Archives /// City Hall

Allan Crawford has dreams of building a lodge at the mouth of the Humber River. The Parks, Forestry and Recreation employee, who runs the Inner City Outtripping Centre, an outdoor education program that provides youth with opportunities to canoe, hike, swim, and camp, has been lobbying for the recreation facility for over six years now, but his face still grows red with excitement when he describes it. It'd be completely off the grid, a sustainable building where inner-city youth could bunk for a night or two, after spending the day canoeing, fishing, and hiking, receiving the kind of outdoor education ...

It's been a year since Christina Zeidler stood before an audience in the Ballroom at the Gladstone Hotel to share her fears of what could become of her neighbourhood. That night in October 2005 was one of the first public meetings held by Active 18, an organization formed to provide Queen-Beaconsfield residents of ward 18 with a voice in plans for the development of the Queen West Triangle, where six building applications — four with plans for condominiums up to 19 storeys tall — currently await approval. The chunk of former industrial land, which runs between Queen Street West, Lisgar ...

Everyone is a pedestrian. Almost everyone in the city walks somewhere on most days, even if just briefly, and the official definition of "pedestrian" includes people who use wheelchairs to get around as well. So pedestrian issues should speak to everyone. But walking's ubiquity is also its weakness, politically. If everyone is a pedestrian, then few people specifically identify as a pedestrian. Walking is not a source of identity or community if everyone does it — it doesn't make people feel distinctive. Walking is also so instinctive, so cheap, so easy that people have little money or effort invested in it ...