Our parks are local cottage country, but need some fixing.

On golden summer weekends the cottage-classes make an exodus from the city, extending the rush hour commute experience well into the countryside.

It can be impossible to make weekend plans with cottage people, as they’ll always be cottaging. Even Mayor Ford’s desire to cottage keeps him from attending the Pride parade, something Toronto mayors have done for two decades now.

While those of us without a cottage are always plotting ways to get a weekend invite, we know it’s better to visit a cottage than to own one.

On these summer weekends a 50-pin bowling tournament could be held on some of the downtown streets, so ghostly empty is the place. We have the city to ourselves.

You’ll find us in the parks. Though often underused and underappreciated, these weekends are when Torontonians use our green spaces to the max, with entire extended families having BBQ picnics, the smell from one charcoal-filled hibachi blending into the next.

Everybody seems in a good mood, and more strangers smile at each other than normally allowed in Toronto, so passing by you feel, for a moment, part of the celebration. This doesn’t happen at cottages, where everybody stays on their own dock or plot of land. An added bonus is good septic infrastructure; you’ll never see a “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down” sign above a civilized park toilet.

Go for a bike ride or walk through Sunnybrook Park one sunny Sunday. Enter from the east side of Sunnybrook Hospital and find picnics all along the paths and roads that meander south of Eglinton, past the Ontario Science Centre, to Thorncliffe park. A similar scene happens in North York from Finch to south of Sheppard, following Derrydowns, Topcliff, and Downsview Dells parks.

Though all classes use the parks, often they are refuge for lower income people and New Canadians, becoming a surrogate cottage country but without the same freedoms.

Cottage folk can enjoy cracking a beer or a bottle of wine in the sun, but those in the parks must do so discreetly, always watching for police who could issue a ticket. Why should only those who can afford cottages be able to have a drink in nature?

Toronto Island park, the most important city-cottage area, has an added problem: getting there. Last week a story in the Star told of a private boat operator prevented from helping decrease ferry waits on weekends. The galling part is the manager of waterfront parks’ assertion that the lines for the ferry are not that bad.

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Anybody who goes to the Island often knows this isn’t true, as hot angry lineups can stretch to Queens Quay. Those picnic entourages, pulling coolers and pushing strollers, endure this, sometimes watching fistfights break out. The ferry trip romance evaporates and a day can be spoiled. For a city official to say this is ok is not unlike the mayor repeating, “Everything is fine” over and over.

For the quality of life of Torontonians without a cottage option, the city needs to fix its dreadful ferry service now.

Wander the streets with the Star’s Shawn Micallef on Twitter@shawnmicallef.





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