Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex's personal blog on architecture Two weeks ago I took my son to Canada’s Sugar Beach. He’s a toddler, and I wasn’t sure whether he’d enjoy the visit. The newest park on the waterfront is a playful two acres of landscape design by Claude Cormier, with candy-striped hunks of granite and small, sugar-pile hills of grass – but that conceptual play is a bit over the head of an 19-month-old. But I liked it a lot, and surprisingly so did he: those rocks and hills are great to climb and tumble on, and the large artificial beach, with its wispy white sand imported from Ohio, is one serious sandbox. Throw in the sights of the lake (boat! seagull!) and you have a winning park experience for almost anybody. The sad thing was, we had the place to ourselves. It was about eight on a Saturday morning – an hour when the only people using parks are parents, dog owners, and elders practicing tai chi – and there was almost nobody else there. The adjacent Redpath Sugar plant and the new Corus Quay office building (handsome but underwhelming) were quiet.

It’s not often that candidates for City Council are given the opportunity to run without an incumbent in the ward. This year there are eight wards with seats ripe for the picking. This post is the first in a series on the candidates in these contested wards, and the key issues in the neighbourhoods they seek to represent. Ward 19 – Trinity / Spadina From Dupont to the lake, Dovercourt to Christie above Bloor, and Dovercourt to Bathurst below Bloor, this ward covers the Christie Dovercourt, Grace Dovercourt, Liberty Village, Little Italy, Niagara, Fort York, Palmerston, Queen West and Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhoods, and was home to almost 50,000 people in 2006 according to the latest Census. The Candidates: With Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone running for mayor, his seat at City Council is up for grabs; enticing quite a diverse group of candidates to show interest in doing a better job. Mike Layton, the candidate endorsed by Pantalone, aims to follow his father into city politics — in the ward represented federally by his step-mother, Olivia Chow. But Layton, who has a BA in political science and masters in environmental studies with a focus on urban planning, says that it’s not his familial relations that will win him the election. “It’s going to be me meeting people and creating a relationship with them and building trust,” he told Spacing. “It’s not going to be my name, it’s going to be the relationship that I’m going to grow within the next 80 days.” Running against this political offspring is Sean McCormick. He’s known to sports fans as the host of SportsNet’s Connected, a job which he left to campaign for council full-time. McCormick says that he was so tired of complaining about the way tax money was being spent and decisions were being made that he felt he needed to do something about it. He says that he wants to be a part of the change that Toronto needs. Also running is Karen Sun, the executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter for the last four years. With over 10 years experience in environmental organizations, she promises to endorse sustainability and the enhancement of public parks and spaces.

Toronto’s second waterfront beach officially opened Monday morning with all three levels of government in attendance to celebrate the cooperation that resulted in a project that came in on-time and on-budget. Canada’s Sugar Beach, named so because of the $14 million in tax dollars that went into the project and it’s location to the east of the Redpath sugar factory, is filled with Muskoka chairs, pink beach umbrellas, red and white striped rocks, and white sand from Ohio. The park has been open and in use for a few weeks, with families lazily watching sailboats and the lunchtime crowd catching some sun before heading back to the office. The view of the water is quite nice, but the area around the beach is too contaminated for swimming. To give beach-goers some water they can play in, there is a maple leaf shaped water feature that is reminiscent of the Dundas Square fountains that shoot water out of the pavement. In keeping with the Canadian theme, the fountain is shaped like a maple leaf, and leaves are made of granite slabs throughout the neighbouring pathway and promenade.

Just in time for Doors Open this weekend, the John Street Roundhouse Park National Railway and Heritage Centre staged its grand opening today. The 17-acre park includes four full-sized locomotives dating back to 1944 as well as Toronto’s own car, No. 1, built in Kingston, Ontario in 1950. (Hurry, though, if you want to see it; the roundhouse will soon be fenced off as part of the security buildup to the G20.) There are also three freight cars and two passenger cars in ...

It isn't what anyone would consider a normal afternoon in the park. Yes, the sun was shining and there were joggers running down the path, as well as picnics set up by the playground. But on the south side of Christie Pits, right next to Bloor Street, was a Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City. The camp at Christie Pits was set up as a learning tool by Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF),  to teach us comfortable and often sheltered Canadians the reality of life for refugees. Each tour was led by aid workers who had been on trips with MSF. Our tour guide, Dr. Wendy Lai, had been to the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Haiti, once before the earthquake and once after. The first step is the border crossing. As participants, we were all treated as refugees who are on the run from rebels. We are told we have three minutes to flee our homes from rebels who are headed our way. What does one bring? The reality of the situation is that you hardly have time to think. You grab your family, hopefully some money. Maybe some clothes? Some food? Whatever you can carry on your back. Those trying to leave the country are forced to bribe the border guard with whatever they have: valuables, money, food. "Do you want to live?"

As the West Don Lands neighbourhood continues to take shape, Waterfront Toronto is being forced to reconcile with the unique challenges of the area. One such challenge has been how the area will interact with the elevated overpass that carries Richmond, Adelaide and Eastern Ave through its heart. To the north of the overpass will be a Toronto Community Housing (TCHC) project and the River City condo development, while the heart of the new neighbourhood, including the athlete's village for the Pan-Am games and the expansive new Don River Park will be built to the south. Thus, ensuring that the overpass does not become a barrier will be an important element of the neighbourhood's success. Mitigating the negative affects of the overpass will not be easy as there are significant psychological misgivings about such dark spaces with low ceilings. Underpass Park aims to address both the problems and importance of the site, and plans are very promising. Construction on the 2.5 acre site will begin in May and will cost $5.3 million with completion slated from Spring of next year.

Spacing Magazine, the City of Toronto, and Ward 20 City Councillor Adam Vaughan have teamed up to give Torontonians a chance to name a new park. This new green space, which is located between Spadina and Bathurst on the north side of Fort York Boulevard, has not been formally named. This spectacular new park in the downtown core, whose design was inspired by the vision of noted Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland was recently unveiled by developer Concord Adex Inc. The $8 million, 8-acre park in the City Place ...

Playter Gardens sits at the northeastern end of the Prince Edward Viaduct, a stamp-sized park bordering Cambridge Avenue and Danforth.  Overgrown and untended, crack-pipes are often found littered around the park.  Only one flower garden still remains to back up Playter's namesake.  Instead, high grasses and dead branches lie in the dense shadow of dangerously leaning trees. Although abandoned by most of the neighbourhood, not all has been lost. Transplanted would better describe the evolution occurring at northwestern edge of Danforth Ave. As Playter Gardens has declined over the last two years, small gardens have been popping up along Cambridge Ave., plots that have been rapidly expanding.  A variety of plants, vegetables and even trees are now growing in the formerly unused grass beds that line the street. I caught up with Chris, a Cambridge Ave. resident and the driving force behind these guerrilla plantings, who explained that his inspiration for these gardens wasn't just aesthetics.  After being fed up with cars continually running over the grass across the street from his house as they cut the turn into their apartment garage a little too close, Chris decided to take matters into his own hands and created what would be the first of many Cambridge Gardens.

Biking along the Eglinton bridge over the Humber, I spotted a tiny little garden on the eastern bank of the river just north of the bridge.  The garden is almost entirely concealed and can only be spotted from several spots along the northern sidewalk of the bridge just west of Scarlett. The outline of the garden and its irrigation mounds can just barely be made out on Google Maps. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be startlingly well-kept and well-tended, growing a variety of plants protected by an elaborately built fence built out of branches and wire.  There was even a small locked gate facing the river, with a thin dirt path leading to large flat stones ideally placed along the bank of the Humber for collecting water. I spent a bit of time trying to research this garden and found that it was featured in a Jane's Walk, but that the gardener is an "anonymous newcomer."  The property is technically owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, but my bet is that the garden is either entirely off their radar or they are simply turning their heads to allow the gardener(s) to work.

Having grown up in the "city of lakes", I find Toronto's waterfront to be a welcoming refuge from the dry air and cement that characterizes the rest of the city. Of particular interest is The Toronto Music Garden, located on the south side of Queen's Quay West, in between Lower Spadina Ave and Dan Leckie Way. During the summer it is a haven for butterflies and other insects, and is surprisingly quiet given its juxtaposition between the island airport and the Gardiner Expressway.