Enjoying winter in Canada can take a bit of effort, especially when you’re navigating dark days, icy sidewalks and freezing temperatures. In a new guest author story, the voice of Kids in T.O. writes about how her children taught her to love winter again. 

"I didn’t think that I would ever enjoy winter again—that is, until my kids came along. I learned early on as a parent that whatever the season, getting my kids outside was a magic potion."

Read more about staying active, connecting with your community and connecting with nature in a whole new way.

Need some tips? Read the story →

Spending time outdoors supports children’s physical, mental and social development and helps spark the next generation of environmental stewards, advocates and caretakers. 

In our Outdoor Diaries series, we capture unfiltered takes from children and youth about being outdoors. In this episode, we met Henrietta and Sam as they reflected on the differences between indoor and outdoor play. Watch →

GREEN LIGHTS. I’ve never been more grateful for a walking commute. 
 
Thanks to some of Toronto’s treasured public spaces, my path to work carries me along a multi-use trail, through a cemetery and down into the largest urban ravine system in the world. Very few traffic jams.
 
But I'm also familiar with the frustration of getting around the city.  
 
Earlier this month, Toronto appointed its first-ever traffic czar. Officially called the Chief Congestion Officer, the role was created to tackle the city’s notorious gridlock, even if the new position means adding one more person to the daily crawl. 
 
How clogged has Toronto become? A recent CBC Marketplace investigation put a name to what many commuters already feel, identifying the stretch from the 905 west of Toronto into downtown as the worst commute in the country. Other GTA commutes are inching close behind. 
 
The city’s new gridlock guru is tasked with improving commute times. We might hear calls for congestion pricing, transit priority or clearing lanes blocked by construction or parking. How does public space (our favourite topic) fit into this? 
 
“Transportation is public space to be shared by pedestrians, bikes, transit and cars," says Project for Public Spaces. “The road, the parking lot, the transit terminal—these places can serve more than one mode (cars) and one purpose (movement).” 
 
Recreational trails, like the ones I take to get to the Brick Works, link neighbourhoods, transit hubs and employment areas, functioning like transit corridors, even if they’re a bit more tree-lined than the average road.  
 
Active transportation infrastructure isn’t a panacea for congestion. And it isn’t the only public space solution. In a December episode of CBC’s Cross Country Checkup, guest Shoshanna Saxe, Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto, spoke about investing in infrastructure like cycle networks. 
 
“One of the only ways to improve mobility and congestion for everybody is to get people who can go another way, to go another way because we give them cheap, easy and safe infrastructure.” 
 
Whether it's connected trails or complete streets, our community spaces can help us out of this (traffic) jam. I'm already one fewer car on the road.

🖊️ ETHAN ROTBERG, SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST | EVERGREEN

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Evergreen is a national non-profit transforming public spaces in our cities to build a healthier future for people and our planet.