[URBAN NOTE] "Battling myth of the green monster in Thorncliffe Park"
Patty Winsa's Toronto Star article makes me think of my own experience living in a Toronto I've deeply inscribed with my routines. Breaking out of these routines can take effort.
The stream of parents and children moving through R.V. Burgess Park on this Friday afternoon is like a kaleidoscope of shifting colour and scenes. It’s one of few public spaces in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood.
Mothers in gem-coloured saris set against others in dark veils push children in strollers towards the highrises that ring the park and the library, an end-of-day migration to apartments that have more than 30,000 residents, double the capacity they were built for.
Some go against the flow, heading back towards R.V. Burgess to set up for the last of the seasonal Friday markets on an unseasonably warm fall day.
Just beyond the towers lies one of the city’s most beautiful public spaces and it’s so quiet you can hear a leaf drop. The E.T. Seton Park, part of the Don Valley ravine, is little used by the predominantly South Asian immigrant community that lives above it.
Part of the problem may be separation from the ravine, which has one main entrance from Thorncliffe Park Dr. and is otherwise cut off from the apartments that ring it. Entrances from the grounds of a couple of buildings were closed off.
Another may be trust.
The stream of parents and children moving through R.V. Burgess Park on this Friday afternoon is like a kaleidoscope of shifting colour and scenes. It’s one of few public spaces in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood.
Mothers in gem-coloured saris set against others in dark veils push children in strollers towards the highrises that ring the park and the library, an end-of-day migration to apartments that have more than 30,000 residents, double the capacity they were built for.
Some go against the flow, heading back towards R.V. Burgess to set up for the last of the seasonal Friday markets on an unseasonably warm fall day.
Just beyond the towers lies one of the city’s most beautiful public spaces and it’s so quiet you can hear a leaf drop. The E.T. Seton Park, part of the Don Valley ravine, is little used by the predominantly South Asian immigrant community that lives above it.
Part of the problem may be separation from the ravine, which has one main entrance from Thorncliffe Park Dr. and is otherwise cut off from the apartments that ring it. Entrances from the grounds of a couple of buildings were closed off.
Another may be trust.