June Callwood Park Is Dedicated

On July 19, Mayor David Miller and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, aided by June Callwood herself, cut a ribbon in a symbolic opening of the City’s newest park. Ms. Callwood, a journalist, broadcaster and social activist, is one of this country’s most beloved figures, well-known for her intelligence, wit and compassion. Now 81, she is living with inoperable cancer for which she has refused chemotherapy. The many great causes she has taken up include Casey House, an AIDS hospice named for her youngest son who was killed in a motor vehicle accident, and Nellie’s women’s shelter.

While the park site extending from Fleet Street to Fort York Boulevard is still partly occupied by a former brewery and a busy cement-mixing plant, these uses will be gone within a year or two, opening up a view corridor to and from Fort York’s southwest bastion. (See plan) This feature has been an important part of the vision offered by the Friends of Fort York for improving the fort’s setting. But June Callwood Park will win its greatest accolades as the figurative lungs of the emerging, densely developed Fort York Neighbourhood.

“I want it to be for the old and the young,” said Ms. Callwood, setting in motion the process for detailed planning of the park. This exercise will be carried forward by the City’s parks planners in conjunction with the first residents in the new neighbourhood, adjacent landowners, and staff at Fort York and Heritage Toronto. The area of the park will be an acre (0.4 ha.) in extent, about the same size as Berczy Park bounded by the Gooderham ‘Flat Iron’ building, Front, Scott and Wellington streets. With Coronation Park and the Mustering Ground behind the Armouries being so near to June Callwood Park, there will be no need for it to accommodate activities that take a lot of space, like frisbee-throwing and touch football. Rather, it is expected to be laid out with play areas for small children and quiet places to sit in the sun with a sandwich or a book.

Many of the costs for improving June Callwood Park to the standards set at Victoria Memorial Square at Portland and Niagara streets (which also is part of the Fort York National Historic Site) will come from levies on new condominiums in the area under so-called Section 37 agreements with the City. But another source of support for special elements, such as a piece of sculpture, may be the June Callwood Park Fund established by the Friends of Fort York. Gifts to the fund sent in care of the Friends at P. O. Box 183, 260 Adelaide St. E., Toronto, ON., M5A 1N1, will be tax-receipted.