The City has started the final series of consultations for the revitalization of  George Hislop and Norman Jewison Parks and Alexander Street Parkette. The first (online) public consultation is on Thursday, Nov. 5. [Register here]

A master plan for the three connected parks parallel to Yonge Street (George Hislop, Norman Jewison and James Canning Gardens) was completed in 2017 and James Canning Gardens is now being renovated in line with that plan.

Alexander Street Parkette, which was not included in the 2017 master plan, has been added to the scope of the project. 

According to the City's Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division, the consultation process will "refresh and build on engagement completed to date for the linear parks, and provide opportunities for additional input during the design process. While the master plan identifies a conceptual design framework for the park with activity areas, planting, seating, lighting, and paths etc., finalizing the park concept plans to meet current community needs will be part of the exercise.  George Hislop Park will also have an integrated public art/design element that celebrates LGBTQ2S+ history, leadership, excellence and resilience - a new feature that was not identified in the master plan."
 
The consultations, being held between September 2020 and January 2021, include:

• 3 public information events, the first of which is scheduled for November 5 (online) [REGISTER HERE].  
• several  stakeholder (Community Resource Group) review meetings (online), the first of which has already been held. CWNA is a participant. 
• physically distant interviews/site walks with vulnerable communities/park users (in person)
• public feedback via email, phone, mail and online questionnaire. 

George Hislop Park is currently closed and will be the first of the three parks to be rebuilt. Parks & Foresty's most optimistic estimate for George Hislop is a start date of mid-2021 with completion in late 2021 or summer 2022.  The other parks will follow.  

Ongoing updates are being posted on the City's web page, Yonge Street Linear Park Improvements.  ​

​The City will soon resurface Church Street from Gloucester Street to Park Road in order to bring the road, curb and sidewalk to a state of good repair.  Crews will also remove old streetcar tracks under the road surface.  The work is part of the Council-approved 2020 Capital Works Program to renew aging city roads and sidewalks. 

Work was scheduled to Start Sept. 21 and take at least three months; however the start has been delayed.  

See the official city notice here. 

The YongeTOmorrow study is progressing, with the next public consultation scheduled for Wednesday, Sept 16. This phase of the study focusses on the redesign of Yonge from Queen Street to College / Carlton, and will influence future plans for Yonge north of College/Carlton. The recommended plan for Yonge Street will: 
- prioritize pedestrians
- provide more protection for cyclists
- maintain access for transit, deliveries, ride hailing and parking garages. 

​The City of Toronto webpage for YongeTOmorrow has information on how to participate in the next public consultation and includes the recommended design concept details and renderings.

Luke Plourde has lived in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood for 40 years and has lost 87 friends to the AIDS epidemic. 

He has seen a once vibrant gay community increasingly taken over by condos, with sparse green space set aside. This summer, he decided to do something about it. 

He noticed a largely uncultivated patch of land behind a chain link fence at the northeast corner of Alexander and Church Sts., across from City Park Co-op where he lives. It seemed a perfect place to plant a garden to honour his fallen comrades. 
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“There's so little left of the village that there was during the ‘80s in the ‘90s and the 2000s that I wanted something to remain that I could look at and think of my friends,” he says. 

After several unsuccessful attempts to locate the owner of the property, he came across Ahmad Zamany, manager of Salon One next door, doing some gardening on the property.  

Plourde proposed creating a garden at his own expense. Zamany liked the idea. He checked with Salon One’s owner, Philip Nazaruk, who has use of the land through his business lease. He too was enthusiastic. 

“We were really excited about it,” Nazaruk says. “We said, ‘Help yourself and do what you want to do.’”

So, starting June 8, Plourde spent a straight two weeks pulling weeds and replacing the soil, which was almost entirely sand and clay.  All summer he has worked at least four hours a day, every day, weeding, digging, planting, tending and watering to bring the patch to life. 

He lay a stone pathway with rocks he dredged from a river in Fenelon Falls. He purchased a statue of cupid at a market in Aberfoyle. His mother gave him a birdbath. 

In fewer than two months, he created an English-style garden made up almost entirely of perennials, some suited to the sun, others to shade, with different flowers constantly coming into bloom. 

“Gardens are living things that are always changing,” he says.

The community’s reaction shocked and surprised him. 

“So many people of all ages have come by and said to me how it touches them,” he says. Some just stop and stare. Others take photographs. Children bring him rocks for the garden. Parents bring their kids to teach them the names of the flowers. Even landscapers come by and pay him compliments. 

“The whole neighbourhood seems to have fallen in love with the garden,” he says. “It’s made it all worthwhile.”

Plourde has come to an agreement with the salon's operators that he will not officially call the garden an AIDs memorial, because they do not own the land. 
But for him, every plant brings departed friends closer, and this has touched older members of the gay community.

“They love it,” Plourde says. “As soon as I mention that I’ve done it for my friends, some of them, they cry. Because everybody from that time lost a lot of people.”

Among the plants, purchased at his own expense, are hostas, hydrangeas, astilbe, begonias, sedum, clematis, wisteria, black-eyed Susans, roses, irises, Cardinal flowers, Japanese windflowers, crocosmia, flox, lilies, coneflowers, echinacea, foxgloves, delphiniums, chrysanthemums, flowering cabbages, peones, anemones, Japanese grass, goat’s beard, false sunflowers, bee balm, lavender, trumpet flowers, a limelight tree and a Japanese snowball shrub. 

The 63-year-old information technology specialist for the Ontario government estimates he has spent more than $2,000 of his own funds so far, which is what he would have paid for a vacation had COVID not intervened.

“I’ll add more things next year. I just ran out of money,” he says.  

For him, the garden is his bit of sanity after a stressful day at work.

“It's amazing what happens when you put your hands in the earth. It calms you down,” he says.

Plourde comes by his love of gardening honestly. As a child in Brampton, he helped his parents, who were avid horticulturists.  He says he is grateful to the people behind Salon One for their unwavering support, allowing him to do what he likes with the garden and, at least in his mind, dedicate it to friends past. 
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“I wanted something to remain of that time, of that era when I was younger,” he says. “And so I wanted to build this garden as a symbol of that, as a memorial. For to me each of these flowers is one of my friends. That's how I look at it in my mind.”

"Greening the Village" is an occasional series recognizing individuals and groups who volunteer their time to beautifying our neighbourhood.  ​

In late July 2020, Graywood Developments submitted a proposal to the City for 506 to 516 Church Street (now Crews & Tangos, Boutique Bar and a Target Park surface lot)

Some Charles Street residents grew so frustrated that a single-purpose community group was founded, the Charles Area Network Alliance (CAN Alliance). The CAN Alliance undertook a media campaign and lobbied Mayor Tory, who appeared for an inspection in late June. 

The George Hislop Park encampment was cleared in early July and the park was completely fenced off at Charles and Isabella Streets. The reasons the City has given for closing the park is for "sod and irrigation improvements."   ​The park will eventually be completely renovated, which would mean it could be inaccessible for up to three years.  

Previously posted:
 - Progress on Park Encampments ;  
-  City Grapples with COVID-19 Homelessness and Encampments

Summer 2020 should have been the beginning of a Church Street Renaissance. Through 2019 and early this year many vacant storefronts had been renovated and found new tenants. Scaffolding came down, new paint jobs freshened up exteriors and heritage facades regained their former glory. The future looked especially bright with a long-awaited plan to redesign Church Street getting underway. 

Then COVID-19 happened. 

As in the rest of the country, the pandemic has had a profound effect on Church Street businesses. Non-essential retail operations have only recently been allowed to get back up and running with curb-side service. Restaurants have been reduced to take-out and delivery orders, and are still waiting for the go-ahead to start patio table service. Bars haven't been open for months, and many have been boarded up to prevent break-ins. Businesses hoping for a break on their rent have been out of luck, with landlords opting not to take advantage of the federal commercial rent relief program. 

So what can we expect on Church Street this summer, usually the busiest and more festive season of the year? 

With summer underway, the street is looking cheerier, thanks to splashes of colour from floral hanging baskets and planters freshly filled with annuals, courtesy the Church Wellesley Village BIA.  And those boarded up windows are now in the process of being transformed into eye-catching murals, another BIA innovation.   

Most important, more people are coming out on the street, taking advantage of the warmer weather and offering a hint of  that familiar Church Street vibe. To accommodate social distancing,  some of the street parking lanes have been temporarily converted to pedestrians only through the CurbTO program, and there may be more pedestrianization in store.  The provincial and city governments are cutting red tape so that, when restaurants and bars start serving again, they can more readily get extra patio space. 

Everyone, especially those whose income hasn't been affected by the pandemic, can help by patronizing local restaurants for take out and delivery and by making an extra effort to shop Church. While Church Street will not be the same this summer, if we all do our part the Village main street will endure -- and flourish another day. ​