When telling the story of the Holocaust, one effective way to overcome our sheer inability to comprehend the scope and scale of such atrocities is to zoom in on one or two stories: share one particular experience, in all its brutal specificity, and we have at least a small way into the event—the small details illuminate the larger whole.

One theatre company from the Netherlands, Hotel Modern, takes a related approach in KAMP (CAMP). The production depicts a typical day at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but instead of zooming in into a closeup, it shrinks everything down, literally, into miniature. It’s the accumulation of thousands of small details that has the impact in this case.

Eleanor McMahon thinks it’s time to change the conversation around cycling in Ontario.

McMahon is the founder of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, who will be hosting the fifth annual Ontario Bike Summit this week in Toronto. She says that we need to stop talking about things like bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure as a zero sum game between cars and bikes.

“We do polling, and our polling tells us that 89 per cent of Ontarians are both drivers and cyclists,” she says. “The notion that it’s cars versus bikes is overblown, and it’s really not working anymore. Deciding to change the conversation means going out of our way to poke holes in that idea and say from the get go ‘We don’t buy into that philosophy, and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true.’ ”

Regent Park Film Festival
Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre (585 Dundas Street East )
November 7–10
FREE

The Regent Park Film Festival celebrated a homecoming of sorts last night. The festival, which had left the neighbourhood for the last three years due to the Regent Park redevelopment project, hosted supporters, filmmakers, and media for a fundraiser and screening of the documentary We Are Wisconsin at their new home at the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre.

The Festival began in 2003, with a goal of providing Regent Park residents with high quality films—and specifically, ones that resonate with their experiences.

Gail Picco, chair of the festival’s board, says that this year’s festival, which kicks off on November 7, has a particularly special line-up: “The points of view in our films, you’re not going to find them at TIFF, you’re not even going to find them at Reel Asian.”

She points to one of this year’s selections, a short film called I’m Starting to Miss Him—in which the director talks about the death of his brother in a remote community in Northern Quebec—as proof of the the Regent Park Film Festival’s distinctive nature. “In three minutes, I’m going to be treated to something that somehow gets at the essence of being an aboriginal person in this country and losing somebody that’s near and dear,” she said.

Documentarian Hugh Gibson has two films in this year’s festival: A Safer Stroll and Harm Reduction. He says that the Regent Park Film Festival represents everything he loves about filmmaking. “I’m interested in social issue films and things with a different perspective,” he said. “They show a different side of things… It’s free, it’s very accessible. I love the program, I love the mindset. I’m very happy to be a part of this.”

We Are Wisconsin is a documentary about the 2011 occupation of the state Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, after legislators there attempted to force a pay cut on public sector employees, while simultaneously stripping them of their collective bargaining rights. Program director Richard Fung says he chose the film for the fundraiser screening because it shows a community standing together in pursuit of a common goal, something he says he’d like to see more of in Regent Park.

“You see the community in Madison come together so quickly to stand up against Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill,” Fung said. “I wish we could get Regent Park together like that to deal with our issues. It is happening now, we’re starting to have community meetings now… But it shows how one small city can get together and have one big voice, and soon one small community in Toronto will get together and have one big voice.”

The new Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre is hard to miss. It’s covered in glass and blocks of colour, a continuation of the design from the Painbtox condos attached to it. Sitting on a block of Dundas Street just east of Parliament, the new 60,000-square-foot building is part of the second phase of the ongoing revitalization of Regent Park. Last Friday, we joined a media tour of the inside.

Funding for the $34-million project came from the federal and provincial governments, who each contributed $12 million. The remaining $10 million was raised by Artscape, who manage the space. The building opens to the public this Saturday.

The architects on this project, Diamond Schmitt, are no strangers to building monumental arts centres. (They’re the firm behind the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen Street and University Avenue.) But with this project, says Artscape President and CEO Tim Jones, designers couldn’t “look at a model [for cultural centres] and plop it down,” because they had to consider what culture meant to this community.

The result: a space custom built to house seven tenants, showcase art, and foster cultural connections and innovations. Most of the tenants are arts groups that had already been operating in the neighbourhood.

Before moving into their space on the second floor, ArtHeart Community Art Centre—which offers completely free studio space and visual arts materials—was working out of the church across the street. The Regent Park School of Music down the hall had been operating from a church too, and more recently from a row house they bought on Queen Street East. In the new building, they have space that includes heretofore unknown luxuries like soundproof practice studios and a classroom space that doubles as a recital room.

Tim Svirklys, a studio manager for ArtHeart, told reporters last Friday that his organization’s new proximity to the School of Music has already helped attract some students. Parents visiting the music school wandered down the hall and found the art studio.

“Now the kids are signed up for music class and art classes,” said Svirklys. It’s this sort of collaboration and cross-pollination that the centre strives to foster. As project architect Jennifer Mallard said, the hallways were all built wide to allow for interaction among community members. The idea was for parents picking up their kids from art class to have space to mingle with, say, staff from the Regent Park Film Festival.

The Centre for Social Innovation occupies the entire third floor of the centre, making this their third co-work space in Toronto. There is still desk space left to rent, according to manager Natasha Stephens.

The ground floor houses performance and practice spaces for COBA Collective of Black Artists, a dance and music group, and Native Earth Performing Arts. In addition to the tenants’ performance spaces, there is a 400-seat theatre on the main floor with flexible seating and room dividers to accommodate a range of programming. It will also serve as the permanent screening room for the Regent Park Film Festival, which has been nomadic for the past few years after losing its office space in the revitalization process.

The theatre opens onto a courtyard with an outdoor stage, which will be the site for Manifesto Festival’s launch party on Friday night. And though the area, like much of the neighbourhood, is currently surrounded by heavy construction equipment, it will eventually be situated on a new street: Regent Park Boulevard. The roadway will run along the eastern perimeter of the centre, from Nelson Mandela Park Public School in the south to the park on the north side of Dundas Street. The plan is for the new street eventually to be a place for farmers’ markets and other outdoor community events.

The Arts and Cultural Centre opens onto the outdoors with large sliding glass panels that line most of the eastern side. This northeast corner on the main floor is home to the Artscape Lounge. Tim Jones calls this space Regent Park’s living room. It’s the kind of gathering space that had been lacking in the neighbourhood’s original design.

Tenants are starting to make themselves at home. COBA has already hosted some open houses. Native Earth is running rehearsals. When we visited last week, floors were being mopped, lights rigged, and pianos tuned.

Break a leg, Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre.

That picture, above, is what the part of Regent Park around Blevins Place will look like in a few years, if the City gives the go-ahead. It’s part of the Regent Park revitalization’s third phase, the details of which were announced yesterday.

At the moment, the area is classic Regent Park: an isolated campus of aging residential high-rises rented as social housing by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. (For reference, here is what the area looked like the last time Google’s streetview cameras rolled through.)

TCHC and its construction partner, the Daniels Corporation, want to turn the area into several blocks of street-level retail and mixed-income housing. There would be about 2,000 market-rate condos, and some 550 subsidized rental apartments. All of it would be built around a new outdoor sports facility called the Regent Park Athletic Grounds, to be paid for with funds raised by the MLSE Team Up Foundation, the charitable arm of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.

The thing you see in the image is a soccer field that can be converted into a cricket pitch. There would also be a basketball court, as well some refurbishment for the existing hockey rink.

TCHC is hoping to file the necessary rezoning application by early 2013. That would be a first step toward getting official City approval for all of this.

A map of the different construction phases involved in the Regent Park redevelopment, past and future. Click for a zoomed-in view.

Regent Park’s redevelopment has been ongoing since 2005. The first two phases have already replaced some aging towers with new condo buildings and community amenities. A new arts and cultural centre and a new aquatic centre are both set to open this fall.

It all looks great on paper. Granted, the original Regent Park did too, when it was originally planned and built, in the late ’40s and into the ’50s. It turned into an insular, impoverished community.

But so far, this second attempt at urban revitalization is looking like the real deal.

Images courtesy of TCHC.

/// Re-ply \\\
Parliament Street between Wellesley and Gerrard
June 8–17
FREE

A series of mostly unmarked art installations has gone up in Regent Park and St. James Town, scattered variously near Parliament Street between Wellesley and Gerrard. Part of Luminato, they are the work of street artist Dan Bergeron, a.k.a., Fauxreel, who famously created those stunning two-storey-tall wheatpasted images of local residents that were stuck to the sides of buildings back in 2008.

This year, as Luminato’s artist-in-residence, Bergeron repurposes Toronto’s ubiquitous brightly coloured condo-ad boards to create /// Re-ply \\\. Many of his installations can be interacted with by the community: in the middle of a grassy field at Winchester Park, next to the Hugh Garner Housing Co-operative, one piece called House of Condo Ad Cards uses those plywood ad boards to form a 15.5-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide triangular house of cards—though to the kids living in the adjacent housing co-op, the sculpture makes for a very novel new jungle gym, as they climb in and out of the various sections on each level of this giant pyramid.

At the far north end of the park, a second installation uses the same materials to create another sculpture that doubles as a jungle gym. This one, called Toronto Housing Price Index, looks suspiciously like a staircase. In fact, it uses stacked and hacked-up condo-ad boards to recreate a bar graph—specifically, the Toronto Real Estate Board’s graph [PDF] showing the average prices of a Toronto house between 1966 ($21,360) and now (nearly half a million dollars).

For Bergeron’s /// Re-ply \\\, the artist also spent three months working with Grade 4 to 8 students in five different elementary schools in Regent Park, St. James Town, and Parkdale to “explore themes of location and transformation.” The result of that collaboration can be seen in the window of an abandoned storefront (which, according to one resident passing by, used to be a Mr. Sub) on the northwest corner of Parliament and Gerrard, where students of Winchester Public School have created self-portraits inspired by Bergeron’s distinctive street-art style.

Walking on and around Parliament Street, you might unexpectedly run into a number of Bergeron’s condo ad–inspired installations, a series of 3D sculptures that provides a contrast to his more common 2D work. Bergeron is a long-time proponent of community interaction and discussion about the ways art can shape a community, so if you’re hoping he’ll shed some more light on his newest work, the artist will be part of a Luminato Illuminations lunchtime discussion this Thursday, June 14, with architect Donald Schmitt of Diamond Schmitt Architects.

Regent Park construction, February 2012. Photo by {a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindaedwards/6904019323/sizes/z/in/photostream/}Linda Edwards{/a} from the {a href=http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}

In 2007, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation opted to embark on a $1-billion, 15-year revitalization of Regent Park, a social housing development, parts of which are more than sixty years old. According to the TCHC website, the current redevelopment will include “diverse architecture, expanding and reconnecting the road networks and adding new pedestrian-friendly streets maintained by the City.”

The project will increase the number of people living in the development by a little more than 50 per cent, and will add market-rate condos to the mix, whereas before, the neighbourhood had been defined by its many rent-geared-to-income housing units. A number of brand-new shared community spaces will also be built, including new spots for stores and other types of businesses.

Now, five years later, the occasionally controversial undertaking is about to see its first major results: the completion of renovations on the neighbourhood’s nearly-century-old Nelson Mandela Park Public School and development of an adjoining, integrated community hub.

“This idea of a community hub is really all about facilitating community interaction and overcoming isolation,” explains Susan Lewin of CS&P Architects, the firm behind the project. “The trustee for the school, in our opening meeting, told us to dream no small dreams.”

Construction on the school began about a year ago and is slated to wrap before classes start in September 2012. The community centre is set to begin construction this summer. The combined facilities, when complete, will serve as what Lewin describes as a “key platform” in the reimagined neighbourhood—”a whole basket of activities and uses.”

A rendering of the Regent Park Community Centre, scheduled to start construction this summer. Image courtesy of {a href=http://www.csparch.com/#section=3&category=10&page=82}CS&P Architects{/a}.

Much of the community hub’s functionality is designed with children and youth in mind. “We’re seeing the school and the community centre as one integrated facility,” Lewin says. “Within the school we have a new City of Toronto childcare on the same level as the kindergartens. So, what we’re doing within the school is reducing transitions for children between different programs.”

Lewin points out that, with the community centre, transitions between activities for older kids will also be reduced. “They can finish school and then just go over to the community centre and play some basketball or go out into the playground,” she explains, adding that computer lounges, game centres, and gym spaces within the centre are being developed specifically with youth in mind.

There will also be a new library in the school that will be open to the public, as well as a new green schoolyard—complete with a community garden—as a public park space for all to enjoy. An employment centre is also part of the package. The whole complex is intended to foster a sense of Sesame Street-style togetherness central to the greater revitalization vision. The hoped-for outcome is a high-density, mixed income, mixed-use space that brings together a melange of people.

“Revitalization has been a catalyst for other positive changes in the area and we’re happy to know that the new facilities will be able to accommodate the growth in the community,” says Sinead Canavan, a spokesperson for TCHC. “The cumulative impact of revitalization is even greater than the sum of the parts.”

Or, as Lewin puts it: “The community hub is really intended to be a hive of activity, to really promote a sense of community and build engagement and a sense of belonging.”

Etobicoke Clerk's Dept. photo of officials touring a residential development, likely Don Mills, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 213, Series 1464, File 7, Item 3.

With the passage of provincial legislation on April 2, 1953, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto became a legal reality, joining together the City of Toronto with its twelve neighbouring municipalities in a regional federation. But few of the region’s 1.1 million inhabitants perceived Metro Toronto, with its combination of dense urbanization and abundant farmland, as a physical reality.

So, when an interim administration was established under inaugural Metro Chairman Frederick G. Gardiner on April 15, 1953, to prepare for the regional government’s full assumption of duties on January 1, 1954, one of the first tasks was to sell the concept of Metro as a reality—at least to those City aldermen and suburban mayors and reeves who would be governing it through the Metro Council.

To do so, on April 30 Gardiner and his hand-picked director of planning, Tracy Deavin leMay, led two busloads of area politicians and bureaucrats on a 70-mile tour to inspect the present state of Metro and outline future plans for growth and development.

Travelling to the far-flung corners of the territory, they passed through each of the now-federated area municipalities (except Forest Hill) and suffered Metro’s extremes, from “bumpy dust-covered suburban roads” to “rush-hour city traffic,” as the Globe and Mail (May 1, 1953) later put it.

By James T. Lemon’s count in Toronto Since 1918 (James Lorimer & Company, 1985), the tour highlighted almost 100 sites, projects, or proposals, particularly those related to water supply and sewage disposal, regional transportation routes, planning, and housing—all now areas of Metro responsibility. The officials observed, one newspaper touted, almost $1 billion of growth that had occurred in the previous five years, in the form of new apartment blocks, shopping plazas, and sites zoned for industrial development.

And as Gardiner presented Metro’s possibilities and problems and its plans for growth in the coming decades—many of which had been outlined in a 1943 master plan composed by leMay’s Toronto City Planning Board—city and suburban officials alike, a newspaper argued, gained “insight into the problems they [had] to solve.”

Toronto Star (May 1, 1953)

After the buses departed City Hall, the first stop of the tour, the Parkdale Pumping Station, served as a perfect illustration of why Metro had been created.

At the Second World War, Greater Toronto was compact, comprising three highly urbanized municipalities—Toronto, East York, and the Township of York—and surrounded by farmland and tiny settlements. But as pressures of outward expansion and urbanization increased, these sparsely populated municipalities proved unable to cope with the necessity of developing water and sewage infrastructure, or unwilling to broaden their tax bases through the industrial development required to fund such services. The City of Toronto, needing room to grow, pleaded with the province to expand the city’s jurisdiction through amalgamation. The province’s compromise was federation, whereby common issues, like the provision of infrastructure and services across local boundaries, could be tackled on a regional basis without sacrificing local-level governance.

When the tour visited, the capacity of the Parkdale Pumping Station was being increased to push nearly 3 billion gallons of water daily up to York and North York townships. Later that day, officials also visited the R.C. Harris Water Filtration Plant and the Ashbridge’s Bay sewage disposal plant, both of which were also undergoing capacity upgrades to better serve outlying districts until Metro could construct an infrastructure network to support orderly development on the fringe.

Metro Chairman Frederick G. Gardiner, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 3050.

Aboard one bus, Gardiner “outlined the important problems and possible solutions, advanced by planning officials,” as one reporter observed. Aboard the other bus was leMay, the man whom, as the City of Toronto’s chief planner for over four decades, had been responsible for the vast majority of the regional solutions so far advanced.

Trained as a surveyor in his native England and having apprenticed at a Toronto firm, leMay was appointed city surveyor in 1910 at 26 years of age. Although leMay was primarily charged with completing legal surveys, tasks were progressively added to his portfolio, including civic beautification, the review and approval of subdivision layouts and high-rise development, street design and traffic engineering, and the consolidation of zoning by-laws. His duties had always included a degree of urban planning and his title evolved over time; he was elevated to the position of planning commissioner in 1930 then made secretary-treasurer of the Toronto City Planning Board (TCPB) in 1942, and its successor, the Toronto York Planning Board (TYPB), upon that body’s creation in 1947.

Map from the Toronto Planning Board's Master Plan for the City of Toronto and Environs (1943).

Enlisting the assistance of expert town planners, architects, and engineers in 1943, the TCPB composed a comprehensive plan for next 30 years of the city’s growth, The Master Plan for the City of Toronto and Environs (1943). But rightly perceiving “that the political boundaries of the City [bore] no relation to the social and economic life of its people,” as the plan put it, the TCPB attempted “to co-ordinate the physical development of the Metro Area as one geographic, economic and social unit.” The plan anticipated the necessity of some form of metropolitan unification a decade before Metro’s creation—although it was very brief, and short on implementation details.

It was a visionary plan, adapting international trends in urban planning for the local context, and incorporating elements from previous city proposals or initiatives. Nevertheless, the 1943 plan had, as Don W. Thomson argues in Men and Meridians, Volume 3 (Queen’s Printer, 1969), “very far-reaching effects upon the development of post-war Toronto.” It was a formative influence on the early days of Metro, and many of its specific suggestions were featured as sites visited or proposals discussed during the bus tour.

Aerial view of Gardiner Expressway, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 47, Item 5.

Gardiner envisioned, in one reporter’s words, “a solid industrial belt, stretching from Oshawa on the east to Niagara Falls on the west.” The weak link in this chain was Toronto in the middle, which had plenty of industry but terrible traffic. Like most provincial highways, the Queen Elizabeth Way ended at the city limits, dumping highway drivers onto the Lakeshore at the Humber River, creating “Metropolitan Toronto’s most urgent traffic problem,” according to a 1954 pamphlet by leMay, promoting three self-guided driving tours of Metro.

A waterfront superhighway, elevated between Bathurst and Cherry Streets, was deemed the only adequate solution for speedy access from the city limits to downtown, Gardiner explained to his bus-riding audience. It was to be one leg in an interconnected network of expressways called for in the 1943 plan. Another was the province’s Toronto By-Pass Highway (now known as the 401), which was already in operation from near Weston Road to beyond Yonge Street.

Toronto traffic, ca. 1950, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1128, Series 381, File 319, Item 12641-20.

Proposed solutions to the city’s traffic problems would be a recurring theme of the bus tour. By 1939, the area’s existing road system was 30 per cent overcapacity and had only worsened despite the efforts of leMay and other bureaucrats to solve congestion. As if to underline the centrality of the problem’s scale, the tour buses kept getting stuck in traffic.

In trying to navigate around one jam, the bus guided by leMay got lost.

As the tour travelled north from the village of Long Branch, talk turned to the plan to expand Highway 27 (Brown’s Line) into a four-lane route carrying workers to the industrial districts of Etobicoke and defense-industry jobs in Malton.

Construction of bridge on Jane Street at Black Creek, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 43, Item 9.

Then, after a steak-and-fixings lunch at the Old Mill Inn, the bus tour drove along St. Clair Avenue past the construction project at the northern end of the extension of Spadina from MacPherson Avenue. It was the first stage of the 1943 plan to use ravines to extend the road up to Wilson Avenue, a proposal which had been long delayed due to the opposition of the York and North York townships. Ironically, just over a decade later, the northern suburbs would be among the strongest proponents of upgrading Spadina from roadway to expressway.

Farther along St. Clair, the officials took advantage of the Mount Pleasant extension—recently completed to extend Jarvis Street up to Eglinton Avenue, at a cost of $4 million—to get to Leaside.

Beyond visiting more industrial areas, such as Scarborough’s Golden Mile strip and the Golden Gate Industrial Area north of O’Connor Drive in East York, officials looked at the region’s undeveloped fringe. Luckily, not knowing what to expect in the wilds of the Metropolitan hinterland, some downtown aldermen had brought rubber boots.

Etobicoke Clerk's Department photo of potential site for development, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 213, Series 1464, File 29, Item 4.

Here, Gardiner explained, he hoped “the Metropolitan Planning Board [would] have regional authority to prevent haphazard industrial and residential growth.” Although he was usually opposed to state authority constraining business, Gardiner expressed unbridled support for Metro’s planning powers, proclaiming on another occasion that the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board (MTPB) was to be “the most important thing in the whole metropolitan setup.” The MTPB, with leMay as planning director, would have broad planning and zoning powers, not only over Metro but also over 500 square miles of adjacent land beyond its borders.

As Timothy J. Colton argues in Big Daddy (University of Toronto Press, 1980), Gardiner took an active interest in planning but recognized that he wasn’t the generator of ideas. Rather, taking advice of his experts, he selected which proposals ought to be fought for in the political sphere, and then bulldozed them through approvals.

Etobicoke Clerk's Department photo of potential site for development, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 213, Series 1464, File 29, Item 11.

In his decades as a bureaucrat, leMay had proven to be politically astute and adept at reconciling “local self-interests with the high ideals of planning,” as his friend Humphrey Carver said. Gardiner knew this well; the two had worked closely on the TYPB when Gardiner had been its chairman. So leMay was the natural choice as Metro’s first planning director in 1953, and staff loyalty ensured that many of his employees at the City joined him with the new department.

LeMay shared with Gardiner a reputation as an extremely hard worker, spending night after night in his office and taking much on himself rather than delegating. On different occasions, he and Gardiner both had to be hospitalized for conditions stemming from overwork. A quiet, unassuming man, leMay emphasized the need to educate stakeholders and build consensus through committee work. Although he was, by some accounts, an engaging and wryly humorous public speaker, leMay seemed happy enough to leave bold public pronouncements to Gardiner.

York Downs Drive, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 82.

LeMay also shared Gardiner’s and the Metro Council’s pragmatic planning philosophy, where—through their provision of infrastructure and roadways—Metro was to be an enabler of natural growth undertaken by private enterprise.

This was seen clearly on the Metro tour by its emphasis on the industrial sites and residential development being built by private companies. As an example of private development done right, the bus stopped on Lawrence Avenue at the offices of the Don Mills Development Co., where the tour group examined a contour map of the ambitious development then under construction—at half the density of downtown neighbourhoods.

To enable the planned community’s growth, Eglinton Avenue was being extended, at a cost of $4 million, over the Don Valley to connect the existing portion in Scarborough with Leaside near Laird Drive.

Construction of bridge on Eglinton Avenue East at Don Valley Parkway, 1950s, from the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 52, Item 1.

Regent Park, then also under construction and another tour stop, presented the other end of Metro’s housing spectrum during the tour. Undertaken as a result of the 1934 Bruce Report, the 44-acre social-housing project was then considered a model of how Metro could use its powers over housing in the future. The tour also identified the Humber Valley Golf Course as another site for low-income housing development.

The tour concluded where it began, at City Hall, with exhausted officials disembarking after a seven-hour excursion. Although much of what they had seen and heard had been outlined in the 1943 Master Plan, proposals for future growth would be updated and formalized in the MTPB’s 1959 Official Plan. This far more detailed document was developed by leMay’s successor as planning director, Murray V. Jones.

LeMay died, at 70 years of age, in July 1954, after 44 years as a civil servant. One observer called him “primarily the father of town planning…in Ontario.”

Gardiner got off to a rocky start with Jones. Where leMay was a man of practical field experience, which Gardiner respected, Jones had enjoyed a formal academic education in planning—too much of which Gardiner considered impractical in the politically charged municipal environment. It took a degree of feuding with Jones before he and Gardiner found a way to work together effectively.

In that sense, beyond the grand vision extolled and construction projects visited on that April day in 1953, the Metro tour highlighted the collaborative relationship between the inaugural chairman and his hand-picked chief planner in Metro’s formative days.

Other sources consulted: Humphrey Carver, Compassionate Landscape (University of Toronto Press, 1975); Graham Fraser, “Planning vs. Development: Placing Bets on Toronto’s Future,” in Alan Powell, ed., The City: Attacking Modern Myths (McClelland and Stewart, 1972); Tracy D. leMay, Tour of Metropolitan Toronto (Board of Trade of the City of Toronto, 1954); James T. Lemon, “Tracy Deavin LeMay: Toronto’s First Planning Commissioner, 1930–1954,” City Planning, 1, No. 4 (1984); Albert Rose, Governing Metropolitan Toronto: A Social and Political Analysis, 1953-1971 (University of California Press, 1972); John Sewell, The Shape of the Suburbs (University of Toronto Press, 2009); and the Toronto Star (May 1, 1953; July 28 & 29, 1954).

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

CORRECTION: APRIL 23, 12:22 PM As pointed out to us by a reader, the lead image in this article, though it comes from the Etobicoke Clerk’s archives, does not actually appear to be of Etobicoke. We have updated the image caption to reflect this.

Once a shabby, forgotten corner of the city, the area under and around the Eastern Avenue, Richmond, and Adelaide overpasses is now undergoing a major revitalization.

Although Underpass Park hasn’t officially opened, Waterfront Toronto has confirmed that the two eastern-most sections are almost complete and will become available to riled-up kids and harried parents alike later this summer. The park will feature a skateboard park and half courts, a community gathering area, and a play area featuring unique jungle gym equipment. A piece of suspended public art by local artist Paul Raff is also set to be installed within the next month (it will be reflective, to attract what light is available).

The final section by St. Lawrence Street, a green space, will be unveiled in September.

Waterfront Toronto’s Meg Davis admits that the area under the overpasses were considered “derelict” and were not originally part of the organization’s West Don Lands revitalization project. But when a developer submitted a plan for the space, the wheels started turning.

With new affordable housing going in just north of Underpass Park—and 50 per cent of those residents expected to be families with young children—Davis said that the park will serve the new neighborhood well.

“Wouldn’t it be great on a rainy day your kids are driving you crazy…you can go to Underpass Park and play on the playscape and be weather protected and the kids can get activity and get out of your hair, so to speak,” said Davis.

Diane MacLean of the Regent Park Community Health Centre agrees that Underpass Park will be a welcome part of the redevelopment of the wider area, including the West Don Lands and Regent Park.

“[The area is] undergoing a true revitalization, physical, as well as how you create social cohesion–gatherings, how people come together,” said MacLean. “One thing that I think is great about Underpass Park is that for space that is considered unusable for a long time…it’s going to bring a whole opportunity for people to find new ways to come together.”

MacLean hopes that by injecting life into the underpasses, a sense of safety and ownership will be restored. She would also like to see Underpass Park become part of a Discovery Walk that would further connect Regent Park with the wider community.

It appears at least that the project is unaffected by the political circus that the Port Lands inspired last summer and the “accelerated” plan for development there. “The City, the feds, and the province are all cooperating with us nicely on this project, on the West Don Lands and on Underpass Park,” said Davis.

Underpass Park will officially open in July.

Margaret Atwood and your grandma (I don’t know, it’s early) and also you will be pleased to hear that Toronto Public Library branches resume service at 10:30 a.m. today. Library workers are going back to work after approving a new deal with the board, and voting yesterday to end the 11-day strike. The union has attained lay-off protection for employees with 11 or more years of seniority—a significant feat, considering Mayor Rob Ford’s administration’s typical stance on granting total security to full-time, unionized city employees with less than 15 years of work on them. Apparently, the popularity of the Library helped give it some sway; it’s kind of the alpha kid of city unions right now. Workers will see a wage freeze this year, followed by a bit of a raise, and CUPE local 4948 said benefits and full-time jobs won’t be reduced; still, the union has expressed some concern over insufficient job security for part-timers.

Remember when Councillor Doug Ford thought a monorail would solve all the city’s problems? Or, y’know, make the Toronto waterfront better? That was cute. But really, the result of Ford trying to wrest control of the Port Lands from Waterfront Toronto is in the headlines today: his proposals, though mostly shot down, triggered a review of the agency’s years-in-the-making, $634-million plan to do things like naturalizing the Don River. The review is, apparently, a sort of compromise, and is looking into the prospect of more development opportunities for the waterfront area. (Read: less space for nature-y stuff). This possible shift in plans has right pissed off architect and urban designer Ken Greenberg, who says his team was not consulted by the city or Waterfront Toronto in considering changes to their design for a riverside park at the mouth of the Don River.

Yesterday’s news reported the purchase of Regent Park condos by former Toronto Community Housing Corporation executives was okayed by the City’s former integrity commissioner. Today, the Globe and Mail reports that Daniels Corporation, the company that redeveloped the inner-city neighbourhood, is defending some of its executives’ purchases of condominiums in Regent Park. Rather than trying to push out poor people, as has been suggested, Daniels’ Vice President Martin Blake said executives were simply trying to demonstrate their confidence in an area typically associated with social stigma. Who doesn’t love a scandal, right? But it looks like this one may be averted.

And, if you were worried about city councillors never having any fun (just kidding, that’d be a weird thing to concern yourself with), take heart in the knowledge that yesterday morning saw councillors and city staff getting a professional pole dance show, courtesy of a dancer who went by “Viviana.” Y’know, ’cause how else would they be able to understand a review of adult entertainment regulations? But also, probably, because politicians couldn’t be properly hypocritical without getting off on something and then publicly disparaging it. Sorry, too bitter?

The mayor has pissed some people off again…fin.

Wait, fine, there’s more. Basically, Rob Ford has drawn criticism within city council for invoking the 2014 municipal election as a potential saving grace against LRT-loving lefties. After losing last week’s fateful transit vote, the mayor used his weekly radio show to rouse like-minded citizens to run against the 24 pro–light rail councillors in the next election, encouraging people to call his “direct personal line.” Councillor Josh Matlow, for one, was unimpressed, suggesting the mayor should not turn his office into a “perpetual campaign hotline.” Apparently, Ford apologized to him, then reneged on it and mocked Matlow on a subsequent radio show. Cla-ssy. Ford, for his part, chalked the whole thing up to his love of democracy.

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation is looking into controversial Regent Park condo purchases made by two of its former executives. The review comes in response to a story broken by the Toronto Sun over the weekend; in addition to the two former TCHC employees in question, three executives at Daniels Corporation, the company in charge of Regent Park development, allegedly used public money to buy condos in an area intended for lower-income residents.

A community centre at Bathurst Street and Finch Avenue West has fallen through the bureaucratic cracks. Although city council voted a year ago to give Antibes Community Centre official “priority centre” status—thereby making all programs free for children and seniors—the City’s recreation chief will not implement the designation. Why? Because this year’s budget called into question free programming for non-adults at priority centres, and, in the ensuing chaos, Antibes seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. In January, a council vote knocked down a budget proposal to instate fees for all priority centres, but now there’s a disagreement among City staff about whether Antibes was ever officially made a priority centre. So, for now, seniors and families must pay for programming. Extra sucky in an area that has among the highest percentage of seniors in the city.

Ensconced in the cozy, centre-of-the-universe, urban bubble that is Toronto, it’s easy to forget about the hate-on so many non-Torontonian Canadians have for our city. But something like the just-outside-the-GTA town councils of Clarington and New Tecumseth both voting this week to stop the Toronto building industry from dumping waste in their landfills kinda reminds you, eh?

And of course, everyone is still all abuzz about the provincial budget, which the Liberals tabled yesterday. It includes the institution of a large number of not-really-spelled-out “efficiencies” and a freeze on personal and corporate income taxes, and also calls for a public-sector wage freeze, leading to worries about striking civil servants and teachers. The opposition parties were predictably aghast, although for opposite reasons—leading us to conclude the document is actually pretty balanced, all things considered. More locally, if Luminato is/was your bag, prepare to bristle at potential changes, as the budget will reduce funding for a number of Toronto’s cultural and arts institutions, including the AGO, the ROM and the Ontario Science Centre. If you never really understood what Luminato was, it’s still okay to be sad.

CORRECTION: 9:06 AM This post originally suggested that the provincial budget passed yesterday. The budget was tabled, but has not yet passed. We have also revised the last paragraph to include more details about the budget.

Laurence Lemieux in rehearsal.

The intersection of Dundas and Parliament has come a long way in the past few years. Situated at the base of Regent Park, the neighbourhood has evolved from one of the highest crime areas in Toronto to the site of a massive urban redesign. The corner is now home to pricey condos, a sparkling Sobey’s, and, as of today, The Citadel—a brand new public dance studio and community yoga space.

Dating back to 1912, The Citadel is housed in a three-storey building formerly owned by The Salvation Army, who gave the structure its name (all Salvation Army churches were called citadels, as indicated by the sign at the top of the building). The brainchild of husband-and-wife dance team Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux, the project was planned over two years ago, when the duo bought the building for their dance troupe, Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie. Having recently moved to Toronto from Montreal, Coleman and Lemieux were hoping to find a living and working space where their two children could grow up and their company could produce and perform contemporary dance.

“We’re a young family and we don’t have massive means financially, so we were looking for a space in Regent Park, which was the appropriate price range. We purchased this building, and then afterwards we found out that we were kitty-corner to a really big urban revitalization project,” says Coleman. “After living here, we’ve become involved with the community.”

The property was completely gutted, and Lemieux and Coleman began a massive renovation on the three-story brick structure. Now complete, the main floor features a state-of-the-art dance studio and performance space, which can seat up to 60 people and features the only complete grid of LED theatre lights in Canada. The building’s first floor houses a professional yoga studio, which will be home to pay-what-you-can yoga classes as part of an initiative between the CLC and The YogaBeat, a project organized by Felicia Ross of Moksha Yoga. The third floor serves as the family’s residence.

Coleman and Lemieux are committed to making the space as accessible to the local community as possible. “The yoga’s PWYC, and Laurence is offering a free Saturday morning dance class. Before, we were doing partnerships with the local schools—teaching classes and workshops out in the community,” says Coleman. “Now that the building is renovated, they can come here and use our space. The dance shows will be affordable, and the space is affordable to rent, so the dance community and the local community can use it.”

The building’s renovations, designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects, took two years to complete and cost $2 million. The project was partially funded through the City of Toronto, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the Canadian Cultural Spaces Fund, along with private donations. But according to Lemieux, their work isn’t done yet. “We still have lots and lots of money to raise to pay back what we borrowed to renovate the place,” she says. With this in mind, the couple has created a campaign called Brick by Brick, where contributors can donate anywhere from $25 (for a brick, to complete the building’s façade) to $80,000 (for the cost of the LED light system).

While the building may not yet be fully paid off, Coleman and Lemieux are eager to kick off their company’s season. The Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie’s first show of the year, a solo piece choreographed and performed by Lemieux entitled Les cheminements de l’Influence (Pathways of Influence), opens tomorrow at The Citadel and runs until February 25. The YogaBeat’s PWYC classes are slated to begin this Saturday.

For Jason Kandankery, a vice-principal at the neighbouring Regent Park/Duke of York Junior Public School, the opening couldn’t come soon enough. “This is a wonderful opportunity to fuse teaching and learning through art,” he says. Kandankery has been working with Coleman and Lemieux ever since Lemieux began teaching dance workshops for the Grade 3 students at his school. “I hope we can have both the student and parent community come into this space, and show them the power of dance and drama,” he says.

Coleman and Lemieux are confident that the community will take advantage of The Citadel. Coleman recalls that before construction began on the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre, studies showed that community residents requested more opportunities to see and learn dance in their neighbourhood. “Dance is a great thing, “ he says. “It’s healthy physically, it has the benefits of participating and interacting with people, and it’s something all cultures can share.”