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?
TD Park People Grants support local leaders to organize environmental education, sustainability or stewardship events that bring people together across Canada.
A guidance and resources to measure the impact of your park work on community health and wellbeing, integrating a social equity lens.
Learn more about green social prescribing, an evolving practice that encourages individuals to reestablish connections with nature and one another to enhance their mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
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City parks staff steward some of our most vital yet undervalued public assets: urban parks and green spaces. These areas are far more than patches of grass, they are dynamic community hubs, crucial environmental infrastructure, and essential public health resources.
The annual Canadian City Parks Report (CCPR) equips municipal park staff, community advocates, non-profits, and the public with data and stories that make the case for parks. Between 2019 and 2024, the annually released report illuminated trends, challenges, and opportunities in how we plan, manage, and experience our shared green spaces. Forty-six municipalities participated over these years, collectively representing 48% of Canada’s population.
This report synthesizes the major findings from the CCPR over these pivotal years. It serves as a curated and thematically organized index of data and stories from across the years, with comments on the trends we witnessed through that time.
1- Health Imperative: Parks as Essential Public Health Investment
One of the most consistent trends across the CCPR data is the growing use and recognition of city parks as essential public spaces, a shift dramatically accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. What were once considered amenities are now firmly recognized as critical spaces that support the mental and physical health and well-being of city residents.
2- The Funding Gap: Resources and Capacity Constraints
Despite documented increases in park use and public valuing of parks, municipalities report ongoing financial and staffing constraints that limit their capacity to maintain and enhance park systems.
3- Environmental Function: Climate Adaptation and Biodiversity
Urban parks serve important environmental functions, particularly in climate adaptation and supporting urban biodiversity, roles that have gained increased attention as climate impacts intensify. Parks are more and more understood as ‘upstream solutions’ for the environmental and economic impacts of extreme weather events.
4- Equity and Access: Addressing Systemic Barriers
Participating municipalities reported on their efforts to address equity, inclusion, and reconciliation in park planning and management, reflecting broader societal reckonings with systemic barriers to park access and enjoyment.
5- Evolving Practice: Community Engagement and Complex Operations
Park management now encompasses complex social dimensions beyond traditional maintenance, including community engagement strategies and navigation of challenging urban issues that intersect with public space.
How the park sector can meet today’s complex challenges through partnerships and collaboration.
How Addressing Conflict and Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Can Create More Equitable and Sustainable Parks.
How collaboration, mindfulness, and power-sharing in parks can help nurture and repair relationships between ourselves, our communities, and the wider natural world.
How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
Park People launches the first Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting park trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities.
The Canadian City Parks Report finds tight parks budgets, increasingly extreme weather events, and changing use of parks by residents are challenging cities across the country. But it also finds many cities are leading the way on solutions through an increasing focus on collaborative partnerships, proactive parks planning, and inclusive engagement practices.
In the report, we share:
Budgets tight while populations grow
Cities across Canada are experiencing budget constraints at the same time as growing populations and changing demographics create demand for more parks, amenities, and programming.Resilience must be scaled up. As instances of extreme weather increase, additional pressure is placed on park systems to absorb effects, like flooding. While cities are piloting green infrastructure in parks, there is a need to scale up and standardize these efforts. We found only 48% of cities have citywide green infrastructure strategies that includes parks.
The future is connected
Population growth and urban development is necessitating a focus on proactive parks planning and creative methods to expand and connect parks. Currently 70% cities have updated park system master plans.
Partnerships are powerful
Cities are developing non-profit partnerships and collaborations with resident groups to bring creative programming, alternative funding, and specialized knowledge to help meet new demands on city parks. We found 74% of cities currently have at least one non-profit park partnership.
Inclusion means going deeper
Cities are beginning the work of ensuring parks foster inclusion by exploring their own policies and practices, increasing accessibility, and developing programs for newcomers.
Happy reading!
Park People launches the second annual Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting the trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
As we worked on stories about biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and homelessness, the world changed around us. But it quickly became apparent that these stories were not made irrelevant, but more urgent than ever.
This year, the report highlights new city park insights to shape the future of biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and approaches to homelessness in city parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 27 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
How urban biodiversity improves our well-being and why that matters even more during COVID-19.
How we can both deepen the conversation about biodiversity and broaden it to include more people
Why habitat corridors are important for urban biodiversity and what cities are doing to make sure parks large and small are connected
As populations and development boom in many cities, finding space for new parks is creating challenges—and spurring innovation
How creative community groups and city support are growing connections through food in parks.
Park People launches the third annual Canadian City Parks Report on Centring Equity and Resilience: How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Park use during the pandemic spiked across the country as people flooded into outdoor spaces to seek safe ways to connect with others, experience nature, and get some exercise. Parks became more important to Canadians in their daily lives, but cities also faced new challenges with rising demands and public health considerations.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 32 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
How climate change is impacting how we plan, design, and maintain parks.
Whether converting streets to cool green oases, designing parks that celebrate water, or re-naturalizing the mouths of entire rivers, these eight Canadian projects point a way forward to more climate resilient cities.
How using an environmental justice lens can help tackle climate change resilience and inequity in parks.
Moving more towards nature-based solutions that view parks as key pieces of green infrastructure.
How Canadian cities can harness the power of park philanthropy—and address some of its challenges
How BIPOC park leaders are centring conversations of justice and power in parks
Park People launches the fourth annual Canadian City Parks Report on Nurturing Relationships & Reciprocity: How collaboration, mindfulness, and power-sharing in parks can help nurture and repair relationships between ourselves, our communities, and the wider natural world.
This year’s report begins to move beyond the impacts of the pandemic to explore how the lessons we’ve learned over the last two years can point the way toward more equitable and creative ways of planning, designing, and programming parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 30 municipalities and over 3,000 residents of Canadian cities.
How leaders from across the country are using different methods to promote a sense of connection to nature by meeting people where they’re at
How we can foster a greater sense of connection to nature through awareness, reciprocity, and gratitude—and why that matters.
How the pandemic has impacted park budgets and sparked a heightened focus on the importance of equity-led investment.
How park engagement can lay the foundation for relationships that last well beyond the end of a consultation period
How investing in ongoing trust-building beyond one-off consultations can help to repair relationships, redistribute power, and reimagine parks.
The unique opportunity of parks departments to play a positive role in addressing houselessness
Examining Prairie cities’ efforts to decolonize park spaces and honour the Indigenous histories of the land they are built upon
How collaborative funding approaches, and investment from other levels of government, are opening up new ways to support parks.
This summer, Park People’s Sparking Change and TD Park People Grants programs in Toronto connected 36 equity-deserving community park groups with training, networks, seed funding and coaching to support city parks as places that connect people to nature and each other.
Many grant recipients around Toronto are activating community parks as sites of decolonization and reconciliation. One of these is The Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Group (IPSG).
The IPSG at St. Matthew’s United Church was founded in 2018 to offer and foster local leadership in building balanced, just relationships with Indigenous people, the land, the water, and all living beings. In addition to hosting year-round events, a core group of 20 volunteers steward the green space beside the church, located in Toronto’s Corso Italia neighbourhood. During an August evening golden hour, Wesley Reibeling met with Elder Catherine Brooks to talk about the Indigenous People’s Solidarity Group, reconciliation and moving toward building a better future together. Earlier that evening, Elder Catherine Brooks, the IPSG, and local leaders and community members joined together to launch the National Healing Forest initiative in what is now known as Bickford Park.
Elder Catherine encouraged the IPSG to become the first Toronto National Healing Forest initiative, joining 9 other projects from coast to coast “in the spirit of reconciliation”.
This initiative is an invitation to Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, organizations, and individuals to create green spaces across Canada, to honour residential school victims, survivors, and their families, as well as missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Elder Catherine Brooks: “Well, first of all, one of the co-leads, Robin Buyers, and I met years ago when I was the Executive Director of a native women’s shelter. She was teaching at George Brown College in Community Work. She had her students do little fundraising projects for us, because, of course, what are shelters always short of? Money, or what we would call “Zhooniya”.
She became a friend over time and invited me to a book talk from author and journalist Tanya Talaga. The book group was very thoughtful and there seemed to be a lot of care put into it.
So I got kind of interested in going to the book talks, and then they said to me, “Well, how would you like to be our elder in residence at St. Matthew’s Church?” And of course, I kind of went, “I beg your pardon?”
So I thought about it, and I thought if we’re going to do this work towards reconciliation, then maybe this isn’t a bad idea. You know, maybe this is actually a good idea! So I went and talked to a Traditional Healer, whose judgment I really trust and respect. And they said, “It’s certainly something that hasn’t been done, and we should do new things.” So here I am.
And then initially, I began by doing various types of ceremonies and we have continued in terms of looking at ways to support Indigenous people. And that’s exactly what the group does.
So I’m kind of guiding them but they come up with their ideas. They have been doing that since before I was here and I give them credit for that.”
Elder Catherine Brooks: “I think it was one of the Cree chiefs, who said, ‘When the last tree is cut down, the last fish is eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.’
And you know, you can’t go fly up there and move up there, as there won’t be anything to send up there to keep you going. You’re not going to go live on Mars. What would be better, is if we all had enough to eat, a place to live, and decent education for our children and work on teaching not to wreck the planet.
Our job is supposed to be stewards of this place, keep it safe, and also express our gratitude and appreciation to creation, for being here, for being alive. People are just beginning to realize what a miracle it is to be human beings and all these wonderful things to exist. So we’re just beginning to have that sense of connection.
“I think a great example of this is how the Indigenous People’s Solidarity Group is using gardening to teach respect for the land. Teaching young children and grown-ups to love the land and to take care of it so that they can understand the relationship between the bees, the plants and having corn and food. By doing this, you are teaching them to know that this is a really important matter because this is how we live. Everybody lives off the land, in a manner of speaking, because that’s where our food comes for, so we are all benefiting from that.”
Funding through the United Church, Pollinate TO, and Canada Summer Jobs allowed IPSG to expand their work exponentially in 2021 and into 2022, recognizing Catherine Brooks as Elder-in-Residence, hosting online and outdoor events, and hiring youth to assist in maintaining the garden space, and to re-design the north end of the green space at St. Matthews United Church with over 50 native species.
Through Park People’s microgrants, Sparking Change and TD Park People Grants, IPSG was able to expand its programming and outreach. On June 14, 2022, IPSG hosted an Ode’miin Giizas Celebration: Strawberry Moon Lodge, Feast, & Ceremony.
The Strawberry Moon Feast and Ceremony celebrates the strawberry. The strawberry is the first berry of the season, which is often represented in Indigenous culture as a berry of connection, maintaining and fulfilling relationships. Full Moon ceremonies celebrate Grandmother Moon, the waters, and women as keepers of the waters.
At the event, Women, 2 Spirit, trans and intersex people were all welcome to join in the ceremony. Subsequently, they gathered inside for a feast of traditional foods, songs and teachings led by Elder Catherine Brooks. Men and others not participating in the moon ceremony remained outside in conversation with a Firekeeper. Once the moon had risen, everyone congregated around the sacred fire to make offerings together, while bowls of water were used to reflect the moon.
As Elder Catherine told me during the interview, “If we only could learn how to live here in peace and harmony with our fellow beings. Nothing in the world, like this tree, the grass, the sky, the water, nothing needs us. But we need everything. Our job is to be stewards of this place, keep it safe, and also express our gratitude and appreciation to creation, for being here, and for being alive. People are just beginning to realize what a miracle it is to be human beings and for all these wonderful things to exist. So we’re just beginning to have that sense of connection.“
Some examples of this connection include a Territorial Acknowledgement that was raised at St Matthew’s United Church in 2020, and a food and traditional medicine garden was planted, Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan — Healing Garden.
The transformation of what was once grass on infill from 150 years of city-building to a healing garden. Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan is situated on a busy St. Clair West corner, in the Bracondale Hill and Wychwood area. The garden’s location helps engage passersby in the neighbourhood which is key to expanding the garden’s reach. Members of the community stewarding the small greenspace adjacent to St. Matthews United Church, (IPSG) and volunteers have modelled how small green urban spaces may become sites of re-connection with nature and recognition of Indigenous spirituality.
Elder Catherine and Wesley discussed better ways forward and how to work together toward better futures and this is what she had to say; “People, spirits are so resilient – or you, and I wouldn’t be talking.
And it’s true of the other people who came here too. Some of the people that came here were leaving because things were hard. In Europe, a reason the bubonic plague kept killing so many people in waves is that they just didn’t have food and when they came to the New World– or what they call the “New World” – Turtle Island, and South America, then they discovered all the potatoes, different kinds of potatoes, tomatoes, corns, beans farms, squash, and tobacco, which is sacred to us. You know, the prophecy did say we’re all going to meet up. We have the ‘Noah’s Ark’ of human beings here on Turtle Island.
We’re going to learn to live together in peace and harmony and then we’re going to help our brothers and sisters all over the world also to live in peace and harmony. It’s a prophecy and it doesn’t mean we got the exact time when it’s going to happen. But we can try our best to work every day towards that. We need to be people of action.”
With municipal elections coming up here in Toronto, Elder Catherine offers some great advice about how to help Indigenous issues be front of mind for municipal leaders:
“Listen to me, you know, it makes a difference in who gets elected– and you know, the difference between good and fair is much less than the distance between fair and bad, ignorant and indifferent. If you want to help Indigenous people, elect people!“
Go talk to those people you elect and say you care about our issues because they listen. I think most people who get elected do want to serve in a way for the public. Here’s the thing we need that support. It doesn’t have to be every week, but maybe go once a year and knock on their doors, because we have the right to be represented, whether we voted for them or not. That would be an incredible help.”
“Go visit your MP and MPP and tell them you care about Aboriginal issues and Indigenous issues, women’s issues, LGBT+ issues. Get out there and support people! That will bring about the change we want to see. Never give up. We wouldn’t have made as much progress if we had given up. If our ancestors had given up, we as a people wouldn’t be here today. “
If your city or local community is having municipal elections coming up this season, this is a reminder to get out and vote and vote with the community in mind when you cast your ballot.
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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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!
“We might get interrupted. I might get a call. I’m monitoring the hotline.”
This is how my conversation with Carolynne Crawley begins.
The hotline Carolynne is referring to belongs to the Turtle Protectors High Park: a volunteer-run phone line that park-goers use to report sightings of nesting turtles in Toronto’s High Park.
Carolynne, one of the two founders of Turtle Protectors High Park is a Mi’kmaw woman with mixed ancestry from the East Coast. She is the Founder of Msit No’kmaq, which means “All My Relations” in Mi’kmaq. Importantly, Carolynne is also Turtle Clan and a member of the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle.
Typically, when we feature stories of TD Park People Grant recipients, we profile park-based events that showcase the vital connections between people and nature.
However, the origin story of Turtle Protectors High Park is particularly meaningful because it manifests two important Indigenous knowledge principles that can shape how we engage with nature and one another:
One morning in June 2021, Carolynne was strolling through High Park when she saw a large snapping turtle walking in circles. Even though Carolynne didn’t know what was happening, she sensed it was something important. She also understood that what looked like harmless summer park goers and off-leash dogs to humans could easily interrupt whatever was happening and cause harm to the snapping turtle, whose life is no less important than her own.Park People’s 2022 Canadian City Parks Report addresses the concept of nature connectedness, and profiles Carolynne’s highly respected work helping others cultivate a reciprocal relationship with the Earth and other beings. As the report highlights, settlers have historically had an extractive relationship with nature. One example of this extractive orientation is our tendency to only value parks in terms of how they benefit human lives. A reciprocal relationship would invite us to consider how we can contribute to natural spaces, such as those we encounter in parks.
“I always invite people to think about our relationships with people. If you’re always giving, giving, giving, and someone’s taking, taking, taking without respect and gratitude, then there’s an imbalance there.” Adding, “As people, we have an individual and collective responsibility to be in a good relationship with the Earth, just as well as being in a good relationship with ourselves and each other.”
Carolynne Crawley
Speaking to Carolynne, it’s clear that this orientation shapes her daily experiences of High Park. Carolynne is attuned to noticing nature and demonstrating love and respect for all beings that she shares the park with. This is why Carolynne took the time to pause, pay attention and move into action on the snapping turtle’s behalf.
Hearing the story, I wonder if I would’ve noticed the turtle at all. Or, whether I would’ve had the inclination to stop and reflect on the turtle’s behaviour. I ask myself whether, like Carolynne, I would’ve made the time and space to address a turtle’s needs.
It’s somewhat ironic that the turtle at the centre of this important origin story highlights the importance of slowing down and taking the time to cultivate relationships with the natural world. If I behaved less like a hare on the run and more like a slowly meandering turtle in the park, perhaps I would take the time to pause, notice and demonstrate reciprocity.
Turns out this is only one of many lessons we can learn from turtles.
Upon encountering the turtle, Carolynne called Jenny Davis, who was the Event and Volunteer Coordinator at the High Park Nature Centre. Jenny’s expertise is collaboration. In fact, in her biography for the 2022 Park People Conference, she describes herself as uniquely adept at “bringing people together to get things done in a good way and fast.”
Both those qualities were key to protecting the snapping turtle.
Together, the two women made a series of phone calls with many experts they had existing relationships with, including in High Park staff, as well as biologist Marc Dupuis-Desormeaux, who specializes in turtles at York University. In fact, it was Marc who connected Carolynne and Jenny to another community park group dedicated to turtles: Brampton’s Heart Lake Turtle Troopers, also a current TD Park People Grants recipient.
Through these conversations, Carolynee and Jenny established several things:
Before Carolynne and Jenny even laid down the first turtle protector built by High Park Acting Foreperson Kyle Moffit, other park-goers came over to share their accounts of turtles laying eggs throughout the park.
Inspired by the Snapping Turtle she encountered, Carolynne and Jenny decided to create a turtle nest protection program in High Park that would:
The protection of the first nest set the course for the project.
To launch a program like this, Carolynne and Jenny would need support from the City, volunteers who would be their active eyes and ears in the park, and a whole lot of materials and people-power to build nest protectors.
Helen Sousa, the General Park Supervisor took the first positive step by reducing barriers to protecting turtles in High Park. While securing support for a project like this would typically require a complicated and bureaucratic process, Helen responded to Jenny and Carolynne’s concept for Turtle Protectors High Park with, “yeah, let’s do it, let’s try it.” And with that, the construction of several more turtle protectors was underway.
As Jenny and Carolynne underscore, the City’s orientation toward collaborating in “a good way” centered relationship-building and trust. The simple act of saying ‘yes,’ unlocked numerous other positive relationships and collaborations that ultimately led to a robust program to protect turtles and their eggs in High Park.
These relationships include:
Throughout my conversations with Jenny and Carolynne it’s clear that it took a tremendous amount of collaboration to get the Turtle Protectors High Park project off the ground. In fact, it almost feels like this project needs a credit reel to capture all of the many people who have contributed to its success (wait for that at the end of the post).
Indigenous artist Catherine Tammaro, a seated Spotted Turtle Clan FaithKeeper and multi-disciplinary artist, designed the turtle image that is featured on the brightly coloured signs that Animal Services manufactured to engage the community in turtle protection. Jenny highlights why this gesture means so much:
“Now you have the city following the lead of Indigenous people. That’s hopefully a model we can move forward with.”
The leadership of Indigenous people has laid the groundwork for a new kind of collaboration.
For example, the project officially started with a Clan Feast on May 1, 2022.
And when a small construction project was slated for a section of the park known to be a snapping turtle nesting site, the park’s General Supervisor reached out to Turtle Protectors High Park for advice and guidance. As a result of this relationship, the City will now consider turtle nesting season when planning future construction projects.
The Turtle Protectors High Park will make their map of turtle nesting sites available to Animal Services, High Park staff, and the local Councillor. Because turtles tend to return to the same nesting sites year in and year out (a practice called ‘site fidelity,”) the map can help city staff be on the lookout for nesting turtles to avoid damaging or destroying their nests.
The City has also agreed to pause mowing when the snapping turtle hatchling emerge in September/October and when the Midland Painted Hatchlings emerge in May/June
In the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report, Carolynne Crawley refers to her work as helping people “return home to the relationship with the Earth” and creating space for people to slow down and notice the world around them.
The Turtle Protectors High Park owes its start to the two founders’ respect, gratitude, and love for all beings. This approach opened the door to a series of valuable collaborations that truly embody what it means to work together in a good way, where trust and relationships come first.
Carolynne and Jenny would like to credit the following people who have worked closely with them to bring Turtle Protectors High Park to fruition:
What to do if you spot a nesting turtle from late May to mid-July: