North London neighbours band together to save beloved park as city looks to 'naturalize' it

Residents of a north London street are devastated that the city wants to close off and naturalize the park behind their homes, but they're hoping to put a stop to the project by making presentations at an upcoming committee meeting.

To begin with, Attawandaron Park is not easy to find if you don't know where to look.

It's a long strip of green space near Wonderland Road and Fanshawe Park Road. Dozens of homes, as well as the Museum of Ontario Archeology, back onto it from adjacent Attawandaron Road. It's peaceful, spotlessly clean, teeming with wildlife and, over the decades, has become the foundation of a tightly-knit neighbourhood, residents said.

"It's how we gather as a community," Kathy Johnson explained. "We have fireworks out there, the grandkids come out and they play baseball, football…all that will be gone for us and all the other neighbours."

The land became part of the Medway Valley Heritage Forest Environmentally Significant Area (ESA) in 2013, which means it's been deemed an important natural area in need of protection. Like all 12 ESAs in the city, it is governed by a Conservation Master Plan (CMP) and, since last year, the Medway Valley CMP has been under review.

The city has decided the park is "not ecologically sensitive", and is moving ahead with plans to "protect, enhance and restore" the land. Staff are recommending planting native trees and shrubs and building a paved walking trail through the area.

The Planning and Environment Committee is meeting Tuesday, and neighbours have sent in letters and plan to attend the meeting in hopes of swaying the councillors' minds to keep it the way it is.

Another issue identified by city staff is what it calls encroachement where, in some cases, neighbours' back yards extend beyond their actual property lines. Some people have gardens they have tended for decades along the edge of the park and others have fences, sheds or treehouses just beyond their property lines.

All of these must be removed at the residents' own cost by September, city staff have said, or they will face fines — even if it was already there when they moved in. Some neighbours simply like to keep the grass mowed between their yards and the park, but they have been ordered to stop that, they said.

City staff came by six months earlier to stake out the official property lines, and some people were shocked to see the markers cutting off more than half of their current yard space.

"I think it's important to remember that projects like this demonstrate council's commitment to continuing to enhance and restore the natural heritage system and to ensure the persistence of these natural spaces for the next generation," said Emily Williamson, the city's manager of environmental planning.

People who live there, however, feel they are losing more than the city is gaining.

"It's going to be weeds back there," Johnson said. "We're living in a city where kids need parks, neighbours need parks… the kids on the street will have nowhere to go besides going across a four-lane highway to get to another park."

The neighbourhood was also shocked by what they considered poor public consultation before the city moved ahead with its plans, said resident Jim Kalman.

"They just basically told us 'This is what's gonna happen,'" he said. "They were very unsympathetic to our situation. They just didn't seem to care."

Kalman's yard is one of the many that is being largely reclaimed by the city. What was once neatly maintained grass will soon be bushy natural growth just a couple metres from his house, he explained. He never would have purchased his home, if not for the park, and he even paid a premium for the land because of it, he added.

A meeting was held in September 2024 to inform the neighbourhood of the changes, Williamson said, and residents were heard.

"When we followed up from that meeting, we included a rendering which noted a mowed strip between the proposed pathway through to the property limits where we are also willing…to establish some privacy plantings for owners as discussed."

She said going back on the plan would require more community consultation and working groups, all over again.

"It's an extremely expensive, time intensive process," she said. "Given that the anticipated results would come out in a similar fashion with the exception of the increased voice from the community, it's unclear if council would choose to move that forward or not."

Still, the residents of Attawandaron Road have hope that they can save the park.

"It's not just a few people, it's the entire community," Kalman said. "We went door to door to every single home in this area and everybody had the same opinion: they want to keep our park."