I visited
Christie Pits in mid-November, going there to look at particular at the community
garden, though when I went there it looked rather barren (note that my
photographs were taken in early December, so it looks even more barren). That
is not to say, however, that I did not take the full park into account, since
it is rather significant that this large park is situated in downtown Toronto,
off of a very major street. It was very cloudy, and in afternoon, and so as a
whole there were not many people in the park. It was a Wednesday and so I
assume that children were still in school, which may have contributed in part
to the lack of people in the park, along with the drab weather. There were a
few people walking through the park while I was there, including some folks
walking their dogs, and there was a couple of people playing basketball at the basketball
court near the garden. I walked around the playground in the park, the
ice-skating rink, and the garden, and probably spent about twenty minutes at
the park, but during that time the number of people who actually spent time in
the park, as opposed to just walking by it on the nearby streets, was rather low.
I
was immediately struck by just how immersed in the city the park is. On all
sides there are streets, businesses, and residential apartments, and when I
first exited the subway to go to the park it took me a few moments to realize
that it was right in front of me because of how well Christie Pits Park fits
into the city environment (though to be fair, the fact that the park is
essentially a valley may have had something to do with my overlooking it). In a
way, the entire time that I was in the park I did not at all feel as though I
had left the city in any way, I was instead just immersed in a greener part. It
did not feel like any sort of escape—instead, it was just a sort of slight
detour off of the city streets. This stands in opposition to many other parks I
have been to throughout my life, which always felt more divided, through the
use of fences or other aesthetic designs. Christie Pits just felt quite
different in this respect.
Statistically,
Christie Pits is an 8.9 hectare park located at the intersection of Bloor Street
and Christie Street (City of Toronto Website). In total, the park contains a
pool, three baseball diamonds, basketball and volleyball courts, a playground,
an ice rink, a multi-sport field, a splash pad and wading pool, and a community
garden. As a whole then, the park provides a wide range of activities for
people of all ages to enjoy, though as previously stated, the weather and time
of year were not conducive to seeing these activities while I personally was
there. The park was named after the Christie Sand Pits that operated in the
area until the early 1900s, and much of the material excavated from these sand
pits were used in construction of Toronto’s early buildings and railways (Friends
of Christie Pits Park). The area was then converted into a park. Notably,
Christie Pits Park was the site of a riot (one of the largest ethnically-charged
riots in the city’s history) between Toronto’s Jewish community and non-Jews
who had displayed pro-Nazi sympathies during a local baseball game. Though no
one was killed, it was an incredibly violent riot that is remembered on a
plaque in the park to this day (Friends of Christie Pits Park).
The
community garden was established in 2009, through the group effort and
cooperation of the Friends of Christie Pits Park organization, the Garden Committee,
and neighbourhood volunteers (Friends of Christie Pits Park). The garden’s shed
has all the tools necessary for gardening available for community use, and the
garden’s focus is on growing organic food, but also produces flowers and
pollinator plants (Gardens in Action). The garden’s goal, in part, is to
provide a space for community members to grow food if they do not have the
space to grow food at their own homes, which in a major metropolitan city such
as Toronto is often very likely, where front lawns can be hard to come by and
rather expensive. The garden also hosts educational sessions that are meant to
try to teach people of all age’s knowledge about healthy gardening and creating
sustainable organic environments. This is accentuated by the fact that non-organic
fertilizers and the like are banned from the community garden.
Christie
Pits Park and the community garden held within draws parallels to ideas of the
biotic community, which are discussed by Aldo Leopold. In his piece, discussing
the notion of the land ethic, Leopold discusses how the idea of ethics, which
are usually centred around the idea of someone trying to be a member of a
community through cooperation, despite any drive to compete for a place in the
community, can be extended to the biological or organic—soil, waters, plants,
animals, etc. (Leopold 1949:24). The land ethic, therefore, seeks to protect
the natural as a part of the community, making the human essentially a part of
the land rather than someone who has conquered it and subjugated it, which is
so often the case throughout modern human history (1949:25). In a nutshell,
Leopold is trying to make an appeal to how humans use the land, and trying to
raise the notion that perhaps humans should treat nature with some degree of
respect, and not seek to constantly shape and re-shape it.
These
notions of the land ethic and biotic community can be seen in Christie Pits
Park. On the one hand, the park is fully representative of how humans have
re-shaped natural spaces. The natural Christie Sand Pits were used and
re-shaped by people in order to build cities and expand Toronto in the nineteenth
century. The park today, as a whole, is clearly quite man-made, with the sports
fields, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, hockey rink, etc. all man-made uses of
what was once a natural space. Walking around the park, there is in fact almost
no part of it that is not in some way shaped or re-shaped by humans.
While
the community garden is, on the one hand, absolutely designed and shaped by
man, it does seem to fit into a sort of land ethic. Leopold asks us to, rather
than conquer the land, to work with it and make it part of our community in a
natural way. In some ways, the community garden accomplishes this. It is a
place where people are meant to come together and try to organically grow
crops, without the use of pesticides or non-organic materials that could hurt
the land in ways that humans have in the past, ways which Leopold denounces. Instead,
the community garden seeks to incorporate the land into the community and treat
it with respect. Anyone, in theory, can come to the community garden and grow
crops (though all personal plots are currently occupied and there is a
waiting-list, so in practice this is not entirely the case). Leopold also calls
for education and rule/guideline setting in order for a land ethic to be able
to function properly and with proper respect for the land (1949:26-27). The community
garden most certainly seeks to accomplish this, with educational sessions to
teach people about how to respectfully work the land without damaging it too
much, and with many guidelines set in place in the garden to maintain this
notion. Leopold states that “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation
to the land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for the land…”
which in turn can be seen with the community garden (1949:30). It is quite
clear that the volunteers and communities putting in the effort to create this
spot of natural respect in the city would most likely be in Leopold’s good
books for what they are attempting to create and foster in Christie Pits Park.
Of
course, this is just one small part of the park, and one very small part of Toronto
as a whole. If more places like the community garden were to arise in downtown
Toronto, and more effort be put into respecting the land as a part of the
community, then perhaps we could come closer to Leopold’s land ethic hopes. At the
same time, in such a heavily urbanized city, this may not be a realistic goal. As
a whole though, Toronto seems to have places that have taken good steps to try
to create a land ethic within a city.
Works Cited:
City of Toronto Website, Christie Pits Park. Accessed at http://www1.toronto.ca/parks/prd/facilities/complex/196/.
Friends of Christie Pits Park Website. Accessed at http://www.christiepits.ca/about/aboutus.asp.
Pages cited in particular:
Gardens in Action. Accessed at https://gardensinaction.wordpress.com/about/.
Aldo Leopold, 1949. “The Land Ethic,” From A Sand County Almanac. In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (2009,
2nd edition). Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, Eds. Routledge.
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