No Walk In The Park

A group of seniors are questioning a city bylaw after they were photographed and threatened with fines for walking through Humber Bay Park in Etobicoke without a permit.

The City bylaw states that commercial businesses must pay for the right to use public parks.  That would apply to things like Yoga and exercise groups.  

But the seniors, who are part of a group called Movement Is Life, don’t actually use the park for their workouts, and claim they were merely walking through the grounds on their way to an exercise session at a nearby Polish Hall.

Don Foster recalls being approached by a city worker.

“We were stopped by a provincial enforcement officer…and he demanded to see our permit for walking in the park,” he recalled.  

Margaret Guthrie says things quickly escalated.

“Then he started taking our pictures, and Don said, ‘What right do you have to be taking my picture?’, and he said, ‘I have every right in the world, you’re in the park, I can take all the pictures I like.’  Then he followed us all the way…over to the Polish Hall where we do our exercises.”

“It’s a tax grab,” she adds.  “That’s all it is, we are an easy target.”

“We do not do our exercises in the park, we walk through it.  We are using the money for the rental of the hall where we do our exercises.”

Foster believes his group has every right to walk through the city park.

“We could just as easily walk through the city streets, but we wouldn’t need a permit for that.  I don’t see the difference,” he said.

The so called ‘offenders’ were facing potential fines of up to $250, but the city has since backed off, and mayor David Miller admitted the case was being investigated.

“Obviously the enforcement was taken too strongly and I’ve asked the parks department to review the policy.  There’s better ways to do this, we are going to review the policy to see what can be done so people can walk in parks but when commercial businesses use city facilities they pay.  That’s the intent of the policy.”