The Future of Our City Series
Public Spaces for Public Use:
Re-imagining the City’s Golf Courses
Check out the full Future Of Our City Series here
Join us for a free event on Monday, July 12 at 12pm for a conversation about re-imagining the future of our city’s golf courses and how public golf courses can better serve communities. Toronto is currently reviewing the use of five City-operated golf course locations. This is our opportunity to shape what our public spaces are and to ensure they serve all communities.
We are excited to hear from founder of Msit No’kmaq Carolynne Crawley (bio), Co-Chair of Toronto Youth Food Policy Council Sheldomar Elliott (bio), Executive Director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance Emmay Mah (bio), and Community Food Growing Senior Manager Orlando Martín López Gómez (bio).
We’re partnering with the Toronto Environmental Alliance and FoodShare Toronto to be providing this timely panel on all that is possible in our city. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how important our outdoor public spaces are and how we must ensure everyone has access to them. Re-imagining our golf courses is a great first step.
The City is consulting with the public and your opinion will make a big difference in what’s possible for our city’s golf courses. From growing food, to public spaces for all to use, the sky is the limit. Please take a moment to share what you imagine for our public spaces in the City’s survey. Deadline for the survey is July 12 so join us at noon to learn more about what is possible!
Monday, July 12, 2021
12pm ET
This online conversation will be hosted on Zoom and the link will be provided with registration
This is a free event, but we welcome donations to support our work for a better city.
Register Below:
About our speakers:
Carolynne Crawley:
Carolynne Crawley, founder of Msit No’kmaq, has Mi'kmaw, Black and Irish ancestry and is from the East Coast, known today as Nova Scotia. She is dedicated to social and environmental justice and supporting Indigenous led community work related to food sovereignty and food security. Carolynne is passionate about reconnecting people with the land, waters, and all beings as there is no separation between us. From many Indigenous perspectives they are all our relations to be treated with as much love, respect, and reciprocity as we do with our human loved ones. Carolynne leads workshops that support the development and strengthening of healthy and reciprocal relationships based upon Indigenous knowledges that decolonize existing interactions with the land and with each other. She also shares Indigenous life ways such as bird language and harvesting ‘wild’ foods and medicines from the land.
She is a certified Forest Therapy Guide. She was also a Mentor and Trainer of the practice. She leads in person and virtual forest therapy walks, facilitates webinars and retreats for corporations, organizations, and the general public. She also does consulting work.
Sheldomar Elliott:
Sheldomar believes in the power of food as a vehicle for change while simultaneously being able to comfort, nourish, and heal us.
With years of experience in food justice work and a background in community support roles, Sheldomar brings an anti-oppressive and community-centered lens into all of the work he is involved in. He is passionate about food justice work that tackles issues around food insecurity and achieving food sovereignty for marginalized communities. His interests are on how Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are able to acquire access to land and the necessary resources needed to achieve food sovereignty and create community-led alternatives within our current food system.
A few other things that he is interested in include drug policy reform, biodiversity (places and things), and video games. Outside of that, you can usually find him listening to Soulection Radio, sorting through his Magic the Gathering card collection, and/or vegan-izing new recipes.
Emmay Mah:
Emmay Mah joined the TEA team in 2019 as Executive Director.
For the last 15 years, Emmay has worked in the non-profit sector, developing and managing programs focused on child rights and protection, HIV/AIDS, Indigenous health, and the environment. Most recently, Emmay was the Project Director for Enviromentum, a project of Tides Canada. In this role, she led innovative initiatives that apply evidence-based behaviour change techniques to climate change programs.
Emmay has also served previously as a member of TEA’s Board of Directors and collaborated with TEA on research and community engagement around climate action.
Emmay is passionate about building a diverse and inclusive climate movement, and a more equitable and sustainable city. Emmay is a co-founder of the People's Climate Movement in the GTA, and the Co-Chair of the Toronto Climate Action Network (TCAN). She participated in the City’s Modelling Advisory Group for the TransformTO climate strategy. As Executive Director, she will use this passion to advance TEA’s work building a greener city for all.
Orlando Martín López Gómez:
Orlando oversees FoodShare's food growing projects across the city - turning under utilized schoolyards, hydro corridors, and parks into vibrant and productive urban farms and community gardens. Orlando is passionate about food justice, and community leadership, and provides lots of resources and support for communities to design, implement, and run their own growing and composting projects.
He is a trained agronomist with an incredible depth of knowledge in all aspects of growing food.