours that [people who use substances] are valued within our community,” Leyland said.
It also includes allowing people to hang out in parks—both alone and together. We heard from unhoused people that the absence of amenities like comfortable benches, covered gazebos, and picnic areas makes it difficult for people to meet basic needs like resting and socializing in a dignified way. Public space researcher Cara Chellew calls this absence “ghost amenities,” noting that these features are intentionally left out in park design as they’re thought to attract “undesirable behaviour” like “loitering.”As the authors of Care and the City write, “Deeply caring about others … [is] an exercise which can be best trained in open and accessible spaces that provide room for caring with, caring for, and caring about one another.” Through taking an intentional approach to park programming and design, we can realize the potential of parks as places that care for all.mmit to working together better, it’s a powerful pairing for 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.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
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.
Happy reading!
Nothing is more rewarding than planting food and watching it grow from seed to harvest. That’s why thousands of people get their hands dirty in community gardens across the country. First and foremost, growing fruits and vegetables provides people with access to fresh food. But community gardens also play a vital role in connecting people to nature and each other, enhancing community resilience and well-being.
“The power of food, placemaking and public spaces is far-reaching and intersects greatly with the issues we are facing today.”
DeeDee, Marpole Temporary Community Garden
Among the 72 outstanding community park groups awarded TD Park People Grants this year are several that demonstrate how growing and harvesting food is a powerful pathway to cultivating community and ecological resilience.
Since 2016, TD Park People Grants have helped 365 grassroots community groups and community-based non-profits build vital connections between people and parks. Two of the community gardening groups supported through a TD Park People Grant this year are Marpole Temporary Community Garden in Vancouver and the Congolese Women’s Group in Ottawa.
Both groups demonstrate how environmental education, sustainability, and stewardship come together, both joyfully and fruitfully, in gardens that are programmed and animated by communities.
Marpole Temporary Community Garden was initiated by DeeDee Nelson who took it upon herself to investigate a “locked up and neglected” plot of land during the pandemic. As DeeDee initiated efforts to clean the space, she tells us, “people just started poking their heads in and asking about joining in.”The temporary garden is in Marpole, one of the geographic areas identified by the Vancouver Park Board as an Equity Initiative Zone. A developer provided the space to the community temporarily, just until construction begins. Located on a busy road, with, what Dee Dee describes as “cars whizzing by on Granville Street,” the garden is a green oasis that transports participants from the congestion and busyness of traffic into a lush space that nourishes the community.
The Congolese Women’s Group is made up of 21 new immigrant women living in the neighbourhoods served by the South-East Ottawa Community Health Centre (SEOCHC). The group was formed in 2019 after a picnic in the park inspired the group to make better use of outdoor spaces. Euphrasie, who works at the SEOCHC as a Community Developer, noticed that the women were both eager to find affordable sources of fresh food and keen to learn about plants. She humbly proposed a community gardening program, asking participants: “What do you think about starting a community garden? Even if it’s a small one, you can start there.” And with that, the women began growing food.
Also located in an equity-deserving neighbourhood, The Congolese Women’s Group sees the community garden sessions as an avenue to address issues like isolation, safety, and mental well-being in the community. In addition to gardening workshops, a Harvest Celebration will joyfully close off the season.
Access to quality, nutritious fruits and vegetables is a systemic challenge in equity-deserving communities. Food insecurity has become an even bigger challenge for low-income families as food costs continue to rise. As DeeDee shares:
“There are so many seniors on a fixed limited budget, and they have told me specifically that they’re growing their own food because it’s too expensive in the store.”
While both groups recognize the community gardens’ role in addressing food insecurity, they also prioritize sharing the harvests’ surplus with others. At Marpole Temporary Community Garden, participants frequently hand out fresh vegetables to passers-by. In fact, they’ve set up what they call a “Veggie Table” to formalize the generous gesture. When people ask “how much does it cost?” DeeDee gleefully responds,
“It’s free. It’s totally free.”
The Congolese Women’s Group also shares this spirit of solidarity. The food collected during the workshops will be distributed to the community during an end-of-season Harvest Celebration which Euphrase shares, will be a “great, great event.” The food from the harvest will be shared with the entire community as a gesture that Eurphase says symbolizes that “yes, there’s something we can do together that can be beneficial, not only to us who are working there but also to everyone in the community.”
The community gardens play an important role in connecting participants to one other and to the broader community. At Marpole Temporary Community Garden, DeeDee has witnessed how engagement in the community garden leads to greater civic engagement overall. She shares:
“All of a sudden people learn they have a voice. They start to realize that the municipal government is made up of real people that can help make things happen. Every citizen can think about what they would like in their community and then ask for it, and that goes not only for public spaces but for land use, active transportation options and virtually anything else that goes on in a community. We have a say in our cities and the more we realize this, the more empowered we are to speak up.”
DeeDee surmises that seniors have been particularly attracted to the garden because many live alone. Particularly during COVID when seniors needed to avoid indoor spaces to protect their health, the community garden gave them a unique opportunity to socialize in the outdoors. She adds: “We are in dire need of outside space for the community. For people to come and spend time in nature and have a community space to gather.”
In our interview, Euphrasie from the Congolese Women’s Group shares how the community garden is a vital source of joyful community connection:
“I saw children coming and wandering in the community garden to look at the plants. They started asking: ‘Oh, what’s this? Oh, what’s that?’ It’s a very nice place to be because participants engage with people of all ages. They meet their seniors, they meet their kids, they meet with their parents. And wow, it’s such a place a way to bring people together to break that isolation, to just help people to go beyond what is going on in their life. You know, and when they meet, it’s just laughter. I love it.”
While laughter and glee fill the garden, it’s important to recognize that community gardens do the serious heavy lifting when it comes to building social resilience. As DeeDee from Marpole Temporary Community Garden astutely recognizes, the kind of social resilience cultivated in community gardens will be increasingly important in the face of climate change:
“Growing that community spirit and community connection is I think, totally what makes a resilient community because then if something like the heat dome or flooding happens, we know who’s down the street and who needs help.”
As we recently highlighted in the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report: “There are multiple inequities in the access and enjoyment of urban green spaces, with ramifications for climate justice, equitable park development, and public health.”
Community gardens in equity deserving communities provide people with access to green outdoor spaces that support individuals’ health and well-being. We know that people who spend more time in nature enjoy enhanced cognitive functioning. They are also more likely to report high levels of happiness and well-being.
As Euphrasie from the Congolese Women’s Group nicely puts it:
“Even if you’re not working in the community garden, just going in there, you breathe, that fresh air, you hear the birds singing. This is good for your health, for this environment and for the community.”
In all of the programs at Marpole Temporary Community Garden, DeeDee starts with a meaningful land acknowledgement, inviting participants to think beyond how nature can benefit human life, and encourages everyone to think about how they can enhance the natural world:
“If we’re saying thank you to the land, that means we must be getting something. So what are we giving? I like to ask people to consider our relationship within nature just like any healthy relationship, one that has a spirit of reciprocity.”
During the workshops, DeeDee teaches participants to use permaculture and syntropic agriculture approaches derived from Indigenous knowledge to enrich the land. For her, those practices are key to ensuring a sustainable planet.
“It really makes us think about what would be the best way to make this sustainable growth, not just growing for this year, but growing for the future.”
Both Marpole Temporary Community Garden and the Congolese Women’s Group underscored that finding space for community gardens is incredibly challenging. While the Congolese Women’s Group was able to secure space through the City of Ottawa’s Community Garden Program, Euphrasie emphasized how long and complicated the process can be:
“It used to be easier to apply for a plot. You just had to go in person and ask. But now everything is online, which is making it more difficult for us. It takes us more time and energy.”
Marpole Temporary Community Garden is situated on private land. However, relying on the generosity of private land owners is not sustainable over the long term. As DeeDee puts it “We’re enjoying our wonderful borrowed backyard while we have it.”
Given the many benefits of community gardens, we need to ensure gardeners have access to spaces to build meaningful relationships with one another, their community and the natural environment.
“Gardening nourishes the community physically, emotionally and mentally. It is a significant reminder of how working together as a community benefits everyone.”
Euphrasie, Congolese Women’s Group
While Vancouver has an extensive and impressive park system, historically, there has been an inequitable distribution of park investments in the city. The Vancouver Park Board’s VanPlay Master Plan recognizes this discrepancy and seeks to address this inequity by using indicators to identify and prioritize geographic areas most in need of additional park investment, known as Initiative Zones.
Vancouver’s Initiative Zones were identified by examining three layers of data:
With support from the Vancouver Foundation, Park People surveyed and interviewed people living in the identified Initiative Zones.
Park People undertook the following process to generate an understanding of park engagement in Vancouver’s potential Initiative Zones:
Here is some of what we learned about parks from participants living in Vancouver’s Initiative Zones.
“Being near the water, the rhythm of the waves always calms me. I can feel the tension and stress leave my body, and when I leave, I feel ready to face the world again”
Rose
“The experience in parks is irreplaceable. I love being in this public space where you can see other people running, playing, walking, laughing, and interacting. That’s really hard to mimic anywhere else”
Theodore
Across the board, people recognize that parks can benefit people’s mental and physical health and help build strong social and neighbourhood connections, which are key to community resilience.
Over 97% of the survey respondents from Vancouver’s Initiative Zones agreed that parks play a significant role in their well-being and quality of life.
However, our research indicates that people living in potential Initiative Zones feel they don’t influence the parks in their communities.
Of our survey respondents:
The interview process highlighted why individuals in the Initiative Zones are less likely to engage in park decision-making. The interviews surfaced the following barriers to park engagement:
Whether it be family obligations, chronic pain, long working hours, depression, or social anxiety, the life pressures and realities of people living in equity-deserving communities leave them feeling they have little time “leftover” for time-consuming park engagement processes. So, while parks play an essential role in people’s health and well-being, those who most need parks most are least likely to have the time or energy to devote to shaping their parks.
Many participants expressed that they were disappointed by past park engagement experiences. These negative experiences made them reluctant to contribute to future park decision-making processes. For example, Molly shared that while she’s previously tried to submit park service requests through 311, her claims were rejected because she didn’t categorize them correctly. These kinds of negative experiences leave people demoralized by unduly complex and cumbersome bureaucracy.
Youth, in particular, feel left out of park engagement processes and, as a result, aren’t motivated to engage. Young people shared that in-person engagement events can be very intimidating for young people who worry that their contributions won’t be taken seriously by adults. A lack of youth-targeted outreach and engagement is particularly unfortunate because the planning processes underway today will likely be implemented when these youth enter adulthood. In short, young people are missing the chance to shape the city and community of their future.
“I think the biggest barriers to participating in engagement processes are energy, mental health, and time. For the most part, everyone I know is super burnt out, so they really don’t even feel empowered enough to participate in anything like that. Everyone’s kind of facing their own mental health thing, and the idea of putting energy into a process that probably isn’t going to do much doesn’t really seem worth it. Like what benefit are you going to get out of spending two hours at City Hall when you could spend those two hours preparing food for the next day or just watching TV and relaxing because you’re so tired?” – Rose
The research indicates that people living in Vancouver Initiative Zones don’t always feel safe or welcomed in their parks. Participants also highlighted that their parks do not appear to be well cared for. Respondents shared that a lack of quality park spaces and amenities keeps them from spending time in their parks. For example:
Participants in potential Initiative Zones identified several opportunities to improve park engagement and park use in their communities. Here’s what they recommended:
It’s vital that park programs and processes are deliberately designed for people who live in these communities. People engage in parks when they see their interests and identities reflected back at them. This is what creates a sense of belonging.
For example, the only time one participant, Ace, ever went to City Hall was for a Black History Month event. Similarly, Molly became more involved in her park when she came across a beginner skateboarding drop-in event that was created specifically for moms. From there, Molly grew her park engagement, participating in an event to inform Vancouver’s Skateboard Amenities Strategy.
Even if people don’t directly participate in culturally relevant park programs, the interview participants shared that they benefit from seeing others in their community being meaningfully engaged in their parks.
“I like the group of ladies who dance to Chinese music in that sheltered area at Slocan Park. They, and other groups, hold their exercise classes there, and I’ve missed seeing them this past year… They look like they’re having fun always.” – Fern
While many participants expressed safety concerns about their parks, they underscored that increased police presence is not the solution. In fact, quite a few respondents shared that increased police presence in the park would make them feel far less safe. Participants suggested that building strong community connections through park involvement would help improve perceptions of safety in parks. Patrick said, “when you get to know your neighbours better, community safety increases without the need for police presence.”
Several participants highlighted methods to better connect young people to parks. Susan suggested that the Park Board start using Tik Tok for youth outreach and consider the “instagrammability factor” in park designs. She emphasized that while teens may show up at a given park to take photos, once they’re at the park, they’re more likely to stay and benefit from the experience.
Participants underscored that youth engagement is tied to better park engagement and access overall. This is particularly true for individuals who are not comfortable communicating in English. As one young participant noted, she’s been filling out and translating important technical documents for her parents since the age of 12, an experience many children of immigrants can relate to. In some cultures, older generations are more likely to trust information or take action on issues when the information comes from a trusted family member or friend. We heard from journal participants that their parents and grandparents are more likely to trust information coming directly from their children than from a government body or the internet. Participants shared that young people can help make park experiences more comfortable for adults who may experience challenges such as language or trust barriers.
Our research with participants living in Vancouver’s Initiative Zones demonstrates much of what we learned in Park People’s Sparking Change Report, which found:
“Parks are not simply green places of respite with grass and trees—they are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. And we believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places that are shaped by and for the people living there.”
We need to create parks that are designed for and accessed by those who can most benefit from them. The Vancouver Park Board’s forward-thinking VanPlay Master Plan goes a long way toward creating more equitable park resource allocation. As the research highlights, we need to ensure that equity-deserving communities feel heard in the planning and management of parks and that parks are designed to ensure the benefits of parks are equitably distributed.
*The nine journal participants chose the following pseudonyms for themselves so that we could share their experiences and insights anonymously
Parks are not neutral spaces but places where legacies of colonialism and white supremacy too often perpetuate urban inequity. At the same time, Black and racial justice movements have helped reimagine parks as places where the presence, experiences, and needs of Black Canadians can be visible and valued.
To recognize Black History Month, we’ve selected some of the content that has resonated with Park People over the past years, highlighting works that contribute to centering Black liberation in planning, designing, and managing parks and public spaces. We’re grateful to the Black thought leaders and communities contributing to a radical rethinking of our parks and public spaces.
Race and Nature in the City: Engaging youth of colour in nature-based activities, 2021, Nature Canada
An evidence-based, community-informed needs assessment that makes recommendations for meaningfully engaging racialized communities in nature and nature-based programming in urban areas.
Healing Disconnectedness with Collective Stewardship, Canadian City Parks Report, 2021, Park People
How reframing our notions of park stewardship can help restore relationships to the land. Parks have become a vital communal space in the COVID-19 pandemic. They appeal to our need for relationships; both to each other in a time of social distancing and to the outdoors as we are asked to stay at home. But we often fail to acknowledge the role of parks in generations of dispossession.
An Invitation to Hike: Let’s Hike T.O.’s Approach to Connecting People of Colour, Newcomers and Young Adults to Nature in Toronto, Park People
Let’s Hike TO is a thriving Toronto organization that intentionally extends a warm invitation to people of colour, newcomers and young adults to join in engaging group hikes. While anyone can attend their walks regardless of age or identity, the group has made an intentional effort since its inception in July 2021 to become the city’s diversity-focused hiking group.
Humber River Black History Walk, Jacqueline L. Scott, 2021, Park People
A guest post was written by Jacqueline L. Scott. Jacqueline is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, OISE, in the Department of Social Justice Education. She is a hike leader with two outdoor clubs. Jacqueline leads Black History Walks in Toronto. She is the author of travel and adventure books, from a Black perspective.
Urban Park Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Are Socially Vulnerable Communities Disproportionately Impacted? Edited by Michelle L. Johnson, 2021, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.
The COVID-19 pandemic altered human behaviour around the world. To maintain mental and physical health during periods of lockdown and quarantine, people often engaged in outdoor, physically distanced activities such as visits to parks and green space. However, research tracking outdoor recreation patterns during the pandemic has yielded inconsistent results, and few studies have explored the impacts of COVID-19 on park use across diverse neighbourhoods. The research team used a mixed-methods approach to examine changes in park use patterns in cities across North Carolina, USA, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on impacts in socially vulnerable communities (based on racial/ethnic composition and socioeconomic status).
Examining privilege and power in US urban parks and open space during the double crises of antiblack racism and COVID-19, Fushcia-Ann Hoover & Theodore C. Lim, 2021, Springer Link
Creating the positive outcomes socio-ecological researchers and practitioners seek for urban areas requires acknowledging and addressing the interactions of race and systemic racism in parks, open and green spaces. Racial experiences are inseparable from physical landscapes and the processes of designing, managing, or studying them. From COVID-19 to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, the events of 2020 in the United States underscore how considerations of social justice must extend beyond the conventional distributional focus of environmental justice. It must incorporate an understanding of how the built environment is racialized spatially, but not always readily quantified through the proximity-based measurements frequently used in research and practice.
Jay Pitter On ‘Being Black In Public’ — And Its Implications For Sustainable Transport Policy, Jay Pitter, 2024, Streets Blog
An interview with placemaker and mobility justice icon Jay Pitter to talk about “Being Black in Public” and her work to inspire policymakers to adopt new strategies and approaches to “transform Black public space precarity into equitable and joyful public space through policy reform.
Public Safety at the City’s Core, Jay Pitter, 2021, Azure Magazine
Public safety is not merely the absence of physical threat; it is the presence of inclusive places shaped by equitable urban placemaking and policy. It is the visceral yet indescribable sense of belonging that is experienced in spaces which invite rather than tolerate differences.
Want safer cities and public spaces? Invest in BIPOC-led work. Lena Phillips, 2021, Safe in Public Space
Given the increasingly urban orientation of the world, a re-set of how cities are shaped moving forward is critical. Socioeconomic disparities have long been named by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC). This has been compounded by the heightened visibility of systemic racism, particularly its impact on Black lives. The field of planning, specifically, is tasked with constructing our built environments and mediating our socioeconomic infrastructure through mechanisms like funding, governance and public space policy. However, through ongoing processes of colonialism and racism, planning works to reinforce oppressive systems. The lack of diversity and critical interrogation within this field – one that fails to recognize its impact on the everyday lives of communities – contributes to the perpetual underfunding of BIPOC-led initiatives and allows systemic injustice to play out in our public spaces.
6 ways to approach urban green spaces in the push for racial justice and health equity, Nahda Hassen, 2021, The Conversation
How can we take an intersectional, anti-racist approach to plan urban green spaces as a public health measure? Policy-makers, planners and public health professionals can learn from critical race and critical theory scholars in pushing for multidisciplinary action. Here are six ideas for policy-makers, city officials, public health, city builders and planners to consider in research, policy and practice.
Green spaces, mental health and well-being in the time of COVID-19, Nadha Hassen, 2021, York U
In her doctoral study on “Parks Prescriptions and Perceptions: Experiences of Racialized People with Mood Disorders in Green Spaces,” Vanier scholar Nadha Hassen explores the experiences of racialized people living with mental illness in urban green spaces in Toronto. Using a visual research method called photovoice, Hassen’s research captures the experiences of people who are racialized and living with mood disorders as they interact with Toronto’s urban green spaces.
Leveraging built environment interventions to equitably promote health during and after COVID-19 in Toronto, Canada, Nadha Hassen, 2021, Oxford Academics
This paper puts forward three considerations for built environment interventions to promote health equitably: addressing structural determinants of health and embedding anti-racist intersectional principles, revisiting tactical urbanism as a health promotion tool and rethinking community engagement processes through equity-based placemaking. This paper outlines four built environment interventions in Toronto, Canada, that seek to address the challenges in navigating urban space safely in the short term, including street design that prioritizes pedestrians, protected cycling infrastructure, access to inclusive green space and safe, affordable housing. Longer-term strategies to create equitable health-promoting urban environments are discussed and may be valuable to other cities with similar urban equity concerns.
‘Without social justice, you cannot have environmental justice’: Making Toronto’s urban forests more inclusive spaces, Ambika Tenneti, 2021, University of Toronto, Scarborough
“Access is not just about proximity,” says Tenneti, an environmental science graduate from India who is currently enrolled in a doctoral program at U of T’s Daniels Forestry. People may live near a ravine, but if there’s no entrance near where they live and they have to walk, bike or take public transit before getting into it, then it’s not accessible. That also costs time and money, which recent immigrants often lack when they first arrive. Likewise, there are some psychological barriers that prevent people from enjoying the ravines and other natural areas in the city. This is where Tenneti’s research comes into play. As a recent immigrant to Canada, she investigates community engagement in the city’s urban forests, looking specifically at factors that lead to inclusion or exclusion, with a focus on the experience of new immigrants. Her research suggests that immigrant communities are interested and do enjoy urban nature, but they prefer parks over wilderness areas. She says in general, people feel comfortable going to well-maintained, multi-use green areas where children have access to playing fields and other amenities such as seating, equipment, trees and gardens. Access to washrooms and drinking water is also important for planning family outings.’
A question of life and death’: Why climate action must also take racial justice into account, What on Earth, 2021, CBC
Jesse Firempong is a communications officer with Greenpeace Canada. She spoke to What on Earth host Laura Lynch about how major environmental groups often centre white voices to the exclusion of BIPOC voices and concerns.
Parks Need Leaders of Colour, Canadian City Parks Report, 2021, Park People
How BIPOC park leaders are centring conversations of justice and power in parks. 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.
‘She’s out here trailblazing’: these 10 Black environmentalists are building community, Serena Austin, 2024, the Narwhal
Black Canadian scientists, researchers and environmental advocates discuss the importance of mentors, protégés and friends in their fields
Black Placemaking: United Through Heritage, Selma Elkhazin, 2023, Heritage Toronto
The African and Caribbean diaspora in Toronto consistently crafts places for the dynamic Black community. These places are spaces of belonging for the Black identity, and allow for the community to connect, invent, and continue creating diverse culture in the city.
Nothing for us, without us, 2024, University of Toronto and School of Cities
This mini-documentary explores anti-Black racism in Canadian city planning (Little Jamaica in Toronto, Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver, and Africville in Nova Scotia) and sheds light on the persistent issue of anti-Black racism and its impact on urban planning.
Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax, Ted Rutland, 2018Modern urban planning has long promised to improve the quality of human life. But how is human life defined? Displacing Blackness develops a unique critique of urban planning by focusing, not on its subservience to economic or political elites, but on its efforts to improve people’s lives. In his book, the author shows how race – specifically blackness – has defined the boundaries of the human being and guided urban planning, with grave consequences for the city’s Black residents.
Watch: A Conversation About Racism in the Outdoors, Brentin Mock, 2021, Audubon
On this episode of I Saw a Bird, Brentin Mock, a staff writer for CityLab, joined hosts David Ringer and Christine Lin to discuss his recent article on the dangers Black people face in the outdoors
How will we ensure equitable access to parks and public spaces? City Talk Canada, 2020, Canadian Urban Institute
Featuring Dave Harvey, Executive Director, Park People; Carlos Moreno, Scientific Director, Chair ETI (Entrepreneurship – Territory – Innovation), Panthéon – Sorbonne University; Rena Soutar, Reconciliation Planner, City of Vancouver Parks & Recreation; and Cheyenne Sundance, Founder & Farmer, Sundance Harvest Farm.
Advancing Climate Justice in Parks, 2021, Park People
Urban green spaces help mitigate the impacts of climate change by reducing temperatures and lowering flood risk. However, unequal access to these spaces leaves many lower-income, racialized communities more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Addressing these inequities involves the more equitable distribution of green space and changes in how we engage and involve communities in the design and planning of city parks.
Change, Hope, and Tension: Perspectives and Practices on Making Green Spaces BIPOC Inclusive, 2021, Park People
A candid conversation with 3 distinguished panellists exploring the barriers and opportunities for creating parks as natural places for engagement across differences.
Park engagement has been transformed by the pandemic. In our survey, 92% of cities said Covid has changed how they engage communities, and 23% said engagement has become a greater priority since the start of the pandemic.
As we’ve written elsewhere in the Canadian City Parks Report, it’s not just the format of engagement that has changed as cities shift from in-person to online methods. Cities are also sharpening their focus on building relationships with groups that have historically been left out, with 35% reporting that the pandemic has prompted more intentional outreach to equity-deserving groups.
“There is new awareness about systemic inequity, and creating equity in our park system means talking with those most affected.”
City staff, Gelph
This work is needed. Our public survey showed that equity-deserving groups face disproportionate barriers to participating in city-led park planning processes. Overall, the top three barriers respondents cited were: being unsure of how to get involved (36%), unsure if their participation would make a difference (31%), and not having enough time to participate (28%). These percentages were higher for respondents who identified as Black, Indigenous or a person of colour (BIPOC), at 48%, 35%, and 36%, respectively.
Cities and community groups across the country are responding to these barriers through creative methods that put equity at the fore.
It is vital to involve communities in deciding what the engagement process looks like, said Jennifer Chan, Co-founder and CEO of the Department of Imaginary Affairs (DIA) . Last summer, the organization led a project called A Tale of Two Parks to surface stories of safe and unsafe experiences that exist at the same park. Through the project, six racialized youth were hired as Social Researchers to engage park goers, especially BIPOC communities, in two Toronto parks.
Through conversations with community members at the park, the DIA team learned that park goers often have great ideas for changes they’d like to see, but community members often felt that “it doesn’t really matter what our ideas are, since the city doesn’t care about us” Chan said. “This statement really struck me in thinking about, how can we meaningfully engage with community when the starting perspective is that ‘the city doesn’t care about us?'”
In response, the DIA designed a participatory planning game called “What if Parks Were Designed By Us?” The game allows participants to experience and define a months-long planning process in a matter of minutes. It invites community members to work together to develop their own planning process, strengthening their ability as a community to identify issues, build a unified vision, and even practice dealing with monkey wrenches getting thrown into their plan.
By gamifying the planning process, DIA aims to reduce barriers to existing planning processes as well envision new possibilities for park engagement, shifting away from traditional mechanisms like town halls “where all the power is held by the city, not with the community,” Chan said.
The City of Toronto has been engaging residents for the Toronto Island Park Master Plan since 2020, which will set out a new vision for a beloved destination park accessible by ferry just minutes from downtown. It’s a signature project that involves many stakeholders, as the Island is meant to serve all Torontonians.
A key priority for the engagement team is embedding an equity lens throughout the process. “Equity really is framed by identifying who is and who isn’t at the table,” said Daniel Fusca, the city’s Manager of Consultation for Parks, Forestry and Recreation.
The process started with a pre-engagement phase—a new approach for the division. This involved meeting with relevant community organizations, Indigenous partners, and other departments within the city, to get a sense of their priorities and determine how they wanted to be involved.
The pre-engagement phase “goes against most people’s instincts of what is appropriate engagement,” Fusca said. There’s an expectation, rooted in conventional engagement practices, to “put something in front of the public for them to react to or else it’s a waste of their time.”
“It took a bit of work to convince everybody that this is actually a good idea,” Fusca said. “There’s a bit of getting people out of their comfort zone.”
The pre-engagement with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) and other Indigenous partners was especially vital given the significance of the Islands as a sacred place of healing and ceremony. Through these conversations, the city heard about the importance of incorporating ceremony into the engagement events, and re-working their land acknowledgment to recognize the waters as well as the lands.
They also heard that each Indigenous partner had different collaboration preferences. Some rights holders preferred regular meetings with the city. For the urban Indigenous communities, they’ve held sharing circles during each phase which are led by an Indigenous facilitator—something the community identified as important.
Lori Ellis, Project Officer of Strategic Projects, acknowledged that the pre-engagement took time and required them to adjust their original scope of work. “But it’s worth its weight in gold in regards to building that foundation of trust and transparency,” she said, noting that the city is now looking to incorporate a pre-engagement phase into future projects.
It’s also laid a foundation for ongoing collaboration with different communities to share back how their input has been used. The project team has tried to make these touchpoints meaningful by tailoring them to the community’s specific interests and input, Fusca said. “We would hone in the presentation to just focus on the things that were most meaningful to them and try to reflect back anything they told us,” he shared.
Constantly scanning to “identify the key voices that are still missing, and to do our best to address that” has been another strategy at the heart of the city’s approach, Fusca said. For example, after identifying that youth and racialized communities living outside of the downtown core were underrepresented in the first phase of engagement, they developed a Youth Ambassador Program.
The program hired a team of 10 youth between the ages of 15 to 27 who collectively spoke nine different languages and lived in neighbourhoods outside of the downtown core. They were provided with training and a budget to design their own outreach program to engage their communities.
Pablo Muñoz, a Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the city who has previous experience as a youth worker, noted the important role youth play as conduits of information to and from the community. “For a lot of immigrant and refugee families, children and youth tend to be the connection to the Canadian English-speaking world. They tend to be the translators, and in many ways, have a big leadership role,” he said. This is a finding echoed in recent Park People research that explored barriers to park engagement in Vancouver’s equity-deserving neighbourhoods.
Another learning from the process is that despite the breadth of audiences involved in the project, it’s been important to hold space to go deeper through small group workshops centred on equity.
Some workshops included visioning exercises guided by Bob Goulais, an Anishinaabe facilitator, where participants closed their eyes to envision the future of the Islands. “It’s a much different way than bureaucratic engagement, where we’re going inwards and acknowledging a little bit more of the soul and the spirit,” said Muñoz.
Other initiatives included an “equity and belonging deep-dive,” and a video interview with activists and historians about the LGBTQ2S+ history of Hanlan’s Point, a clothing-optional beach on the Islands.
At these sessions, “the turnout would be smaller, but the conversation would be much richer. None of these conversations ever went the way you thought that they were going to go. And they always were incredibly meaningful,” Muñoz said.
What other cities are doing:
Zahra Ebrahim, Co-founder of Monumental and Park People Board Chair, said that when it comes to deepening engagement, in many ways cities are “set up to fail.” Through research to inform the Making Space toolkit—a resource for engaging equity-deserving communities in planning processes—Ebrahim and her team learned that cities may face internal barriers to implementing meaningful processes.
However, many of these issues could be addressed through “simple intervention points,” Ebrahim said:
The ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves has forced Canada to reckon with its ongoing legacy of residential schools as part of the colonial tactics that strived for Indigenous erasure. Municipalities, street names, secondary and post-secondary institutions have all been under pressure to change names that step away from the colonial figures they were named after.Canada was born the moment settlers began claiming land, creating borders, and dispossessing First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. And while the ongoing effects of colonization can look vastly different across geographies, the prairies in particular trace land theft and displacement of Indigenous livelihood to agricultural opportunities that allowed white settlement to prosper. For Indigenous Peoples, this meant a violent history of land extraction, residential schools, and starvation methods through buffalo extinction and government policy.Inherently, cities remain a site of dispossession, and the land on which city parks exist are no exception. Nahomi Amberer reminds us of the pre-existing relationship with land Indigenous people held prior to contact, and how this relationship was undermined by land dispossession by European settlers, including land used today for parks. “Dividing up land was central to claiming ownership of a land already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples,” she wrote in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report. Indigenous Peoples continue to be reminded of these violent histories often; whether driving through the country or walking through an urban neighbourhood, place-names continue to honour colonial figureheads who played instrumental roles in the genocide against Indigenous populations. However, city spaces can also be a site of mass education. So, how do we create spaces that decentralize the colonial past and instead, promote Indigenous knowledges?
Over the past year, a handful of prairie city parks have taken steps towards decolonizing public spaces, making room for Indigenous histories in a way that hadn’t been done before. This is a particularly important step for prairie cities that reflect some of the highest urban Indigenous populations across the country. Further, city parks moving towards the process of decolonizing space provides urban Indigenous folks access to nature and ceremony without the barrier of having to leave the city.
Take Winnipeg – Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population – and the Indigenous Peoples Garden as a start. Anna Huard, Manager of Education and Programs at Assiniboine Park Conservancy described the Garden as a massive joint effort of community consultation, Matriarchs, Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and an Indigenous architecture firm. “It’s important that the consultation process on a project like this includes a lot of different connections,” she said. “As soon as others were able to help out, it started to feel like a community. We cannot just rely on one Indigenous spokesperson.”Native plant species helped guide the Garden’s development, and to further community inclusion, Indigenous youth also had a hand in planting trees and building boardwalks. The park includes fire and water nodes as well as interpretive signage that includes ancestral languages of Ojibway, Cree, Dakota, Oji-Cree, Michif, Dene and Inuktitut translations.
With last summer being the Garden’s launch, Huard is ready to see the space used more frequently for youth storytelling programs, language learning, and an Indigenous plants program that includes a guided tour and salve-making classes. Most importantly, Huard noted that the space provides urban Indigenous folks the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of land and culture within city limits.
The city of Regina also experienced a big leap forward in decolonizing park spaces recently. Last year, the city finally caved to public pressure to relocate the Sir. John A. MacDonald statue in Victoria Park in downtown Regina. Although grassroots initiatives and petitions for the statue’s removal have been circulating for a few years, the city’s website stated that in March of 2021, city council approved the relocation of the statue to storage, “while Administration proceeds with broader public engagement and working with partners to identify an appropriate future location and contextualization.”Further, the Buffalo Peoples Art Institute (BPAI), a grassroots community organization driven by social justice in Regina, played a significant role in advocating for the name change of an inner-city public park. In spring of last year, the city officially changed Dewdney Park in the North Central neighbourhood to Buffalo Meadows Park due to ongoing pressure from organizations like BPAI and public community support. The city also voted in favor to change Dewdney Pool to Buffalo Meadows Pool. Edgar Dewdney was a colonial figure who administered and oversaw residential school policies and the starvation crisis faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada.Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, a member of the White Bear First Nation and a resident of Regina, said she started the Institute to help re-educate prairie learners about the significance of the buffalo’s presence before its erasure. She explained that Regina, often referred to as ‘Pile of Bones’ because of its creation literally being built on the bones of buffalo, must acknowledge the original histories of the land. “This was buffalo land before colonization,” she said.Advocating for the name change started a few years ago, and eventually led to public awareness campaigns through community barbeques and petition signing. After enough signatures were collected, the grassroots group and their allies presented the petition to the city council and the civic naming committee. The city vote to rename the park was successful, but the BPAI is still waiting for the approval to change a major street name, Dewdney Avenue to Buffalo Avenue, as well.The park’s name change encourages a reconnection to the land and is crucial for Regina’s north central community where many Indigenous people reside, BigEagle-Kequahtooway explained. “Even in an urban setting, our environment should reflect who we are as a community,” she said. “We need to determine whether the legacies of [colonial figures] are something we want to emulate or preserve for the future, and further question whether those names play a role moving forward in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation.”
BPAI plans to continue to bring awareness to the buffalo’s history on the plains through public art installations, courses on preparing buffalo hides, and hosting an annual buffalo festival all in the newly named park.
The city of Edmonton also had a big year for centering Indigenous knowledges in parks as construction on the kihciy askiy park (Cree for Sacred Land) started in Whitemud Park last year.
The park has been 15 years in the making after the city received a proposal from the Indigenous Elders Cultural Resource Society outlining an urban cultural site where Indigenous people could practice cultural ceremony and learning opportunities. Although long overdue, the city’s website acknowledges that “long before becoming farmland, the kihciy askiy site was used for many centuries by the Indigenous people foraging for medicines for healing purposes.”After forming a Counsel of Elders in 2015 to work alongside a city project team, the city followed cultural leadership throughout the park’s entire design process. Alongside consultation from Elders and Knowledge Keepers, the city has also called upon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, the MMIWG Calls for Justice, and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to help guide the work.“Consistent with Indigenous culture of respecting the land, the project is designed to be completely synchronized within its location in the Edmonton River Valley,” Chelsea Burden, City of Edmonton’s Project Manager shared. With this in mind, the city also conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment to ensure the construction of the site results in minimal destruction to native plant and tree species along the River Valley.
The park’s development plans include spaces for ceremony and sweats, the opportunity to grow medicinal native species plants, and the infrastructure to host culture camps and talking circles. The park plans to officially open in early 2023.
As more graves continue to be uncovered, the urgency to recognize Indigenous history and presence must be prioritized. Acknowledging that colonialism continues to have a devastating impact while actively making changes led by the Indigenous community with ancestral ties to the land are two processes that can and should happen in tandem.
For example, in January of 2022, Vancouver’s Park Board chair Stuart McKinnon presented a motion that calls for the co-management of city parks that fall under the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. “I think it’s important as we recognize reconciliation in this country, that the land Vancouver sits on was occupied land,” McKinnon shared in a CBC article.
There is still plenty of work left to undo the colonial violence of the past, and governments at the municipal, provincial and federal level should actively engage in meaningful Indigenous consultation to lead the creation of cultural learning spaces in city parks as a starting point. In order to achieve successful consultation, engagement strategies must build authentic relationships with multiple Indigenous community members and respectfully make space for varying Indigenous worldviews. Further, municipalities must acknowledge that empowering Indigenous community members to lead educational programming, park signage, language camps, and plant/medicine gardens also empowers the community as a whole. Doing so promotes a way forward that allows urban Indigenous presence to access aspects of ceremony and tradition, and in turn, allows non-Indigenous people to learn more about the original stewards of the lands they occupy.
And perhaps above all, working alongside one another in mutual respect is one way to honour the spirit in which Treaty relationships were built upon.
Parks are not “nice to haves,” they are critical social, health, and environmental infrastructure for Toronto. City parks are lifelines in extreme heat waves. Social connectors in an age of increasing polarization. Keepers of biodiversity despite ever fragmenting urban landscapes.
To meet the biggest challenges we face in Toronto—climate change, biodiversity loss, social polarization, rising inequality—we need whole new ways to plan, design, manage, program, and govern parks.
This shift requires doing things differently. It requires ensuring proper funding, sharing decision-making power, addressing inequities head-on, and prioritizing action on truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
As Toronto faces upcoming municipal elections, we urge candidates for Mayor and Council to accelerate the transition to a more equitable, resilient future for city parks by working with us on the ideas presented in this platform.
All of the ideas in this platform require us to invest more time and money into city parks. In our 2022 survey of residents of Canadian cities, 87% said they support more investment in parks.
Responsible for 60% of Canada’s infrastructure, municipalities like Toronto receive only 10 cents on every tax dollar. That means our three levels of government, each of which has responsibilities for our natural environment and human health, all need to come to the table.
This is easier said than done. The multiple benefits of parks—health, environmental, social, economic—actually make it harder to invest at the scale we need to. Why? Because the benefits of investing in parks are distributed across many different ministries and government departments, each of which is accountable for its own budgets and plans. That is why we need to support governments to pursue an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to investment in Toronto parks.
Investing more in city parks is not an imposition or an obligation. It is an opportunity to transform Toronto for the better.
There is a clear and growing disparity in who has access to quality green spaces in Toronto. As COVID laid bare, equity-deserving communities face complex, interrelated health crises. Toronto must recognize how race, income and the built environment conspire to make parks a pressing environmental justice issue in our city.
Park Policy Directions:
Usable parks are the bar for entry. Toronto’s parks maintenance and operating budget have not kept pace with use and demand. There’s an urgent need to increase park operating budgets to ensure basic amenities like bathrooms and water are the standard in every single Toronto park.
Spending on park operating budgets must start to keep pace with demand. It is basic: amenities like bathrooms and water must be the standard in every single Toronto park, with a priority focus on equity-deserving and high-use parks. Investments in basic amenities that promote park use must include:
Further reading:
Towards equitable parks, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
People living in Toronto will need to adapt to hotter, wetter and more unpredictable climates. Climate change is here and is already impacting our city. With the right investment, parks can serve as climate infrastructure and provide people with critical places of refuge in hot, dense cities where a major health crisis is looming.
At the same time, people are seeking out nature more for its mental and physical health benefits. People want more places to experience nature close to home: 71% of survey respondents said they value visiting naturalized spaces within a 10-minute walk of homes, such as a native plant garden or small meadow. In fact, 87% of respondents said they were in favour of more native plant species within parks—the second most requested amenity after public washrooms. Toronto’s Ravine Strategy offers a strong road map for ensuring these vital biodiversity and natural habitats are safeguarded for the future and enjoyed by residents, but funding has remained limited.
Policy Directions:
Invest in the co-benefits of naturalized spaces as climate resilience infrastructure, urban biodiversity habitat and vital nature connections in Toronto.
Further reading
Deepening the conservation conversation, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
There is an urgent need for new models of Toronto park governance rooted in shared decision-making power. We need a new way of managing city parks that are more inclusive, community-focused, and respects the land rights of Indigenous peoples and the knowledge of communities.
Park planning and design practices
Over the past several years, communities have been actively working to decentralize power in institutional spaces.
It is time for Toronto to give communities more decision-making power on the park issues that affect them most, particularly in equity-deserving communities.
Abundance, the theme of Park People’s 2022 Conference, is an invitation to radically reimagine city parks. For three days, September 21-23, the virtual event will focus our collective attention on the transformational park work charting a new path forward in cities.
Community park groups, park non-profits and park professionals are recognizing parks as essential urban infrastructure and building new approaches to collaboration, community engagement and nature connections. The Park People Conference is an invitation to engage with the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in our city parks.
We’ve identified 4 key pathways to generating abundance in parks: decolonizing practices and narratives, engaging in power sharing, recognizing parks as sites of healing and justice, and cultivating human/nature connections.
Indigenous leaders and allies are calling for settlers to reckon with colonialism and decentre settler approaches in park work. We’re hosting numerous sessions during the Park People Conference that feature people and organizations that are leading the movement to collectively decolonize Canada’s city parks.
How can municipalities, community groups, non-profits and residents meaningfully work together to create spaces that address community needs in parks? The Park People Conference features several sessions that approach collaboration as an act of power-sharing where the process is just as important as the project itself.
What would parks look like if we saw everyone as equally worthy of having their needs met in shared spaces? Inclusion and access look much different from the perspective of those who are too often viewed as outsiders. But, their experience in parks tells us much about our communities, our cities and ourselves.
Several Park People Conference presenters demonstrate how centring nature builds both community and ecological resilience.
Check out the whole agenda, and 100+ speakers bringing together the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in city parks.
See you at the Park People Conference!