Donated toys were a big hit with kids and parents at this Toronto playground. Then the city tossed them

Brad Ross, the city’s chief communications officer, said staff regularly check playgrounds to ensure donated items “do not pose any safety hazards.”

Thestar.com
April 12, 2022
Joshua Chong

Jean Orava’s two-year-old grandson loved playing with the buckets and shovels in the sandpit at Cudmore Creek Park in midtown Toronto. Almost every day, Orava would accompany her grandson to the park, near Mt. Pleasant Road and Eglinton Avenue, where they would often be joined by dozens of parents and their toddlers from the nearby daycare.

The new park and playground, nestled in a quiet residential neighbourhood beside a church, was always a hive of activity. Some kids zoomed around on the asphalt on mini-karts, while others created castles in the sandbox with buckets and shovels -- some of the toys donated by community members for local children to enjoy.

“The playground has really morphed into a community park with these young toddlers,” said Orava. “The donated toys -- it’s the first thing the kids make a beeline to. Little toddlers just look forward to playing with them.”

At least until last month, when the city cleared the playground of all its toys.

Now, the mini-cars and tricycles are gone. The large sandpit -- a favourite among the little tykes -- is bereft of its shovels and buckets. With the toys removed in one fell swoop, community members like Orava are left scratching their heads as to why the city would remove these seemingly innocuous items that brought joy to kids in the neighbourhood, and which are a common sight at parks and playgrounds across the city.

“It’s rather sad that the city has been a bit overzealous when you know the kids are now trying to get outside and play,” said Orava. “It just does seem a bit Grinch-like to me.”

Brad Ross, chief communications officer for the city, told the Star in an email that staff regularly check playgrounds to ensure items left behind “do not pose any safety hazards.” Toys are only removed if they are broken, rusting or unstable. Some parks with a large number of toys will also be cleared, but staff would post notices advising residents where they can retrieve unbroken toys, Ross said.

“The city understands and appreciates community-minded toy sharing gestures and only removes toys and other items from parks that may be hazardous to anyone attending a playground,” he added.

Sara Evans, a mother who frequently brings her two-year-old daughter and six-year-old son to the park, said most of the toys were fully functional and safe: “A lot of the toys were very nice, and they were not broken. So for them to take them and just throw them out kind of sucks.”

Orava noted that guardians often discarded broken toys themselves. “In fairness, the parents were watching and if anything was broken, I’ve seen broken toys just put by the recycle bins to be thrown out,” she said.

But Shane Gerard, a spokesperson for parks, forestry and recreation, contends that the toys were “mostly broken” and says the clearing on March 29 was part of “spring cleanup work.”

“Staff posted a notice at the time of clearing to advise the public that they can retrieve any of the non-broken toys that were removed from Sunnybrook Yard,” he said.

Though not a formal policy, toy removal actions are part of the city department’s long-standing operational practice to ensure park maintenance and inspections can be carried out and that the park area is free of hazards, Gerard said in a statement to the Star.

The local councillor, Jaye Robinson (Ward 15, Don Valley West), said in a statement that she was disappointed to hear of the sudden removal of donated toys from the park.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of parks and green spaces in our urban communities, and the city should be supporting efforts to make community spaces more usable for families,” she said, noting she raised the issue with senior staff at the city’s parks, forestry and recreation department.

Jutta Mason, a community activist whose work focuses on public spaces and the value of “the commons,” said modern parks, such as Cudmore Creek Park, are often filled with donated toys because their playgrounds lack things to play with that can be moved around, “which is one of the things that kids crave.”

“Unwanted plastic toys are a sad substitute for natural materials, but the kids clearly experience them as better than nothing,” she said.