HIGH PARK -ACCESS FOR ALL?
In 1873, John Howard donated his land to the City for “the free use, benefit and enjoyment of all citizens.” Today, High Park celebrates 150 years as a place for quiet enjoyment and escape from busy lives.
In 2022 the City undertook “The High Park Movement Strategy” to explore options for managing movement to, from and within High Park, while minimizing impacts to surrounding communities and naturalized areas within in the park in order to improve the travel network to better serve park users and the surrounding community, with a focus on safety and accessibility while prioritizing the park’s ecological integrity.
The strategy presented by City staff and the consulting firm WSP, did not recommend closing the park to vehicles, this option was added in Committee and voted on and presented for approval to the City Council in May 2023, when it passed 18-7 in favour of closing the park to vehicles by 2027. Now, we hear that the City plans a Pilot Project to close the park to vehicles 7 days a week in 2024.
In a recent interview Mayor Chow said that “access to parks are important for the mental health of children”
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2005 (AODA) says that cities should remove barriers to public spaces. Whereas with vehicles being prohibited on weekends in High Park with the city is in fact putting up barriers!
The implementation of “Stage 1” of the proposed closure of the park to cars on August 5th. 2023, retained the weekend closure, closed West Road, removed 355 parking spots, and implemented a one-way system, entering from notoriously dangerous Parkside Drive and exiting onto a busy Bloor Street intersection.
Whatever the intent, Stage 1 of this study has created a speed cycling track, resulted in loss of patronage to all venues, shut down park events, destroyed the feeling of safety within the park, and shut out access to all but the young and fit.
Major Issues
• Without car admittance, families with a disabled/ageing member are shut out of the park on weekends, often the only time their families can take them.
• High Park is 2.5 k in depth and 1.5k wide with most venues situated in the centre. High Park is well named, presenting physical challenges with steep hilly areas and unpaved pathways when entering the park from south, east and west, challenging for the less mobile and aged visitors.
• Thousands of challenged individuals cannot use the city subway/bus system.
• Currently only a summer bus service into and around the upper loop of the park runs from May to Labour Day. There is no transportation within the park from October to May when the seasonal shuttle stops running. Wheel trans has limited access on weekends from 10.00am to 5.00pm.
• There are no signs to direct visitors to drive down Parkside Drive to enter the park on weekdays and on weekends there is very limited parking. The city is studying this street as it has seen accidents and is dangerous.
Loss of Revenue-lack of visitors
• The Nature Centre, Children’s Garden, Colborne Lodge, High Park Zoo, The Dream in the Park, Swimming Pool, Tennis Courts, Ice Rinks, and Sports Groups, all have reduced attendance. Events no longer held due to lack of access for the past four years: Colborne Lodge’s Harvest Festival, Christmas Celebration on Café Patio and Santa at the Zoo, Grandparents Day Tea, Pumpkin Float, Ukrainian Events, which all brought revenue into the Park.
• The Grenadier Group, food concessioner for the park, have lost 80% of their patronage. The Café is an icon, visited by generations of families and beloved as a meeting, eating, and greeting spot. Where else in the City can you sit on a patio and enjoy the beauty of nature. The Grenadier Group pays rent to the city and in addition donates $50,000.00 a year to High Park enabling organizations that call High Park and the Western Beach home, to hold free events for families and for capital improvements e.g. the 6 bottle water filling stations and bike racks.
• Friends of High Park Zoo have raised and donated over a million dollars to the Park for Capital improvements since 2012, with attendance down, fundraising events are limited and no longer accessible to everyone.
Environmental Impact:
• Rather than an improvement, the changes have wrought damage to the perimeter of the park, visitors enter near where they park and trample the undergrowth, widening trails as they drag picnic essentials into the park rather than using the main road. Dog owners, finding walking to the Off Leash too far, let their dogs loose and damage the vegetation, often endangered species growing in the wooded areas.
Not appropriate in a Family Park-A speed track
• Speed cyclists, well over the 20kmh limit have taken over the park and visitors are afraid to walk particularly on West Road where cars are prohibited and on weekends along Colborne Lodge Drive when there are no cars. There have been many near misses as people attempt to cross the roads at the crosswalks where cyclists ignore stop/yield signs.
Now
An empty park compared with years gone by and now deserted during the cold winter months. Always a beloved place for a family outing with small children and not so mobile Grandma, it is impossible to visit with roads closed to cars, sparse parking and no accessible transit within the park! Twenty-four per cent of Ontario's population (3.44 million people) have some sort of disability, whether that be physical, cognitive, sensory, or episodic.
“What will the park look like in five years?” We are losing the heart of the park as people find it too difficult to get in and therefore it is not being used as it once was and should be. There should be access for all…
John Howard deeded High Park to all the citizens of Toronto!
Write to the City Council now and let them know what you think:
Mayor_chow@toronto.ca
Councillor_perks@toronto.ca
Highparkmove@toronto.ca
Parks@toronto.ca
bkarpoche-co@ndp.on.ca
Sign the Petition: High Park-Access For All at:
www.change.org/highpark-equalaccess.com