Green space gives new life to cemeteries
More and more (living) visitors come in search of some much-needed greenery.

thestar.com
By Peter Goffin
Oct. 25, 2016

A pair of cyclists, mother and young son, glide under the grand brick archway, past a dog walker, past a gaggle of teenage girls, past 140 years’ worth of graves, family crypts and mausoleums.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery on a Saturday afternoon is alive and bustling with walkers, joggers, bikes and strollers.

The sprawling property, which covers more than 800 square metres from Yonge St. to Bayview Ave. just south of Davisville Ave., does attract its share of mourners.

But more and more visitors come in search of some much needed greenery in midtown Toronto.

“It feels like a little hub of escapism,” said Rachel Cooke, who discovered the cemetery just a few months ago, and now stops by for a walk at least once a week.

“Once you enter, the trees surround you and you leave the outside world behind and it gives you time to deflate,” Cooke said. “I think there is something different from spending time walking through there than a regular park.

“It gives you a lot of perspective and appreciation for life.”

Mitchell Kosny, interim director at Ryerson University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, said cemeteries have become a part of the public realm after years of being sealed off, private places.

“The space has always been there,” said Kosny, who often runs through Mount Pleasant.

“What’s changing is the sense of the ownership of cemeteries . . . . We, in cities, are more diverse, our beliefs and our faiths about living and dying are different, and I think we have a different sense of what that space is and how we use it.”

Michael Black, a member of the pedestrian advocacy group Walk Toronto, has lived a couple of blocks away from the cemetery for around 30 years.

He walks and bikes through the cemetery all year-round, settling in to read a book or snap photos of tree blossoms in the good weather.

“There’s such a shortage of green space in the area that it serves, sort of, as an unofficial park,” he said.

York Cemetery serves the same purpose in the condo-heavy corridor near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave.

“(The areas are) in need of green space and the provision of public park land hasn’t kept up,” said Black.

Mount Pleasant Group, which operates 10 cemeteries in the GTA, welcomes recreational visitors with opens arms.

On its web page “Friends and Neighbours of Mount Pleasant,” the company has maps of walking and jogging routes that visitors can download and an extensive template for self-guided tours of the cemetery.

Rollerblading is prohibited in the cemetery, but cyclists are permitted, and bicycle racks have been added over the past few years.

Sean Marshall, another member of Walk Toronto, lives about 20 minutes’ walk from one of the city’s oldest cemeteries, the Toronto Necropolis in Cabbagetown.

“It’s more private. It’s quieter. It’s a place that you can just explore,” Marshall said of the Necropolis.

“It’s just a nice place to stroll, to walk without any particular purpose and just enjoy the nature and the heritage of that property.”

One of the big advantages of Mount Pleasant, said Marshall, is its link to the Kay Gardner Beltline, a trail that follows an old rail path from the cemetery all the way to Allen Rd., north of Eglinton Ave. W. This makes it, not only a recreation space, but part of a transportation corridor for people trying to bike across the city.

And, unlike so many spaces in Toronto, historic or not, cemeteries are relatively safe from developers’ bulldozers.

“Increasingly, the amount of space that is sacrosanct seems to be shrinking; we seem to have less of a hold on some of those spaces that are the fabric of the city,” said Kosny.

“I like the fact that the cemetery feels secured and enshrined.”