Apparently, the City of Toronto is going to designate October as “Toronto Walks Month.” A lovely idea, but it’s hard to find out what exactly this means — the only information on the City website is a press release about the opening ceremony. The ceremony will take place for half an hour in Dundas Square on Friday, Sept. 30, from 1:15 to 1:45, including a proclamation by the Mayor. The press release assures us that more details about the program will be available at this launch.
The event is part of a campaign to get Toronto to be a healthy, physically active city. It’s nice to have that aspect of walking be prominently supported, but there are so many other reasons to walk as well — especially environmental and social ones. Perhaps next year these will be integrated into the “Toronto Walks Month” too.
October is also “Toronto Trails Festival Month,” which seems like it ought to be related to “Toronto Walks,” although it got a kickoff a few days earlier. “The 2005 Toronto Trails Festival’s celebration of the joys of walking & hiking in Toronto” will include the free annual “Fall Classics” walks in October.
Somehow, it seems like an opportunity to really bring together and highlight the many aspects of walking in Toronto is not quite being grasped.
