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CivicAction Better City Bootcamp brings out over 600 civic leaders
Day-long event on April 28 brought together people from all walks of life to improve the region's prosperity.

TheStar.com
April 28, 2015
Lauren Pelley

Michael Creek remembers screaming and crying in the Don Valley in late 1995, knowing no one could hear him as traffic rumbled on the highway nearby.

At the time, he was living in poverty; he fluctuated between that and outright homelessness for over a decade. Mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, lingered in Creek’s daily life.

But Creek climbed out of that rut in the early 2000s and has been working for the last eight years. Now, he’s ‎director of strategic initiatives at Working for Change, an organization that provides education and employment opportunities for people disadvantaged by mental illness and addiction issues — and he brought his particular insight to a summit for civic leaders in Toronto earlier this week.

Creek was among more than 600 attendees at Tuesday’s CivicAction Better City Bootcamp, which enabled people to collectively develop solutions to challenges facing the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

The diverse crowd explored topics including housing affordability and seniors, childhood health, public spaces and the infrastructure needs of tomorrow. In Creek’s case, he attended the discussion on mental health and the workplace — a topic that hits close to home, given his 30-year history with mental health issues.

The day-long event brought together people from all walks of life — first-time moms, local politicians, CEOs, students, city planners, physicians, activists — all working towards a common goal of improving the region’s prosperity.

“Some of us were policymakers, some of us were practitioners, some of us were just parents,” says attendee Ivan Solano, a local physiotherapist and father of two who is juggling dad duties and pursuing a PhD at the University of Toronto.

Solano attended the discussion on childhood health, which highlighted the importance of the “first 1,000 days” in a child’s life — the span from conception until around age two.

“We decided we’re going to have this toolkit, this screening tool . . . with information catered to the region, whatever resources they have there, to link (parents) to those resources,” Solano said after a brainstorming session with other attendees.

The groups were encouraged to think big with their ideas for civic change, inspired by earlier remarks from speakers such as Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard) (the former chair of CivicAction), Premier Kathleen Wynne and federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt, along with various other local leaders with backgrounds in areas such as health care, city planning and business. Every detail of the day was geared toward creativity, including a fencing session near the end, where attendees had the chance to learn the swashbuckling sport.

Creek’s group, focused on workplace mental health, developed the concept of a checklist and certification for workplaces achieving positive mental health, for instance.

Those pondering public spaces brainstormed the position of a “chief neighbourhood officer” to convene a Business Improvement Area-style model for community spaces.

Will the ideas turn into real civic change? It’s hard to say, but organizers seem to have high hopes.
The next steps include a formal report from CivicAction and, in the fall, a concrete action plan developed from participants’ ideas.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said CivicAction CEO Sevaun Palvetzian.

Action items
Some notions that intrigued the Bootcamp crowd on Tuesday: