A Park for All, 2018
Site-specific, painted mural, approximately 1300 feet (400 metres) long x variable height.
Sited on a riverbank retaining wall along the Don River in Toronto.
A public artwork commissioned by the non-profit organization Evergreen.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Claire Harvie.
A Park for All is a 1,300 foot (400 metre) long mural developed in response to an invitation to create a public artwork for the land around the Don River in Toronto. For many years, the area along the southern tip of the Don River emptying into Lake Ontario was a disregarded and marginal space, used by city workers as a snow dump, by unhoused residents for encampments, as a commuter bike path, and as a popular canvas for graffiti artists. The site is also host to an assortment of infrastructure: freight rail and gas pipelines running into the downtown core, a straightened portion of the river that serves as a flood channel, and most prominently, a busy six-lane parkway that runs along the eastern edge. In 1994, a disused quarry in the upper portion of the site underwent refurbishment into a cultural and commercial facility. The Evergreen Brickworks opened in 2010 and is where the non-profit organization Evergreen operates its sustainability-themed programs including a farmer’s market, educational workshops, and corporate events. Coinciding with the regeneration of the Brickworks and Evergreen’s masterplan for the entire Don River site (re-christened as the “Don River Valley Park”) are wider shifts in the landscape of North American cities, in particular the popularity of urban renewal schemes and a surge in real estate investment and property speculation. The text composed for the mural speaks to the complexity and heterogeneity of the Don River site. The list of users, occupants, and stakeholders described in the artwork range from the most powerful and affluent to the most marginalized and vulnerable, from those who are most local to the site to those who have an indirect impact, from those who naturally assume that the creation of a park is a wholly civic virtue to those who are more skeptical about the underlying motivations behind how any public resource—especially land—is allocated and used.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Claire Harvie.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Claire Harvie.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Drone Boyz.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Drone Boyz.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Drone Boyz.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Claire Harvie.
Installation detail, Don River, Toronto, Canada. Photo credit: Claire Harvie.
Study for A Park For All, 2017.