New park to honour First Nations Residents hope Ontario Place park will include canoe landing spots

Dennis Hanagan —

A new park planned for the east side of Ontario Place would have a wooded area on the west side and a more open area leading down to the lake on the east, all with a pathway meandering throughout.

That’s what landscape designers have come up with so far. They presented their idea to the public at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Jan. 22.

The park is only 7.5 acres—roughly the size of seven or eight football fields—so there are restrictions on just how much can be done with it. It’s oblong shape runs north and south. Right now it’s an asphalt parking lot that once served Ontario Place staff.

But designers are promising the park will offer many grand views, looking out to the lake and back into the city.

“In the end we’re creating a feel good park where we can integrate people with nature,” Patrick Morello, a principal with LANDinc landscape architects, told the crowd of about 200.

A woman in the audience asked Morello how designers could mitigate what park users would see as they look east and view a Billy Bishop Airport runway stretching into the lake.

Morello suggested that strong support for the park might influence how the runway is built, if it is, to lessen its impact on the view.

Morello spoke about using the park to highlight Ontario’s various landscapes from the Hudson Bay Lowlands to Lake Ontario and everything in between.

“How can we try to bring that unique landscape into the park … This is going to be different from a typical municipal park,” said Morello.

West 8, a landscape architecture firm from Rotterdam and New York, has been brought in to help with the park’s design.

“They bring a very unique perspective. As Ontarians we sometimes over look what is special about what we have,” said Morello.

The Toronto area used to belong to the Mississauga First Nations. Designers want to incorporate their history into the park.

Carolyn King of the Mississaugas suggested honouring First Nations by placing “marker trees” along the pathways to point park users to certain highlights. For centuries aboriginal people bent young trees to point travellers to good fishing sites or places to launch canoes.

Regarding canoes, another audience member wanted places in the park where canoeists could paddle up to a beach, jump out, and go exploring.

The park will be for year-round use. Landscaping and native Ontario plants will be used to create wind blocks from harsh winter weather. It will be wheelchair accessible, but some parts of the wooded area will be inaccessible to allow plant communities to survive.

A final park design will be publicly unveiled this spring or summer.