You may havefelt a great disturbance in Toronto this spring, as if many thousands of voices suddenly cried out in sadness and were silenced by melancholy when the city announced the Toronto Islands would be closed until at least the end of July.

Photos of fish swimming on baseball diamonds and people paddle-boarding by half-submerged drinking fountains are like visions from a climate change disaster film set in Toronto’s near-future.

Will the beloved island beaches at Ward’s, Gibraltar and Hanlan’s Point — all with the best lake swimming in the city, and great lawns that see hundreds if not thousands of picnics on busy weekends — still be as they were once the water recedes? Beach erosion was already severe in recent years at Hanlan’s, worrying regulars of this urban oasis.

If there is an upshot to the loss of our islands this summer it’s perhaps a reminder of what we take for granted: a cottage-like escape for everybody who doesn’t have easy access to the countryside, let alone a place of their own there.

It wasn’t until I moved to Toronto that I understood why cottage country was such an obsession here. In smaller cities like Windsor, my hometown, the countryside is quite close, just a 10 or 15-minute drive or slightly longer bike ride from most places. Proximity and access is simple.

Smaller cites also don’t have the relentless intensity massive ones like Toronto do. As great as this place is, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, regular escapes are necessary, critical even, to depressurizing and relaxing.

Escape in Toronto is not equal though. You need a car, usually, as the countryside is farther away from where people live as sprawl has pushed the city edges out. Then there’s traffic. When I haven’t timed leaving the city right it’s taken nearly three hours to drive beyond Milton and get a first glimpse of the Greenbelt and escarpment country. Proximity is gone.

The Greenbelt Foundation has been running a program called “Into the Greenbelt: Nature Discovery Tours” that bring bus loads of New Canadians to various locations in the countryside to help spread the experience to city people who don’t have easy assess to their hinterland.

Summers when the islands were open would see entire clans of folks pulling coolers, strollers, chairs and umbrellas, all queuing in sun-baked holding pens waiting for the antiquated and abysmal ferry service. That we Torontonians routinely endure this unpleasantness that I’ve seen escalate to fights and dangerous levels of crowding demonstrates the acute need for parks like the islands.

Toronto is becoming increasingly denser and more intense as it transforms from the “big small town” it’s been to a real big city where the need for escapes is essential. This explains why Rail Deck Park remains such a compelling proposal despite considerable development hurdles and the big price tag in a city that doesn’t like to pay for the things it wants. Toronto really desires parks.

Though it doesn’t officially open until June 28, for months now people have been drawn to Berczy Park on Front St. as its redesign by landscape architect Claude Cormier comes together. The centrepiece fountain, with its 27 cast-iron water-spurting dogs staring at a bone at the top, had people taking pictures through the construction fences before the fountain was in operation. There’s even a token cat, to appease the all-powerful Cat Lobby no doubt. Desire for high quality parks like this should spread to all neighbourhoods, with cats or not.

Park life itself has also come a long way in Toronto. Stories of old “Toronto the Good,” where ball playing and even swinging on swings were prohibited on Sundays, seem like apocryphal fiction. The ravines and expansive parks across the GTA become picnic grounds on the warm weekends today, and even on weekdays with long summer evenings. Places like Morningside Park, Sunnyside, or Petticoat Creek Conservation Area in Pickering all have big picnics that even bring their own sound systems sometimes. This is not your grandparents’ Ontario.

But in some ways it still is. I’ve argued here that Ontario’s antiquated liquor laws and terrible island ferry service are equity issues. If you own a cottage, or even a house with a backyard, you can enjoy a drink outside in the sun. If you don’t own that kind of property, you’ve got to find a patio and pay for the privilege. Prohibiting those who don’t own land from having a glass of wine outdoors is leisure serfdom.

A few years ago, a group of us went to the island in October and had a picnic on the nearly empty Hanlan’s Point beach. I opened a bottle of Ontario Pinot Grigio and not too long after two police officers ambled out and gave us a ticket for the open bottle, ironic considering we could see the Niagara Peninsula across the lake where the grapes for the wine were grown.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In recent years, Trinity Bellwoods Park has become jammed with people spread out on blankets on warm days, and there have been predictably worried Toronto reactions that too many people were in the park and the inevitable ticket laying on people enjoying a tall can of craft beer. Booze issues aside, as not everybody wants to drink, Toronto is learning to embrace its parks as public living rooms like Amsterdam, London and many other mature cities do when their city parks become massive communal picnic grounds when the weather is nice and civil order does not break down despite the libertine tippling.

As many of us increasingly live without backyards of our own, the need for space for all this will increase. Park life is maturing here. If your neighbourhood doesn’t have the kind of high quality, well-maintained parks that can handle it, ask your local councillor why not.