Downsview Park is as integral to Toronto’s future as Central Park is to Manhattan’s.
Although this is a bold assertion to some, consider this: Downsview Park’s green space is as distant from our downtown core as Central Park’s is from Manhattan’s lower downtown.
Specifically, Downsview Park is almost identical in physical distance, driving time, and number of subway stops from Union Station as Central Park is from Manhattan’s lower docks. Imagine if it had been decided in the 1850s to hive Central Park into apartment blocks.
The federal government is currently attempting such a small-minded fire sale of Downsview Park, and Canadians cannot allow it to continue.Toronto has no shortage of condominium towers. One only has to look at the cranes in our skies to see the evidence. However, our green space is a resource whose scarcity is becoming more pronounced every year.
In a few decades we will lament the loss of any parkland we had the chance to save. Downsview Park, if permitted to be sold by the federal government to developers, will be considered a travesty by future Torontonians. We are at our own Central Park crossroads.
Downsview Park once had the title of Canada’s First Urban National Park, which was unceremoniously handed to the Rouge Valley along with necessary money to fund that green space’s operation. It is a political decision for the federal government, not one based on fiscal necessity, to sell off Downsview Park. Visit SetDownsviewFree.com and stand with me to save our green space.