On Saturday a dedicated group of enthusiasts spent a couple of hours learning more about their own. Thunder Bay played host to six Jane’s Walk tours.
Who knew that Hillcrest Park once stood in the path of a giant cloud meteor debris cloud, an event that levelled the land around Sudbury, it’s remnants rumbling hundreds of kilometres northwest to help form one of this city’s favourite attractions?
Liane Voyer-McLean, who spent 10 years in Vancouver before moving to Thunder Bay, said she got involved with Jane’s Walk out of sheer curiosity about her neighbourhood and the desire to be part of a home-grown solution to make it even better.
“I started a group, Friends of Hillcrest, and we’ve been working with the city to discuss things in the park and kind of organize the community’s ideas of what the people who live here would like to see. Instead of having the city always telling the community what they’re going to do, have the community say to the city, hey these are the things we want to see you do,” Voyer-McLean said.
“This walk is going to focus on looking at the park, looking at accessibility and looking at things like sidewalks and crosswalks and basically accessing this really amazing park.”
The walks were inspired by the life of Jane Jacobs, an American-Canadian journalist who died seven years ago.
Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, helped pioneer concepts like eyes on the street and was a powerful grassroots organizer who opposed major changes being planned for her Greenwich Village neighbourhood. Later she stopped the Spadina Expressway from being built through downtown.
Held on her birthday, more than 600 walks in cities around the world are being held in 2013.
Amy Siciliano, the city’s crime prevention council co-ordinator who helped pioneer the event in Thunder Bay, said the walks accomplish two important things.
“They bring people together that live in our neighbourhood and live in the broader city together to talk about what they love about this neighbourhood and also what they want to see changed,” Siciliano said.
“It’s a guided tour, but it’s not an official tour of the neighbourhood. It’s meant to give you an inside scoop of the things that matter to the people who live in this neighbourhood. It’s supposed to be a community conversation about what matters to people in the places they live, work and play.”
Similar walks are scheduled throughout the day in different part of the city. A Downtown Fort William Walk is slated for 11 a.m. starting at the Lake Superior Art Gallery. At 1 p.m., at Minnesota Park, a Simpson/Ogden walk will begin.
On Sunday at 1 p.m. a downtown Port Arthur trek starts at the Pagoda. At 1:30 p.m., meeting at the fountain at Waverly Park, a Bay/Algoma walk commences, while at 3 p.m. anyone interested in learning more about the Academy area can gather at the Greek Ukrainian Church on Beverly and Balmoral streets.
For more information, visit www.janeswalk.net and look for the Thunder Bay link.
