June Callwood was a celebrated Canadian journalist, author, and social activist. Following her death, the City of Toronto undertook a 2 stage international design competition to award the design of a park to celebrate her life.

The starting point of the design takes a quotation from her last interview — “I believe in kindness” — and physically maps it onto the site. Its undulations create an abstract geometric pattern of openings and clearings within the dense groves of a Super-Real Forest, which inhabits the site with plantings of native Canadian tress, a sampling of the specimens that would have inhabited the Lake Ontario shoreline at the time the city was settled.

Intrinsic to the Super-Real Forest is the idea of ecological responsibility, its design inextricably bound to its underlying environmental imperative. Its open spaces are priceless amenities of good city living, the context for the kind of play that results in a healthy population. Investment in a forest commits to thinking long-term; we imagine the lifespan of the park will make it relevant to centuries of children and adults alike.

Th edge of this voice wave pattern creates a path that runs north to south through six clearings in the forest with black granite planks touching the edges at several points to provide east-west community access into the park.

Client: City of Toronto

Location: Toronto ON

Completion: 2014

Landscape Architects: gh3

Consultants: Beth Kapusta (competition contributor), Moonmatz (mechanical, electrical, civil), DEW Inc (water design)

General Contractor: Mopal Construction

Awards:

2007 Project awarded through an international design competition
2015 AZ Award—Best Landscape Architecture
2015 AZ Award—People's Choice for Landscape Architecture