As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Each year, we support inspiring older adults in Metro Vancouver to reconnect with nature by leading events in their local parks—sparking belonging, joy, and wellness in their communities.
Discover how Arts in the Parks is transforming Toronto’s green spaces into vibrant hubs of creativity—and how Park People helps make it all possible.
How colonialism plays out in park practices and how we can work together to embed reconciliation and decolonization.
Discover ways to help you host events in your local parks during extreme heat events.
Each year, Park People Summits bring together our growing network of urban park changemakers to connect, reflect, and explore what’s possible for more inclusive, community-powered parks in our cities.
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
A profound Indigenous saying here on Turtle Island is that Water is Life. Water is not only scientifically required for life to flourish, but it also connects people to new places; it brings people together. In Toronto, we are lucky to have many water sources – from rivers and lakes to ponds and ravines formed through thousands of years of geographical shifts.
Focusing on these waterways, the InTO the Ravines program, launched in 2020, has made quite a splash. First conceptualized on the heels of Toronto’s first-ever Ravine Strategy, the program’s multifaceted, support-focused and community-first approach has made soaring positive impacts. The InTO the Ravines program seeks to mitigate the impacts of climate change that continue to become more apparent everywhere, including in Toronto’s urban and natural spaces, while keeping communities at the centre.
As the program nears its 4-year mark, Park People has recently launched the Ravine Engagement Report, highlighting its tremendous impacts on the communities it serves across the city.
InTO the Ravines has sought to tackle the fact that despite many people living or working near them, Toronto’s ravines are often forgotten spaces in the city. InTO the Ravines consists of two main components.
First, a microgrant stream, where community-led groups are funded to host gathering and learning events in and around Toronto’s ravine system. Second, a champions training program, where pairs of community leaders are provided training, funding, and event planning support to host an event in their local ravines.
Equity-deserving community groups who face barriers, including uncertainty due to fear of getting lost or other feelings of lack of safety, in accessing ravine spaces are prioritized. As can be found throughout the Ravine Engagement Report, InTO the Ravines, through its very design, has been developed to work more closely and collaboratively with equity-deserving community members to support the Protect, Connect, and Celebrate tenets of the Ravine Strategy.
The multipronged nature of the program has had wide-reaching impacts: over 3,000 community members have actively engaged with their ravine spaces, with 50 champions receiving training and support over the course of the past three years.
Since the implementation of this unique and innovative program began three years ago, everyone involved in InTO the Ravines, whether they have played the role of champions, grantees, or program staff, has been able to experience Toronto’s ravine spaces in different, unique, and memorable ways. InTO the Ravines program also emphasizes continuing to develop relationships with the ravine spaces long after their involvement in the program ends.
InTO the Ravines centres around fostering connections between people and nature and nurturing spaces for self-connection or self-reflection.
As the program launched and the impacts of the pandemic became more pronounced, including greater feelings of isolation and sadness, the importance of these natural spaces became all the more crucial, especially for those in equity-deserving communities. As the program facilitates space for community gatherings in and around ravine spaces, community connection is a major element of this program. Over 100 events have been hosted by community members, and 15% of in-person event attendees said they had never visited a ravine before. Importantly, in a space where the impacts of climate change manifest, ravine spaces become critical to highlight the need to restore relationships and reconnect to nature.
The connection piece of InTO the Ravines is especially emphasized through the champion training program. Here, champions get to meet each other and learn from each other and speakers from the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and the City of Toronto, as well as build up their own skills in event planning and networking.
For me, it was knowing more about not just what is the Ravine Strategy, but what the city sort of looked to develop and how it grew. So meeting with park staff…that was pretty cool because I think on just our own– we had the documents, but just hearing it from the city and the work on that strategy was cool to get an inside look.
Program Participant
Park People ensures that champion alumni remain connected to the program by supporting them through various means, events and opportunities, networks, and funding to continue their activation of ravines in the years after they have completed training and that they are re-connected to other cohort members. 50% of past participants have continued to host events in their ravines after completing the program.
Finally, InTO the Ravines has also helped facilitate new connections to the land through Indigenous teachings as part of the various ravine events.
Events like this or talking to an elder, for me, was one of the first opportunities to learn about Indigenous history and parks. Otherwise, I don’t think I would have ever known where to even find information other than just reading up online.
Park and nature access are unequal across the city. For many of our programs, including InTO the Ravines, Park People prioritizes working with equity-deserving, resident-led groups who often live close to ravines but, for various reasons, both physical and sociological, do not access them.
As mentioned in our Ravine Engagement Report, several participants reported that they either didn’t know that ravines existed in their communities or that they were unaware of how to access them.
Our research found this was especially true in communities of colour.
Specifically, the Champions training program has focused on redressing some of this imbalance by working with residents from equity-deserving communities to provide them with training, funding, and support. One of InTO the Ravines’ core value is that community members are the experts on their local parks, neighbourhoods and ravines, and their nuanced and lived knowledge of their local community make them excellent leaders to take on this work.
A community member shares the impact of this focus in our Ravine Engagement Report,
In a dense city like Toronto, where few people have access to backyards or natural areas outside the city, InTO the ravines helped (me) see these spaces as shared places where (I) could get away from the daily life in the city.
Community member
Significantly, 70% of event attendees are more likely to bring friends and family to visit the ravines in the future.
Another cornerstone of the InTO the Ravines program is strong and collaborative partnerships. The InTO the Ravines Champions training program focuses on working together as a group and helps foster partnerships between sets of champions and inter-community partnerships across different city regions. As a testament to this, 125 park and ravine groups and 30 organizations worked together on the development and execution of InTO the Ravines.
Additionally, The City of Toronto and Park People developed this program collaboratively and continue to work jointly through the year to support each other’s strengths and to offer assistance or help fill in gaps. InTO the Ravines champions and microgrant recipients work collaboratively with Park People and the City through focus groups, feedback and evaluations to improve the program each year and are plugged into our wider Toronto Network. This year, Park People worked directly with past champions to provide partnership and support where groups requested it, continuing to prioritize working in trusting and collaborative relationships with community groups.
These themes also show up in a myriad of other ways through our Ravine Engagement Report.
Also, find the Ravine Strategy here to learn more about the important principles and how you can get involved.
If you are in Toronto between Saturday, September 30 and October 9, we highly encourage you to attend a Ravine Days event, including one that Park People and Evergreen are jointly supporting on Saturday, October 7, and one that STEPS Public Art is hosting with the support of Park People’s Cornerstone program.
Every summer, Toronto’s parks come alive with art, music, theatre, and dance through Arts in the Parks, a city-wide initiative that turns public green spaces into open-air stages.
Presented by the Toronto Arts Foundation in partnership with the Toronto Arts Council, the City of Toronto, and Park People, this unique program animates parks in every corner of the city, from concrete plazas to lush green spaces in Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York.
Since the program’s launch in 2016, more than 700,000 people across the city have visited 78 parks for over 2,400 free arts events including Japanese Taiko drumming, collaborative mural painting, and African circus performances—to name just a few!
At Park People, our vision for Canada’s cities includes vibrant parks where people and the rest of nature thrive, and where everyone—regardless of income, identity, ability, or age—has equal access to the benefits of public green space.
However, 33 percent of Torontonians don’t live within walking distance of arts and cultural programming, and overwhelmingly, those people are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, and newcomer residents of the city’s inner suburbs.
To close this gap, Park People supports Arts in the Parks by selecting sites in areas where access to free cultural programming isn’t generally as accessible, and where new opportunities for creative park animations abound.
Park People also supports the Arts in the Parks program by drawing on our biggest skill: strengthening the relationships between neighbours and their local parks. To ensure that events are responsive to the needs and interests of their surrounding communities, we bring our relationships with park groups and local leaders into the process early on, helping to shape events that reflect the neighbourhood and invite people in.
“Our role is to connect. Before events are organized, we try to bring together artists and community groups, usually in the park where the event will happen. These early meetings create space for ideas to grow.”
Cindy Hashie, Senior Project Manager at Park People.
These meetings are a chance for everyone at the table to share stories, ask questions, and shape something new, together. Community groups bring valuable knowledge, like when the park is busiest or which language flyers should be printed in, while artists can share their creative visions and learn what matters most to the people who use the park every day.
“We help make the connection so everyone feels comfortable, heard, and respected.”
Ayesha Talreja, Project Manager at Park People.
For Ayesha, one of the most exciting parts of Arts in the Parks is seeing how it inspires event attendees to think about their own creative potential.
Ana Cuciureanu is just one great example: Ana first got involved in Arts in the Parks as the founder of the Friends of Parkway Forest Park, a group also supported through Park People’s Sparking Change program. After seeing how Arts in the Parks brought community-based art into her beloved local park, Ana decided to create her own event through her collective Splash on Earth, which brings together eco-artists, storytellers, and neighbours to make public art using eco-paint made from food waste. Ana’s team has hosted Arts in the Parks events for three years, and even formed a non-profit dedicated to creative climate action.
“Ana understands what it means to collaborate. She’s been on both sides as a community organizer and as an artist. That perspective helps create events that reflect the community.”
Ayesha
Others have followed similar paths, like Christine Malec, who started as a participant in Park People’s InTO the Ravines initiative and now leads accessibility-focused arts programming through Arts in the Park. Her project, Described Toronto, offers audio-based tours of the city for people with sight impairments which are often incorporated into a podcast with rich descriptions of Toronto, its flora and fauna, inhabitants and culture.
These stories remind us that public space and public art are powerfully connected. When people see themselves reflected in what happens in their park, they feel a deeper sense of responsibility to their community, and often, an expanded sense of creative possibility.
Arts in the Parks aims to offer something for everyone, whether it’s Asian drumming or Salsa dancing that invite people to move together, or quiet moments of storytelling under a shady tree. Some events are deeply rooted in local cultural traditions, while others introduce new and unexpected art forms to neighbourhoods that may not have seen them before. No matter the medium, the program’s strength is in how it brings people together, and how it inspires long-term creative partnerships between artists and residents.
“Artists who return to the program year after year often think deeply about how to engage the community. They find creative ways to hear from neighbours and make space for local input in how their work takes shape.”
Of course, there are always challenges: schedules shift, event permits take time, and not every collaboration unfolds exactly as planned. But there is care in the process. And if an event has to move, the program works to make sure the original park still gets something special. The intention is always to honour local relationships and keep the doors open for participation.
As we approach the tenth anniversary of the program, Arts in the Parks continues to grow in both its reach and impact.
Between supporting artists in building meaningful community ties and helping park groups explore their creative side, we’re proud to be part of an initiative that brings joy, connection, and possibility to neighbourhoods across Toronto.
To learn more about Arts in the Parks and find more events near you this summer, visit artsintheparksto.org.
Mark your calendars! Here are a few of Cindy and Ayesha’s recommendations for the 2025 Arts in the Parks season:
July 12 & 13, Aug 9, Sept 6 2025 | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Rowntree Mills Park
Exploring the intersections of nature, community arts and wellness, this public art program will share crafting and movement sessions, led by STEPS Public Art alongside local and Indigenous creators, to reconnect with the land and the Humber River. Learn more
August 16 & 23, 2025, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | R.V. Burgess Park
Enjoy music from the Middle East, Mediterranean, South Asia, and more! Four different musical groups will perform modal music, a centuries-old system of music-making practiced by many cultures, with contemporary interpretations and new compositions. Learn more.
September 27, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM | Lee Lifeson Art Park
Artists will tell original stories inspired by the land and public artwork of Lee Lifeson Art Park, using descriptive and inclusive language that is accessible to a Blind and partially sighted audience. Participants will also experience a touch tour of the public artworks and 3D tactile models of the park. The Story Hour will be recorded live and released on the Described Toronto podcast. Learn more.
Park People is thrilled to announce that Erika Nikolai will transition from Co-Executive Director to sole Executive Director, effective July 1. Erika’s current Co-Executive Director, Dave Harvey, will be retiring from Park People then.
Erika brings decades of not-for-profit experience in community development and city building to her new role. Dave and Erika have been sharing leadership of the organization since 2022.
She joined Park People in 2014 when their work was based exclusively in Toronto and went on to play a critical role as Park People’s Managing Director, helping to lead the organization’s expansion to cities and parks across Canada. Prior to joining Park People, Erika played leading roles at Evergreen, working with equity-deserving communities around urban agriculture, active transportation and green employment opportunities for youth.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to lead this amazing team as we continue to grow our impact in cities across the country. Dave has built an incredible legacy. What started as a call for more community involvement in parks in 2011 has grown into a small but mighty organization shifting the way we think about parks.”
Erika Nikolai, Park People’s Executive Director
Erika will lead Park People’s team of more than 30 staff with offices in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Over its 13th-year history, Park People has helped create a massive paradigm shift for city parks: once considered “nice to have” amenities, city parks are now understood to be essential urban infrastructure.
“Asking Erika to be sole-ED recognizes Erika’s significant contributions to Park People’s success over the last 10 years. It’s such a positive, natural transition for the organization, and I look forward to where she takes Park People in their next chapter.”
Zahra Ebrahim, Chair of Park People’s Board of Directors
Retiring Co-Executive Director Dave Harvey, who founded Park People in 2011, shared the enthusiasm: “I’m so delighted with the transition in leadership to Erika. I’m leaving the organization with a fantastic leader supported by a great team.”
Dave intends to continue to support Park People and other greenspace-focused work as a consultant and advisor.
2024 is shaping to be a very exciting year for Park People and Canada’s city parks. The organization has many exciting initiatives in the works for this year, including its Canadian City Parks Report, Montreal Forum, TD Park People Grants and InTO the Ravines program, and the incredible Cornerstone Parks program for Canada’s large urban spaces.
Every year, Park People brings together our network of changemakers—neighbours, volunteers, municipal staff, nonprofits, park leaders, and advocates—at our Park People Summits.
Held in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, these summits are more than just local networking events. They’re important moments for us to pause our work, to connect with one another, and to expand our sense of what’s possible in our cities.
At a Park People summit, anyone who cares about urban parks can join the movement to build vibrant, inclusive, and community-powered parks.
How Canadians access and care for their parks is changing dramatically. From increasing rates of social isolation to the instability of climate change, we need everyone at the table if we’re to build more resilient urban parks that meet our growing cities’ needs.
Park People was born from this same spirit. In 2011, a group of Toronto volunteers gathered around a simple but radical question: “How can we all play a role in making our parks better to serve people and neighbourhoods?” This idea struck a chord throughout our city, and a strong network of local park groups, programs, and partnerships began taking root.
But we didn’t stop there. In 2017, we hosted our first national conference in Calgary to bring together park leaders from across Canada to imagine what might be possible if we collaborated on a national scale. That gathering helped launch Park People’s National Network, which now includes over 1,400 park groups in 46 cities spanning every province. This first summit was proof that the grassroots potential we saw in Toronto existed everywhere, and that local ideas can ripple into national change.
We summit because urban parks aren’t just green spaces, they’re people spaces. As city dwellers, they’re our stages for connection, culture, protest, rest, and joy. And behind each well-loved local park are countless stories of community care, from the volunteers who organize clean-ups, to the artists who animate their spaces with music, movement, and meaning.
That’s why we summit: we’ve seen firsthand that when we come together and share these stories, we can create a parks movement that’s truly transformative.
This year’s Toronto Parks Summit is happening on Saturday, June 14, from 12 to 6 PM at Daniels Spectrum, and anyone who cares about parks is invited. You’ll hear stories of creative collaborations and meet the people shaping the future of our city parks. Between sessions, there will be time to connect over food, visit interactive community stations, and share your own experiences as part of this growing network.
Our keynote speaker is interdisciplinary artist Ange Loft, who’ll reflect on Indigenous presence and partnerships in parks, followed by a stellar panel on community-driven initiatives featuring Ana Cuciureanu (Splash on Earth & City of Toronto) Julia Hitchcock (Apothecary’s Garden and Teaching Gardens at Churchill Park), Shakhlo Sharipova (Thorncliffe Park Autism Support Network) and moderated by Eunice Wong (Monumental).
Whether you’re a long-time advocate or just starting your park journey, the Toronto Parks Summit is your space to learn about contemporary park issues. Because real change in our parks doesn’t start from the top down—it grows from the ground up.
And that’s why we summit.
Toronto Park Summit: Saturday, June 14, 2025, 12-6pm ET at Daniels Spectrum (585 Dundas St E, Toronto, ON), Tickets start from $5.
If you require a bursary for transportation or attendance, please reach out to Cynthia Hashie.
Join us and hundreds of park changemakers across the Greater Toronto Area and beyond.
Large urban parks are critical spaces for city residents to build meaningful connections to nature and each other. We already know that people who engage in hands-on, nature-focused activities in parks experience powerful social connections; a sense of belonging, meaning and purpose in their lives; greater physical health; and overall life satisfaction. We need more parks that can lead by example in extending those benefits to equity-deserving communities across Canada.
This summer, Park People welcomes new partners into the Cornerstone Parks program. Everett Crowley Park & the Champlain Height Trails join founding parks High Park, Mount Royal and Stanley Park and new members: the Darlington Ecological Corridor and Meewasin Valley Authority. Together they hold space for nature in cities and demonstrate what’s possible for communities within large urban parks.
The Cornerstone Parks Reports on Stewardship and Park Use demonstrate that volunteer park stewardship makes people healthier and happier. Among the findings:
Unfortunately, these benefits aren’t equitably enjoyed:
The Canadian City Parks Report also found that post-pandemic, surveyed BIPOC Canadians became more interested in stewardship activities (70%) than white respondents (54%).
So what are the ongoing barriers to park stewardship for diverse communities? And who is helping to support those communities’ well-being by overcoming them?
In equity-deserving communities such as Champlain Heights in South Vancouver, B.C., park groups play a crucial role in supporting residents’ health and well-being. Champlain Heights contains a former city landfill and now boasts the fifth largest park in Vancouver, Everett Crowley. Everett Crowley is a 40-hectare park home to Avalon Pond and Kinross Creek, which provide critical habitats for birds, amphibians, fish, and other wildlife. The park and adjoining Champlain Heights trail system are part of the only 4% of native forest remaining in the city. Champlain Heights has hundreds of low-income, co-op, strata, and seniors’ housing units alongside some of the city’s oldest trees.
The City of Vancouver dedicated Everett Crowley Park in 1987 after lobbying by local residents. Those residents then created the Everett Crowley Park Committee (ECPC), a sub-committee of the Champlain Heights Community Association. The committee’s mission is to encourage stewardship of this resilient urban forest by hosting community stewardship events, outdoor education, and an annual Earth Day festival. In 2022, 306 volunteers contributed nearly 1,000 hours towards park stewardship, removing approximately 80 cubic meters of invasive plants.
Just east of Everett Crowley, another stewardship group is hard at work in the trail system that winds through Champlain Heights. In 2021, local residents noticed invasive plants taking over the trails. Together they formed Free the Fern. Like the ECPC, Free the Fern brings their community together through environmental stewardship activities such as invasive plant pulls and native planting events. Since 2021, their 277 volunteers have removed 50.33 tons of invasive plants. They’ve also planted over 1,300 native plants.
“Parks are not simply places of respite with grass and trees. They are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. We believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places shaped by and for the people living there.”Sparking Change Report
“Parks are not simply places of respite with grass and trees. They are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. We believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places shaped by and for the people living there.”
Sparking Change Report
Our Sparking Change Report suggests five ways of catalyzing social impact through parks, particularly in underserved neighbourhoods:
We spoke with Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern, to understand how these five factors appear in Champlain Heights.
Becoming involved in a local park can foster a sense of possibility, creating momentum for change that can galvanize others. One strategy for creating shared ownership is pairing park improvements with conversations about ongoing community involvement.
The Champlain Heights Community Centre is jointly operated by the Vancouver Park Board and the Champlain Heights Community Association (CHCA). The CHCA is also the steward of Everett Crowley Park. The community centre is a neighbourhood “anchor” that offers residents leisure activities and an entry point for involvement in the park and trails. Through community events, notice boards, and tool storage, the centre creates a relationship between the (indoor) resources available to community members and their potential to create change through improvements within the park, along the trails, and beyond.
Building skills and confidence through volunteering in the park can ripple outwards, leading to greater civic engagement. Hiring a community organizer from within the local neighbourhood can be a crucial support pillar for volunteers. This helps build capacity and ensure groups remain community-led.
As Free the Fern’s founder-turned-Executive Director, Grace is a passionate volunteer who recruits, coordinates, and supports fellow neighbourhood stewards. “All our current 9 board members live within the neighbourhood of Champlain Heights,” Grace notes.
“Most of our volunteers who attend our monthly pulls and fall planting live a short walk from the trail. This year, as part of our Native Food Forest project, we have incorporated outreach events so that the larger community can be informed and share their ideas with the project. We distribute flyers to townhouses adjacent to the trail and post them on local community Facebook groups. In addition, we have signage on the trail that directs people to our website to learn more and get involved with Free the Fern. It is so important that those living within this neighbourhood have a hand in stewarding the Champlain Heights Trail system.” Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern
“Most of our volunteers who attend our monthly pulls and fall planting live a short walk from the trail. This year, as part of our Native Food Forest project, we have incorporated outreach events so that the larger community can be informed and share their ideas with the project. We distribute flyers to townhouses adjacent to the trail and post them on local community Facebook groups. In addition, we have signage on the trail that directs people to our website to learn more and get involved with Free the Fern. It is so important that those living within this neighbourhood have a hand in stewarding the Champlain Heights Trail system.”
Grace Nombrado, Executive Director of Free the Fern
While improving a park’s physical infrastructure can invite more people to use it, what really brings a park to life are activities and events that engage people in meaningful ways. Park programming needs to be inclusive and representative of the local community.
“Inclusivity is a journey, one that will continue as long as you seek to understand and better serve your community,” Grace says. “I have learned so much about how to be more inclusive by listening to volunteers.” She cites stories of community members directly shaping Free the Fern’s inclusion practices: from purchasing extendable garden tools for wheelchair users and ergonomic tools for people with arthritis to offering free food and beverage for volunteers and ensuring all events remain free. Future plans include budgeting for babysitting at events and offering prepaid transit vouchers.
“Everyone deserves access to environmental education, no matter their financial situation.” Grace Nombrado
“Everyone deserves access to environmental education, no matter their financial situation.”
Grace Nombrado
Parks have a long history as democratic spaces, catalyzing interactions between people of different backgrounds. It’s important to recognize and remove barriers to those people working together. One strategy is for municipalities to review park oversight through an equity lens to ensure they are not creating obstacles–like a lack of clarity around park management and what’s permitted.
“When people ask me, ‘Is this city land?’, I say, ‘Yes, and WE are the city.’ We, as citizens, should see park spaces as spaces for all of us. Spaces for us to gather and spaces for us to care and connect with the land.” Grace Nombrado
“When people ask me, ‘Is this city land?’, I say, ‘Yes, and WE are the city.’ We, as citizens, should see park spaces as spaces for all of us. Spaces for us to gather and spaces for us to care and connect with the land.”
Grace talks about balancing the initial fear of breaking city rules with a determination to be transparent. Free the Fern formed when diverse citizens decided to steward the land together. The city was not sure what to do to support the group. Should they set safety guidelines? Who in the city should oversee the group? Just as the process seemed to be getting tangled in red tape, Free the Fern decided to invite the city workers on a tour of the trail. Walking past hundreds of ferns, Oregon grapes, huckleberries and Douglas firs, the city workers were impressed that local citizens had accomplished so much on their own. The city pledged full support for Free the Fern’s stewardship effort.
The economic effect of parks is often spoken about in terms of increasing property values. This sometimes sparks concerns about gentrification. However, parks can offer many benefits to people living in the community–including leverage.
“Champlain Heights [is] an experimental mixed-income neighbourhood built in the late ‘70s,” Grace explains. “Rather than single-family homes, the city chose to build townhouse complexes here–a mix of strata, co-op, low-income, and senior townhouses… Many of these co-op townhouse leases are coming to the end of their term. There is a concern if the city will renew leases or if they will choose to redevelop our neighbourhood, perhaps to include towers for higher density levels.”
“The Champlain Heights trail system, a strip of the original Douglas fir forest, is also on leasehold land and not protected from development. One of the best ways citizens can protect the trail from development is to steward it. By removing the invasive plants and replanting native plants, we show that the trail system is a thriving, biodiverse ecosystem rather than a hazardous area. By connecting as a community and volunteering, we also increase the connections with each other and future chances for advocating in the neighbourhood as leases run out. With our thriving, diverse community, we have proved that this ‘experimental’ neighbourhood of Champlain Heights works.”
Volunteer park stewardship has the potential to make all people healthier and happier. However, our ability to extend these benefits to equity-deserving communities like Champlain Heights relies on reducing barriers to engagement. Free the Fern and the Everett Crowley Park Committee are critical additions to Cornerstone Parks, as they demonstrate what’s possible in their neighbourhood.
Cornerstone Parks lead by example. They offer opportunities for people of all identities, ages, languages, and abilities to pursue health and happiness through park stewardship. Read the Cornerstone Parks Reports to understand how park stewardship makes us happier and healthier. And follow our new partners, Free the Fern and the ECPC, as they demonstrate how you can better support your equity-deserving communities.
Les Amis de la Montagne, Stanley Park Ecology Society and High Park Nature Centre, three of Canada’s most successful and longest-standing park-based non-profit organizations, were among the 100 Delegates in attendance when Park People launched its national network at the Heart of the City Conference in Calgary in 2017.
As Park People expanded its national programs and launched the first Canadian City Parks Report, we learned of the immense impact of these groups. For example, while four million people visit Banff National Park every year, over 8 million visit Mont-Royal – 30,000 times more visitors per acre of parkland. In fact, taken together, these three large urban parks see more than 17 million visitors every year.
Over the course of the pandemic, Park People began hosting a series of virtual “cinq a sept” sessions with large urban park organizations to delve deeper into how we could best serve these groups so they could, in turn, maximize solutions to make our cities greener and more resilient in the face of a changing climate. We learned that these large urban parks need recognition and funding to support their immense contribution to climate change and community resilience.
During the pandemic, Canadians flocked to Mount Royal, Stanley Park and High Park in never-before-seen numbers. In Park People’s own survey, we found that almost three-quarters (70%) of Canadians said their appreciation for parks and green spaces has increased during COVID-19. It’s clear that even as vaccines bring the end of the pandemic into view, there will continue to be unprecedented pressures on the unique ecosystems found in these parks.
Today, Park People is excited to be launching Cornerstone Parks, the first-of-its-kind national collaboration to revitalize the green infrastructure of the country’s largest urban parks and celebrate their incomparable value to overall wellbeing. We call them ‘Cornerstone Parks’ to express how central they are to our cities.
A Cornerstone Park is defined as a large urban green space that contributes biodiversity, ecosystem services, and multiple parks uses to the community at large. In these parks, City staff, local and park-based NGOs, and community leaders facilitate activities focused on environmental education and stewardship, to engage people from diverse backgrounds in connecting to nature and to each other. These Cornerstone Parks provide invaluable environmental and social benefits to our urban environments that make our communities healthier and more resilient to the effects of climate change.
In the first year, Park People is bringing these three groups together to support their ecosystem revitalization efforts. In Toronto’s High Park, funding will improve wetland health and restore the globally rare Black Oak Savanna habitat by removing invasive species. Efforts in Montreal’s Mont-Royal will likewise mutually benefit the park’s forests and wetlands. Through planting and stewardship work, the restored marsh will be better able to absorb stormwater thus improving groundwater quality and the habitat for species. This will reduce erosion and surface water runoff that damages the forest. In Stanley Park, by planting 500 native trees and shrubs and removing 10,000 square metres of invasive species, efforts will enhance the health of this coastal temperate rainforest that serves as a powerful carbon store and wildlife habitat in downtown Vancouver.
“Today, we understand nature’s role in restoring our sense of well-being. We need to go further and take a bigger view on how restoring nature actually makes our cities more resilient to the impacts of climate change.”
Sara Street, Executive Director of High Park Nature Centre
In addition to supporting critical restoration work, Cornerstone Parks will act as a backbone to connect these large urban park NGOs together to establish a forum for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of best practices. The Cornerstone Parks program will be underpinned by a rigorous impact evaluation to measure and amplify learnings about the value of large urban parks for community well-being and ecosystems.
“By working as a group, we can make a greater difference, scale up our work and tell our collective story in a way that none of us can do alone.”
Dylan Rawlyk, Executive Director at Stanley Park Ecology Society
“Cornerstone Parks recognizes we have so much to share with, and so much to learn from, our fellow non-governmental parks organizations across the country. Park People is bringing much-needed awareness to how important these green spaces are, and providing us with the necessary framework to revitalize the ecosystems.”
Hélène Panaioti, Executive director of Les amis de la montagne
The long-term vision of the program is to ensure that there is an ecologically and socially vibrant Cornerstone park within reach of every urban Canadian. Park People’s Program Director Natalie Brown says.
“Large urban parks offer so much value for cities. Park People’s providing a backbone to strengthen their work and galvanize support for more large urban parks. There’s no question that there are large-scale precious landscapes that could serve climate change and community goals. We couldn’t be more excited to help make it happen.”
Natalie Brown, Program Director at Park People
Through its National Network, Park People will identify other large parks across Canada where investments and a connection to the network will provide maximum ecological and community benefits.
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:
How does the City of Victoria’s Get Growing Victoria program take a food justice approach to provide gardening supplies to communities at risk of food insecurity, including those experiencing houselessness, Indigenous and racialized communities, seniors, and youth.
How Toronto is transforming future park spaces into temporary public areas through partnerships, letting residents enjoy them now while planning for long-term park development.
How partnerships across city departments and with local community groups helped the City of Charlottetown recover from Hurricane Fiona’s devastating winds.
How Mississauga is expanding parkland in a growing neighborhood to meet future demand through a cooperative, long-term property purchase plan.
How a temporary plaza in Montreal’s Parc Marcelin-Wilson was created to offer a gathering space for youth, with design improvements informed by Metalude’s insights through direct observations and youth engagement.
How an agreement between the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Metro Vancouver Regional Parks provides a path for shared cultural planning.
How can municipalities move from awareness to action? A conversation with Jay Pitter about Black people’s experiences in parks and public spaces.
How Waterfront Toronto is raising the bar on inclusivity through their Waterfront Accessibility Design Guidelines.
How Nature Canada is building a web of partners at all scales to help Canada achieve its biodiversity conservation goals.
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:
As cities struggle to find and pay for new park space to meet growth needs, some argue that a shift towards focusing on quality is part of the solution.
Discover Vancouver’s ambitious parks and recreation master plan, using innovative mapping to guide equity-led parkland investment.
Brampton leads the way with its Eco Park Strategy, a citywide initiative focused on naturalization projects that preserve and enhance natural and cultural heritage.
How the City of North Vancouver is working to better engage equity-deserving groups in its longstanding Park Stewards program, including people who are underhoused, newcomers, and at-risk youth.
The Montreal’s Darlington Ecological Corridor bridges urban and natural spaces while addressing both ecological restoration and social needs through meaningful partnerships.
A look into the logistics of collaborative governance in a large urban park with Meewasin Valley Authority in Saskatoon.
Learn more about the District of Saanich’s collaborative approach to tackling conflict over off-leash dog parks.
How cities are navigating the benefits and challenges of privately owned public spaces (POPS) through creative policies and guidelines on design, stewardship, and public programming.
Restoring the Don River’s natural flow, Toronto’s renaturalization project enhances biodiversity, mitigates flooding, and reconnects the city with its waterways.
Public washrooms are a park necessity.. Discover Edmonton’s approach to creating safe, inclusive public washrooms.
Bill 23: A conversation with Michelle Dobbie, Manager Park and Natural Heritage Planning, City of Richmond Hill.
Happy reading!
Park People is thrilled to announce three new partners within our growing national network of Cornerstone Parks: the Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition in Edmonton, AB; Toronto Botanical Garden in Toronto, ON; and Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, NS.
Launched in 2021, Cornerstone Parks is the only national network dedicated to maximizing the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks. These are critical spaces for people living in cities to build meaningful connections to nature and each other, and they give cities a head start when mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Large urban parks often require more maintenance, operations, and programming resources, as well as innovative solutions to their unique challenges. Cornerstone Parks convenes organizations working in parks across Canada through a community of practice. The program supports them through direct funding for community stewardship and restoration, capacity-building within and between park groups (especially in equity-deserving communities), and measuring and storytelling the impact of our collective work.
The Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Ecology Action Centre join the program’s three founding partners – Stanley Park Ecology Society in Vancouver, BC; High Park Nature Centre in Toronto, ON; and Les Amis de la montagne in Montreal, QC – as well as returning 2023 partners the Everett Crowley Park Committee and Free the Fern Stewardship Society in Vancouver, BC; Meewasin Valley Authority in Saskatoon, SK; Rowntree Mills Park in Toronto, ON; and Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal, QC.
The Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition (ERVCC) is dedicated to the protection, preservation, and regeneration of the North Saskatchewan River Valley and Ravine System in Edmonton, AB. The river valley is an 18,000-acre “ribbon of green” forming the largest expanse of urban parkland in Canada. The volunteer-led Coalition collaborates with many conservation groups and initiatives – including Swim Drink Fish, Edmonton Native Plant Society, Shrubscriber, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Edmonton’s Root for Trees – to support conservation and restoration through knowledge-sharing, co-stewardship, public education, and political advocacy.
Through Cornerstone, they aim to accelerate the number of trees and plants planted alongside Root for Trees, enhance water monitoring with Swim Drink Fish, support the Tree Equity Program and Bird Friendly Edmonton, and pilot a new trail restoration program with their City. All this while creating employment opportunities that elevate people-power over carbon and exploring future designation as a National Urban Park.
Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) offers an array of gardens spanning nearly four acres in Toronto, ON, adjacent to the Don Valley Ravine, Wilket Creek, and Edwards Gardens. They’re currently undergoing a landmark expansion across a 35-acre site, re-aligning their efforts to become a purpose-led botanical garden, cultivating a community with a profound connection to nature, and inspiring impact in their unique ecosystem and beyond.
With Cornerstone support, Toronto Botanical Garden will pilot a series of activities – including accessible ravine tours, citizen science initiatives, seed saving, and a fall festival coinciding with City of Toronto Ravine Days – to help communities engage more deeply with their local ravine systems and support ecological restoration efforts.
The Ecology Action Centre has operated as a member-based environmental charity in Nova Scotia since 1971. Their efforts to establish a Halifax greenbelt – a thriving and protected network of parks and greenspaces – have led to strong partnerships with local conservation organizations representing three key locations: Purcells Cove Backlands, Blue-Mountain Birch Cove Lakes, and Sandy Lake-Sackville River.
As a Cornerstone partner, the Ecology Action Centre will expand its existing hike series to improve public awareness and engagement within these parks, initiate research on local invasive species through citizen science programs, and pilot new activities like park user surveys. They will support Blue-Mountain Birch Cove Lakes as they, too, explore future designation as a National Urban Park.
Welcoming new partners into the Cornerstone Parks program helps us to make different (yet equally critical) connections: between parks in the same municipalities and across different municipalities; between long-established and newly-emerging park-based organizations; and between different types of large urban parks, as shaped by our changing cities.
By fostering relationships between different parks within the same urban centres – Vancouver, Edmonton and Saskatoon, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax – Cornerstone Parks enables peer-to-peer support where challenges like invasive plant species, wildlife interactions, and the impacts of climate change (as well as local policies to address them) are often the same. By creating dialogues between cities, the program exposes park groups to new (and shared) challenges and demonstrates novel models of collaboration and co-governance to help surface transferrable solutions.
Since 2021, the program has evolved to address the fact that there are many different types of large urban parks. This includes historically prioritized destination parks like our founders, Stanley Park in Vancouver, High Park in Toronto, and Mount Royal in Montreal. It also includes “adaptive reuse” projects like Everett Crowley Park and its connecting Champlain Heights trail system in Vancouver and the Darlington Ecological Corridor in Montreal – a former landfill site and rail corridor, respectively – whose revitalization creates new and essential green spaces for equity-deserving communities. It further includes connective parks like ravines, river valleys, and greenbelts that continue to resist urban development as cities rapidly grow around them.
Canada’s large urban parks are vital nature spaces that deserve our support. Whatever their location and history, and however long their organizational legacy of conservation and care, they all provide critical nature and community connections to people living in cities.
Cornerstone Parks enjoy benefits that they, in turn, multiply and extend to the urbanized, often equity-deserving communities who visit them. They do this through accessible programs and opportunities that measurably improve park users’ and volunteers’ physical health, mental health, and overall well-being. A win for these parks is a win for communities.
The Cornerstone Parks program is honoured to play a role in providing shared resources, networking and capacity-building, impact measurement and storytelling, and overall advocacy to help support the continued growth of our new partners, the Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Ecology Action Centre, and uplift the ongoing work of all our Cornerstone Parks.