As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks?
We know we benefit when we get outside and connect with others when winter makes us feel isolated. Here are some ideas for how your group can animate parks in winter.
Here are some valuable tips to create a welcoming, safe, and respectful environment for participants of all abilities, backgrounds, ages, and gender identities!
Watch our special launch webinar with the Report's authors to get the inside scoop on our findings.
How the City of Charlottetown’s experience with Hurricane Fiona demonstrates the importance of cross-departmental partnerships and resilient infrastructure to mitigate the impact of extreme winds.
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Park People is excited to launch the 2024 Canadian City Parks Report, our sixth annual edition highlighting the most significant trends, issues, and practices shaping Canada’s city parks.
Watch our special launch webinar to explore our findings:
The webinar features an engaging discussion on the future of city parks, with guest speakers from the City of Victoria and Greenspace Alliance. They share opportunities and challenges in their work around collaborations and partnerships, across city departments, communities, non-profits, and more.
Adri Stark is specialized in research and policy at Park People, and co-author of the annual Canadian City Parks Report.…
Joy is the Manager of Research and Partnerships at Park People and facilitates national research and network engagement that supports…
Julia is the Food Systems Coordinator for the City of Victoria. She comes to the role after over 15 years…
Nicole DesRoches, born in Ottawa and living in Chelsea Québec, part of the National Capital Region, therefore living within the…
Today Park People launches the sixth Canadian City Parks Report–and the final iteration of this report in its current form: Bridging the Gap: How the park sector can meet today’s complex challenges through partnerships and collaboration.
Last year, we dove deep into the minds of park managers across the country, interviewing over 44 senior parks staff across 30 municipalities about the trends and challenges in the industry. One of the key insights from that process was a need to find collaboration sweet spots to achieve our many collective parks goals.
This year’s report expands on that insight by showcasing collaborative examples from across the country and through collecting data from 35 Canadian municipalities, over 2,500 residents of Canadian cities, as well as interviews with park staff and professionals.
Through that process we found six key insights related to collaborations and partnerships:
In this report you’ll find:
For those eager to dive deeper into the report’s contents, join us for the report launch webinar featuring a lively discussion on the report’s key findings and future directions for city parks. This hour-long webinar will take place on Wednesday, November 27th, at 3:00 PM ET.
Park People launches the fifth annual Canadian City Parks Report: Surfacing Solutions: How Addressing Conflict and Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Can Create More Equitable and Sustainable Parks.
Over the past five years of the Canadian City Parks Report, our goal has always been to tell a story—the story of where city parks are going and where they need to go.
This year, we took an even deeper approach to gathering these stories. We sat down for interviews with 44 senior parks staff across 30 municipalities, who generously shared with us the challenges they are facing, the projects and people inspiring them, and their vision for the future of city parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from those conversations with the data we gathered from our surveys of 35 municipalities and over 2000 residents of Canadian cities.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
Happy reading!
This case study is part of the 2024 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.
In Metro Vancouver, a ground-breaking agreement between a government agency—Metro Vancouver Regional Parks—and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation shows a different way of managing parks and highlighting their past and present cultural value.
At 2,560 acres, təmtəmíxʷtən/Belcarra Regional Park is two and a half times the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park and receives 1.2 million visitors per year. The park was also the site of the largest ancestral village within the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
Gabriel George, a Tsleil-Waututh Nation member and also the Nation’s Director of Treaty Lands and Resources Development said that a lot of the Nation’s territory falls into parkland “so it’s been something that historically has isolated us and disconnected us from our land. I think the importance of trying to engage and have partnerships…is an important way for us to exert our rights.”
Mike Redpath, Director of Parks for Metro Vancouver Regional Parks said that Metro Vancouver Regional Parks began working with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in 2017 on developing a “Cultural Planning and Cooperation Agreement,” which was signed in 2020. The agreement outlines a shared vision, guiding principles, and governance for the park. These include, among others, protection of natural resources, promotion of the site for recreational use, and increased public awareness of Tsleil-Waututh Nation cultural history.
“There’s a strong acknowledgement within the agreement and the relationship that it is public land; however, there was a traditional use of the site and the agreement strives to find a balance between the two,” Redpath said.
Good governance is a cornerstone of a successful partnership. The cooperation agreement contains two mechanisms for joint-governance: a Leadership Committee and a Technical Committee, which include both members from the Nation and Metro Vancouver Regional Parks.
Projects are prioritized in an annual work plan by the Technical Committee, which is then approved by the Leadership Committee and submitted during an annual budget process. Each individual project includes an “engagement agreement,” which outlines deliverables and ensures both partners understand roles and responsibilities.
The agreement also includes economic development policies, such using Tsleil-Waututh approved contractors in the park to support local entrepreneurs.
“We had an economy in place that was basically stripped from us,” George said. “We had currencies older than paper. We had systems of trade. So we lost that.” He noted that his people used to harvest clams for thousands of years, but then had to “sneak around at night…because they weren’t allowed.” so seeking out these economic opportunities is “our inherent right.”
Although the cooperation agreement was signed just four years ago, there have been several significant projects that have been implemented since then, with more on the way.
The first was a park renaming in 2021, which changed the park’s name to təmtəmíxʷtən/Belcarra Regional Park. Prior to this, Metro Vancouver Regional Parks had not engaged in any renaming of the regional park system to traditional place names with First Nations communities.
For George, the term “renaming” doesn’t quite fit, however. “It’s more than that,” he said.
“It’s recognizing the real name of that place. It’s important because we need to be represented. We need to be seen. We need to be heard on our own territory.”
Gabriel George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation member and Nation’s Director of Treaty Lands and Resources Development
Redpath also said it provided Metro Vancouver Parks with a naming precedent that could be used in other places. Indeed, another regional park has just had its name changed from Colony Farm Regional Park to ƛ̓éxətəm (tla-hut-um) Regional Park–a name gifted by the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) First Nation that translates to “we welcome you.”
Another joint project was the just completed installation of a welcome pole in the area of the Nation’s traditional village site. Other projects have included environmental restoration work, interpretive programming, and the development of a Cultural Heritage Study that will better understand the depth of cultural history of the park.
While it took time to implement the agreement, Redpath said it provides many benefits. Staff are “able to pick up the phone and talk to someone at the Nation who’s a familiar face. It helps advance projects together and sometimes faster as well.”
The willingness to try doing things differently is key to success. “It’s a change process,” Redpath said, adding that it’s a different way of doing business in many ways. He stressed that early and ongoing communication is key for the trust-building necessary for a strong partnership.
“The agreement is a piece of paper, but the relationships and the conversations are really what make it successful.”
Mike Redpath, Director of Parks for Metro Vancouver Regional Parks
George echoed these sentiments. “It can be so easy to not change things,” he said, but it’s important to push outside of comfort zones and do things differently. “You can’t fix all the issues, but when you approach the work, think about what kind of legacy you can create.”
“I think for Indigenous Nations, parks can be important places to occupy and to reclaim,” he said, adding that they’ve seen big successes in some of their relationships to their parks. “This is our home. We think of it as an extension of our community.”
I will retire from my co-leadership position at Park People at the end of June 2024, thirteen years after I founded the organization.
This milestone has me considering the many positive changes that have happened in urban parks in Canada since 2011 and the special role that Park People has played in advancing them. It’s been quite a journey for me, the organization, and Canada’s incredible ecosystem of city parks.
Since the very beginning, Park People’s work has been about creating new connections—between people and nature, between neighbours when they meet by chance in public spaces, and between leaders and bold ideas that can make our parks even better.
Park People’s own origin story echoes this theme brilliantly. In 2010, I released a paper for the Metcalf Foundation, “Fertile Ground for New Thinking,” with my ideas for improving Toronto’s park system. Its final recommendation was to start a park-focused NGO in the city. At the time, I had absolutely no intention to start or lead such a group, but an enthusiastic group of people were inspired by the paper and pushed me to start an NGO. In return, I cajoled them into becoming our founding board members and volunteers. We then embarked on a bold plan to support more people to see themselves as park leaders and to connect them to the tools they would need to create great parks for everyone.
On April 12, 2011, we officially launched Park People with our Toronto Park Summit. This was our first opportunity to connect park professionals and emerging advocates in our city. Through these lively conversations, we began building the collective power required to support and sustain vibrant green spaces that all urban residents can enjoy.
In the years since our original group of board members and volunteers has expanded exponentially: Park People now has more than 25 staff members, offices in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and a national board of city and community builders. We’ve also engaged thousands of new supporters — our Park People Network now unites 1,400 local park groups in 35 cities in every province, and we’ve provided grants to grassroots community leaders to animate their parks in 21 urban areas.
When launching Park People, our goal was to spark a city parks movement that could fundamentally change how our society sees the value of these public green spaces. It was an ambitious vision, but I think that through our work with many great partners and community leaders, we’ve achieved it.
Canada’s parks have changed significantly in these last 13 years, mostly for the better. Park People is proud to have been a small part of these shifts, contributing vital research on trends and opportunities and working with governments and park leaders to support progressive park policies.
As a result:
The major increase in park use during the height of the pandemic wasn’t a one-time blip: I’ve never seen so many people using our parks in so many new and creative ways. Parks are where we meet with friends, celebrate occasions, mourn losses, sample great food, hear music, and experience art—they’re key to the diversity, richness, and joy of urban life.
This belief has long guided the design of Park People’s grants, training, and networking programs, which have helped hundreds of people turn their parks into dynamic community hubs. We’ve consistently made the case for the unique value of parks, from our parks-focused platform for the 2014 Toronto election to solutions papers, national conferences and our Canadian City Parks Report.
They aren’t frills—they’re core to the character of our communities. Our research has shown that they measurably improve our physical, mental, and overall well-being and can serve as antidotes to the social isolation and loneliness epidemic.
Who isn’t using parks is as important as who is. Through programs like Sparking Change, Park People centres equity-deserving communities in our program planning and delivery, collaborating with them to ensure their knowledge and experiences make parks accessible for all. As we embark upon this work and share what we have learned from it, we’ve observed that equity metrics have increasingly become a core part of park planning and acquisition strategies in municipalities across the country.
As Rena Soutar of the Vancouver Parks Board says, “There is no such thing as a culturally neutral space that’s been touched by human hands.” The 2022 Park People Conference featured three of Canada’s leading Indigenous park professionals, Rena, Lewis Cardinal, and Spencer Lindsay, who addressed how colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can embed reconciliation and decolonization into the places we call parks. As an example, the Vancouver Park Board has implemented co-management and guardian programs with Indigenous communities. At the same time, Edmonton worked closely with Indigenous leaders on kihcihkaw askî, the country’s first urban Indigenous culture park site.
As our climate changes, urban parks are becoming increasingly important spaces to mitigate heat, absorb stormwater, and protect plants, animals, and people. Park People has been at the forefront of highlighting opportunities for parks to serve as powerful tools for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The value of a park doesn’t lie in size. Small pockets of green space can be far more meaningful to our well-being. As our cities increasingly densify and the cost of land rises, we’re seeing neglected spaces such as those under highways, roads, electricity corridors, railway lines, and even old landfills being transformed into beautiful natural spaces. Our research and financial support helped spur such innovative parks as Toronto’s Meadoway and Bentway and Calgary’s Flyover Park.
We’re asking a lot of our municipal parks departments. More people are using parks, and staff are now entrusted with addressing issues of homelessness, equity, reconciliation with Indigenous people, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. In my opinion, their work is more interesting and rewarding, and park staff are making a positive difference in our cities and communities. But it’s certainly a tougher job than it used to be. In response, Park People has made supporting and connecting our municipal park staff partners one of our top priorities.
The populations of our cities are rapidly increasing, and park budgets in Canadian cities are frankly not keeping up. If this longtime trend continues, I’m concerned about what our parks will look like 13 years from now. Without appropriate funding, there won’t be enough parks to meet community needs. We’ll slide down into an American-style model, where a lack of government support created a crisis in parks that philanthropy and private conservancies had to address. Partnerships and philanthropy are great, but there is absolutely no replacement for properly funded city parks departments.
Creative community partnerships are no longer the exception for city parks; they’re the norm. From working with local volunteer groups to creating formal park conservancies, park departments are embracing collaborations with unexpected partners to add value to city park resources, not replace them. Park People made the case for such partnerships from our earliest days, and we have helped to nurture and lay the groundwork for some of Canada’s leading park partnership models. Meanwhile, the federal government is becoming an important player in city parks. Canada was once one of the few jurisdictions without a strong federal role in city parks. But after creating Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, the federal government has initiated a process to create six new national urban parks across Canada in the next few years. Provinces like Ontario, which have traditionally stayed away from pursuing provincial parks in cities, have also committed to new urban parks. Park People has been excited to partner with governments and support these game-changing efforts.
Park People didn’t invent community involvement in parks — there were people across Canada doing that long before 2011. But we played a critical role by bringing them together, amplifying their voices, sharing their successes, inspiring others, and most fundamentally, making it easier for them to unlock resources and address barriers so that they can make their parks more vibrant and their neighbourhoods stronger.
The last 13 years have seen incredibly positive changes in Canada’s urban park system. I’m proud to say that Park People has played an important role in advancing these developments.
Decolonization of park practices, according to Rena Soutar, begins with the recognition that “there is no such thing as a culturally neutral space that’s been touched by human hands.”
On the first day of the 2022 Park People Conference, three of Canada’s leading Indigenous park professionals, Lewis Cardinal, Rena Soutar, and Spencer Lindsay directly addressed how colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can work to embed reconciliation and decolonization into the places we call parks.
Lewis Cardinal’s ceremonial name sîpihko geesik means “blue sky” and was given to him with the understanding that his ultimate purpose on Earth is “to build relationships between two worlds that don’t understand each other.”
In Edmonton, Cardinal is living up to his ceremonial name by devoting his work to building understanding between settlers and Indigenous communities. This lifetime of effort culminated in the recent opening of kihciy askiy, or sacred land, Canada’s first urban Indigenous ceremonial site in Edmonton’s River Valley.
In his presentation at The Park People Conference, Cardinal made it clear that the foundation for the 2022 opening of kihciy askiy was laid eighteen years earlier in 2004, when Aboriginal communities and the City of Edmonton co-created the Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Accord Relationship Agreement. The Agreement’s guiding principles established a new relationship between the two groups, which is best reflected in the statement:
“We believe all people in Edmonton are served well by positive relationships between the City and Aboriginal communities.”
Indigenous approaches to positive relationship-building such as mutual exchange and partnership, listening and storytelling, ceremony and celebration were, according to Cardinal, integral to the process of creating kihciy askiy. Over the long process of seeing the project to fruition, conflicts and challenges, of course, arose. However, Cardinal believes that the Agreement and the practices it codified helped “tamp down the darker forces of humanity” that can undermine visionary projects like Edmonton’s kihciy askiy.
Cardinal emphasized the importance of codifying the tenets of relationship-building in Agreements like the one in Edmonton. Once put in writing, these tenets set an intention for relationships that can be returned to again and again. In fact, one of the core principles of the Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Accord Relationship Agreement is a renewal, which includes the principle of “acknowledging this Agreement as a living document to be reviewed on a periodic basis to maintain accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and responsiveness.”
Like Cardinal, Rena Soutar, Manager of Decolonization, Arts and Culture, and Spencer Lindsay, Reconciliation Planner, both from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, consider the act of engaging in difficult conversations as the pathway to decolonizing park practices.
The Colonial Audit, which will be released in December, uses conversation as its central tool. In fact, for the audit, Soutar and Lindsay conducted 21 interviews over 5 months across 7 departments. As Soutar and Lindsay see it, only meaningful conversations can reveal the deep-seated colonial assumptions, beliefs and approaches underpinning the organization’s colonial park practices. In the audit, they identified 27 stories that illustrate the current effects of colonialism.
One story of embedded colonialism that Soutar and Lindsay shared at the Conference is the development of Vancouver’s NorthEast False Creek Plan. NorthEast False Creek is a prime downtown waterfront area in Vancouver that was set for redevelopment. Consultations with Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and Urban Indigenous communities revealed that “access to water” was a top priority for the park’s redevelopment. However, when preliminary plans for the site were shared, it was clear that this critical piece of First Nations’ input was lost in translation.
The Park Board hit ‘pause’ on the project to take the time to understand how, after so much consultation with local First Nations, the park’s design could miss the mark. The conversations that ensued helped highlight the importance of “cultural translation” in park design.
As Soutar and Lindsay shared, for the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations “access to water” in the park’s design meant the individuals would have direct access to the shoreline- in an intimate and immersive way. However, colonial mindsets dictated that “access to water” meant enjoying beautiful vistas of water from a distance. In other words, for settlers, access to water means a beautiful vista from which to gaze at nature from a god-like vantage point. For local First Nations, it meant fishing, conducting ceremonies, and placing their hands and feet directly in the water.
As Soutar and Lindsay highlighted, the Northeast False Creek Plan reveals the consequences of unexamined colonial perspectives. The conversation that centered First Nations’ perspectives instead of settler ones, as Soutar says, “turned the narrative upside down to show the embedded colonial perspective.” These conversations made invisible colonial worldview visible, which then opened up the opportunity to “unlearn.”
Cardinal, Soutar, and Lindsay all underscored that decolonizing colonial relationships with nature is an urgent imperative. As Cardinal put it, “we are living in sacred times.”
Decolonizing our relationship with nature means, according to Cardinal, “understanding the connection between ourselves and the natural and spiritual world that surrounds us.” Cardinal shared that reciprocity with nature requires settlers to recognize that humans are not at the “top of the food chain” or at “the center of the universe,” but rather occupy but “one seat in this great circle of life.” As he puts it, “being in a relationship uncentres individuals as the focus,” and helps people view themselves in “a bigger context of family, community, and nature.”
Like Cardinal, Soutar and Lindsay emphasized that decolonization is the only path forward if we are to protect ecological diversity, which is essential for humans to survive. As their presentations underscored, the future of humans is bound up with our relationships with each other and with the rest of nature. As Soutar shared, “plenitude, abundance—that was already here” before settlers arrived and declared Vancouver’s unceded territories ‘parks’ that are ‘for everyone.’
As Soutar, Lindsay, and Cardinal make clear in their presentations on decolonizing parks and relationships, if we are to collectively move in the direction of decolonizing our parks, we must “forget everything we know” about our relationships to each other and the rest of nature. But, before we can forget or unlearn, we need to render the too often invisible colonialist practices visible. The learning, which is the focus of the audit, moves us in the right direction since, as Soutar reminded attendees: “decolonization is a direction, not an outcome.”
Park People launches the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report, the fourth annual report featuring the biggest trends, issues, and practices shaping Canada’s city parks.
In the webinar, you can hear directly from the Canadian City Parks Report authors—Adri Stark, Emily Riddle, and Jake Tobin Garrett and get the inside track on:
The session features an in-depth discussion moderated by Park People Board Chair Zahra Ebrahim. The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Emily Riddle is nehiyaw and a member of the Alexander First Nation in Treaty 6. She lives in amiskwaciwâskahikan. A…
Jake Tobin Garrett (he/him) is a writer, illustrator and public space policy and research consultant. He was previously Park People’s…
Zahra is a public interest designer and strategist focused on shifting power to people who are typically underrepresented in institutions…
It takes deliberate thinking and action to enjoy park and ravine spaces while ensuring they’re protected. How can you use ravine and park events to foster reciprocity and ensure the natural world benefits as much as the community does?
We want to help more people connect to and engage with Toronto’s ravines through our InTO the Ravines program. However, given the environmental sensitivity of the ravines, this goal must be carefully balanced against the importance of protecting these fragile spaces. After all, Toronto is a city of almost 3 million people and population growth, new development and climate change are all putting increased pressure on the ravines which do a whole lot of “heavy lifting” for our city.
We are eager for more people to experience the ravines and see an opportunity for these kinds of events to contribute rather than just extract from the natural world. However, this takes deliberate thinking and action. We encourage people to start by asking:
How can your event be in alignment with nature? How can you use a ravine event to foster reciprocity to ensure the natural world benefits as much as the community does? How can you strive to use events as opportunities to give back to the natural world which offers us these meaningful and enriching experiences?
We explore these questions through conversations with Monica Radovski, Natural Environment Specialist from the City of Toronto in the Natural Environment and Community Programs unit of Urban Forestry and Carolynne Crawley, a Mi’kmaw woman with mixed ancestry from the East Coast known today as Nova Scotia. Carolynne operates her own business, Msit Nokmaq, which focuses upon decolonizing current interactions with the land, self, and others to build healthy and reciprocal relationships.
Given that we are writing this on the land we now call Toronto, which is on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, Carolynne focuses our conversation on sharing teachings that may resonate across many nations. She also reminds us that Indigenous people have been in relationship to these lands since time immemorial.
“I see the earth as my teacher, my healer, my confidant, my companion”
Carolynne Crawley, Founder Msit No’kmaq
Carolynne emphasises that many Indigenous nations across Turtle Island believe that in order to be in “right relations” with the land, water, and other beings, we must treat our relationships with the natural world as we would our family relations or friendships. For example, if you have a friendship in which a friend is always giving and the other is always taking, the relationship will be out of balance and will likely suffer. Similarly, as Carolynne emphasises, when we take from the land without giving back to it or nurturing it, we not only harm the land, but we harm ourselves. We damage ourselves by damaging our relationship to nature as we are all interconnected.As a reflection exercise before planning an event on the land, ask yourself: What can I offer back to the land in return for its gifts? What does living with reciprocity with the land, water, and species mean to me?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but Carolynne offered some helpful suggestions to consider when hosting ravine and park events:
When you slow down enough to develop a personal and meaningful connection to a park or ravine space, you provide others with a model to begin building their own connections to nature. Start your event by looking around and encouraging others to do the same. Consider what resonates with you: Is it a bird sound? The smell of leaves under foot? Is it seeing water flowing in the distance? Carolynne recommends visiting a spot regularly to build a relationship with it, just as you would with a new friend. One practical approach is to conduct a regular sit spot exercise in which you simply return to a spot at different times to observe what’s around you, how it changes and how you experience it. Doing this before, during and after your event can help you build a connection and consider what you can give back. Encourage event participants to do the same.
When you enter a park or ravine space, consider what you have to offer in return for the enjoyment the park brings to you. Think about the life in the park as being equal in meaning to your own life and think about how this belief might influence how you act. For example:
Monica Radovski, Natural Environment Specialist from the City of Toronto in the Natural Environment and Community Programs unit of Urban Forestry also shared how to host events that demonstrate respect for nature.
When Monica visits a natural space, she imagines that at least 1000 other people are taking the same steps she takes. This helps her remember that even if she is walking by herself, every step counts and that collectively, our steps add up fast. Even if we can’t see others walking with us, our actions never exist in isolation. Encourage your groups to imagine all of the other individuals and groups that will tread on this same path today, tomorrow and in future generations. Imagine your own ancestors walking this same path. How does that influence your actions on the path?
“When we are thinking about how we move on the land it is important to know what the impacts are, but also it’s important we don’t want to treat the land like a museum that we can’t touch, interact with, and have a relationship with the land. There is this fine balance.”
Monica encourages people to use their senses to note what lies under their feet. Fallen logs and crunching leaves under foot may look messy, but they are home to animals and insects and serve as a natural fertilizer for the earth beneath. How does recognizing this inform how you interact with the space?
Look around. If the space around you looks bare it might mean that the area you’re in is being overused. Knowing that might inspire you to consider taking a less popular route. On the other hand, if the space is rich with undercover, walk on it to create the smallest possible impact. Stay on the trail wherever possible, and if you have to go off trail (which is not recommended) consider walking in a zigzag fashion to avoid eroding the earth outside the trail or creating a new informal trail to be tread upon by others. Also, consider walking back along a different route.
Watch for animals, particularly during dawn and dusk when they’re most active. If you spot an animal during the day, observe their behaviour and tweet, call, or email 311 if you see anything unusual. If you observe anything unusual with plants and trails conditions, contact 311 to ensure this information reaches the City’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation staff.
Living in sync with nature means scheduling events with consideration of seasonality. Spring is one of the most sensitive times of the year when animals are having their young and plants are starting to grow. During dawn or dusk you might spot more wildlife. If your event is scheduled during these times, encourage participants to tread as carefully and quietly as possible to minimize disruption to plants and animals.
Marie-Pierre is a visionary and advocate for creating green oases in the heart of concrete jungles. Her passion is understanding the challenges and the important role of accessible green spaces. These spaces foster community connections, a sense of place, and an appreciation for histories and practices woven from the land. This vision led to the inception of the Vancouver Urban Food Forest (VUFFF).
Formed amid the pandemic, VUFFF addressed the challenges of isolation and food accessibility in a community of 34,000. Recognizing the need, and with support from Park People, VUFF envisioned a food forest as a haven for urban indigenous communities and low-income residents, championing the belief that access to green spaces and the right to cultivate food are fundamental human rights.
They established Vancouver’s first Indigenous food forest, Chén̓chenstway Healing Garden, in Oxford Park, Vancouver. VUFFF’s ongoing efforts at the Burrard Park View Field House are a testament to their resilience.
With the support of Park People, VUFFF has been able to host community herbal garden workshops and other events to support, connect, and empower their community. Those once disconnected or hesitant about gardening have discovered a nurturing community, valuing their stories and experiences. Through herbal gardens, arts and crafts, and open dialogue, VUFFF has ignited a wave of positive change across the community.
In the concrete jungles of modern cities, Park People supports VUFFF to plant seeds of connection, empowerment, and transformation, reminding us that parks are more than mere spaces – they are the heart of community growth, healing, and prosperity.
As we dream of vibrant cities, we at Park People acknowledge and support the crucial role of community organizations like VUFFF. They are not just sowing seeds of change but nurturing the bonds connecting us to nature and each other.
Read other community leaders’ stories with Nawal from Toronto and Geneviève from Montreal. Their stories feature the incredible work being done to foster social connection and community resilience in parks and green spaces across Canada.
Park People launched the 2023 Canadian City Parks Report, the fifth annual report highlighting the most significant trends, issues, and practices shaping Canada’s city parks.
Watch the webinar recording to meet the report’s researchers and writers and get the inside scoop on:
The report launch webinar features a lively discussion on the report’s key findings and future directions for city parks.
This hour-long webinar features Adri Stark and Jake Tobin Garett, co-author of the report. It is moderated by Selina Young, member of Park People’s Board of Directors and Director, Indigenous Affairs Office at the City of Toronto.
The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Selina is Métis from northern Saskatchewan. She has been a guest on Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee territory in and around Toronto…