It was bound to happen to me, and my views on the world were bound to change.
We decided to make some (what we thought were) small renovations to the house; an addition to the kitchen area and a smaller front porch. We pretended we could continue to live in the house during the work but got smart while we waited for the building permit to be issued and decided to move into an apartment.
We now live in a building more than 30 storeys high overlooking what’s left of the dwindling main street of Forest Hill Village.
I now realize this was bound to happen to me: as a born and bred Torontonian, I could not expect to spend all my earthly days living in a house with both a front and a back yard.
Here’s where the first of my views about the world began to change. The apartment has a tiny balcony just large enough to stand on but much too small for a table let alone a BBQ. I have scouted out all the nearby parks — and the nearby Cedarvale Ravine — and there is not a BBQ pit to be found anywhere. I have found three lonely picnic tables in tens of acres of parkland, and they are often occupied.
Where are we supposed to enjoy our dejeuners sur l’herbe?
Sharing food and drink is agreed to be the most sociable of activities, but it is clearly not one that city hall wants to encourage. I count the apartment buildings within 500 metres of where I now live and estimate there are at least 5,000 apartment units filled with people like me, wanting to have a meal outside, and we don’t particularly want to sit on the grass. There are precious few park benches to rest on, although holding a meal with everyone in a line is hardly congenial.
As I walk my dog in the neighbourhood — he has not taken to highrise living — I realize that parks are planned as places of green with kids’ play equipment but not as places for adults who live in the area to enjoy outdoor life. Often the trees make the park space cool, sometimes even serene, but they are not to be lingered in.
My neighbourhood is no different than other collections of apartment towers that I can see out the window, far above the marvellous treetop greenery on the house-lined streets. But residents of those towers — at St. Clair and Yonge, at Eglinton and Yonge and much further afield — face the same challenges as we do.
The parks are not arranged for summer enjoyment with picnic tables and BBQ pits. Those with a car can drive to Serena Gundy Park in the Don Valley and grab a BBQ pit, if they get there early enough, but those without wheels are out of luck.
I have been told of the other problem by those who have attempted to have a picnic on the grass. Open a bottle of wine as you eat, and the police force instantly knows there’s a law to be enforced and a ticket to be issued. It happens often. Sometimes the officer will give a pleasant warning, but mostly the officer doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity of scoring a ticket to impress the commander.
Imagine if the city had a parks department that started out each day by asking how the parks could better serve the people who live around them, so they became places where there was pleasant and convivial human interaction rather than exist as dull and empty places (which, I have found, they are much of the time.)
I like the sign that Tommy Thompson posted four decades ago on the parkland at Centre Island: Please Walk On The Grass.
Think of that welcoming sign over the picnic table in your local park: Please Enjoy Your BBQ, and Drink Your Wine Responsibly. That, of course, would be summer reverie, a dream come true. Which is what is needed in the hot days of August in Toronto.
