kg nOx emissions of one truck during 20 days

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GREEn BuRIAL sustainable memorial sites

Since the 1831 founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, credited with inspiring North America’s public park movement, spaces of remembrance have played evolving, disparate roles in cities. Landscape architects have been instrumental in negotiating the uses of cemeteries as parks, memorials, arboreta, and, more recently, natural burial grounds.

Today’s green burial is an iteration of the ancient practice of direct ground burial, which is still traditional in many cultures. In guidelines laid out by the Green Burial Society of Canada (GBSC), an unembalmed body is placed in a simple wooden casket or shroud, which is placed directly in the ground, without a concrete vault or liner. To complete the process, the surface over the grave must be restored with indigenous plants, and the cemetery plan must minimize the disturbance that can come with digging new graves.

The British Columbia-based GBSC was formed in 2013 to promote sustainability within the bereavement sector and share information about green burial. The GBSC is also working towards establishing certification standards for green burial practices, something its American older sibling, the Green Burial Council, has already put in place in the United States. Catriona Hearn, BLA, Senior Associate at LEES + Associates and Vice President of the GBSC’s board of directors, emphasizes that Canadian certification will acknowledge the spectrum of green practices within the bereavement sector: “Death and choices about disposition are sensitive—and legitimately so. We should be trying to help people consider these things based on real information.”

According to Hearn, “The burial industry has become more sustainable—environmentally, socially, and, on some levels, economically. It’s incremental, and largely based on people understanding the value of land in a broader sense, especially as space becomes more precious, notably in urban areas. This has led people to see cemeteries as park space.”

Hearn points to Mountain View Cemetery as an example of the positive change sustainable practices can bring to traditional urban cemeteries. Owned and operated by the city of Vancouver since 1886, Mountain View has dealt with the space crunch by becoming a pioneer in grave reuse, allowing it to remain active. The cemetery searches out and reclaims pre-paid vacant plots, using advertisements to try to find the owners of potentially abandoned lots purchased before 1940. As well, relatives can reuse existing plots after 40 years have passed, a practice contingent on burial without concrete grave liners, so that existing remains can be reburied deeper and eventually returned to the earth. Grave reuse is a rarity in Canada, but Hearn thinks it would be a big move forward for sustainable burial practices.

In her position at LEES + Associates, Hearn worked on the Woodlands area at Victoria’s Royal Oak Burial Park, which was created in response to community demand and opened in 2008. A shady grove surrounded by the native coastal forest of Vancouver Island, it is the first dedicated green burial area in Canada, and expresses a communal approach to the land. People are interred sequentially, and memorialized on a central monument. Hearn says that this gets people thinking of the larger picture instead of concentrating on the ownership of a single space.

While B.C. is clearly a leader in green burial, options for sustainable interment also exist in Ontario. Three non-denominational cemeteries offer green burial: Duffin Meadows Cemetery in Pickering, Meadowvale in Brampton, and Cobourg Union Cemetery north of Toronto. As well, there are a number of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries with green practices, including the Toronto Muslim Cemetery in Richmond Hill.

Both Duffin Meadows and Meadowvale cemeteries are run by the Mount Pleasant Group, Ontario’s largest not-for-profit cemetery. At these sites, graves are not individually marked, and memorials are inscribed on central monuments. Meadow grasses are allowed to grow tall, and naturalization is encouraged. Rick Cowan, Mount Pleasant Group’s Assistant Vice-President of Marketing and Communications, describes natural burial as a niche market:

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10/ Woodlands entry monument at the Royal Oak Burial Park, Victoria, B.C. IMAGE/ Courtesy of LEES + Associates 11/ Woodlands memorialization

IMAGE/ Courtesy of LEES + Associates

12 “While much has been written about natural or green burial, demand for this choice of disposition, in our experience, remains relatively low. Our goal is to provide choice regardless of the market size.”

Stephanie Snow, OALA, a principal at Snow Larc Landscape Architecture, has worked with private cemetery clients to increase environmental stewardship through use of low-impact design, such as xeriscaping at Toronto’s Prospect Cemetery. She sees green burial as one option among many for cemeteries trying to appeal to a diverse population: “Some cultures have embraced natural burial for a very long time. For example, the Bahá’í faith does not permit embalming unless required by law. Jewish burial restricts embalming and places the body in as close contact with the earth as possible. Muslim tradition restricts embalming, and the deceased is wrapped in a simple shroud. Traditionally, the casket is carried to the gravesite by members of the community, on foot, and shovels are provided at the graveside. If a vault is used, and it most often is not, it is open bottomed to allow the remains to be in direct contact with the earth.”

Snow and Cowan both point to cremation as an option for people searching for an environmentally conscious choice, citing the development of nearly emission-free crematoria, such as those added to Elgin Mills and Mount Pleasant cemeteries in 2014. These advancements come as the bereavement industry makes a major shift towards cremation. Between 1985 and 2014 the number of cremations in the Greater Toronto Area jumped from 8,500 to roughly 55,500. However, according to Snow, 50 percent of the remains were either left at the crematorium or “stored” at home, reducing the number of interments. As she sees it, “The business challenge for cemeteries and landscape architects alike is that while designers create more options to attract families back to cemeteries, fewer people are using them.”

As well, Snow reports that peoples’ burial requests are changing: “In addition to scattering forests and scattering gardens, I’m seeing my clients incorporate a range of green burial options, from mausoleums using geothermal heating systems to communal ossuaries.”

Nicole Hanson, MES (Pl.), a community planner and former funeral celebrant who has worked as a regulator for Ontario’s Cemeteries and Crematoriums Regulation Unit, sees the challenges of access to affordable housing created by rising land values mirrored in cemeteries. People want to memorialize relatives nearby, but can’t necessarily afford the options in the city. She asks where people will go if they can’t afford to pay thousands for a plot and their culture forbids cremation: “Death is becoming an equity issue when you are looking at planning for death, and designing for death, and memorializing people. We should be allocating spaces for people to die [and be memorialized] in the city.”

Hanson points to the extensive cemeteryneeds analysis done by York Region in 2015 as the kind of planning that needs to become more common. The report inventoried the region’s existing cemeteries and user demographics, and projected the need for cemetery space up to 2041, a planning horizon considered too short by many stakeholders. Notably, the report suggests that 66 percent of the users in York Region could be coming from Toronto within the next 25 years, as Toronto will have reached its interment capacity. Hanson hopes that Toronto will undertake its own cemetery-needs analysis soon, and she has been working with Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong and Councillor Justin J. Di Ciano in an effort to make this happen.

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15 Hanson sees opportunities for planners and landscape architects to design smaller memorial sites that serve nearby communities, or to find more capacity in currently inactive municipal cemeteries. She has seen cemetery operations consolidate as small sites no longer able to support themselves are signed over to municipal care, which provides municipalities with the opportunity to incorporate cemeteries into their long-term plans.

As Southern Ontario continues to densify, the green practices of cemeteries such as Mountain View and Royal Oak Burial Park could be examples of how to deal with space constraints in memorial sites. However, that will depend on what consumers want from the bereavement industry, and how far into the future planners, landscape architects, and cemetery operators are willing to think.

TExT BY kATIE STRAnG, A LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTuRAL InTERn AT BSq LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTS And A MEMBER oF THE Ground EdIToRIAL BoARd.

12/ Woodlands view of the entry into Phase 1, Royal Oak Burial Park IMAGE/ Courtesy of LEES + Associates 13/ Woodlands 2009 plan IMAGE/ Courtesy of LEES + Associates 14-15/ Mountain View, a Vancouver cemetery, is a pioneer in grave reuse. IMAGES/ Wayne Worden

How conventional planting design often compromises a culturally important landscape feature in the everyday suburban landscape

TExT BY MIcHAL LASzczuk

Back in 1997, when the neighbourhood I grew up in was being built in the north end of Guelph, there was a lack of awareness about the risk that emerald ash borer posed to ash trees in Ontario. Almost all of the trees planted on my street were ash, as was the case in many neighbourhoods developed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Now, in 2016, many of the trees along my street will be removed, and we will have to start over in developing the tree canopy. However, along the edges of backyards and the local Golfview Park, we still hold on to a precious neighbourhood landscape feature that helps define our local identity: the hedgerow. A hedgerow is a linear band of trees that exists between agricultural fields and along fences. They exist primarily because the trees and shrubs along these edges were allowed to grow naturally; farmers retained them because they served as windbreaks between fields.

Due to the nature of suburban home and neighbourhood design and a reliance on the automobile, neighbourhoods built within the past twenty years are often left with little by which to structure a local identity. As the demand for tract housing has grown, agricultural fields have been swallowed by development and, when the crops are gone, there are few obvious references left to the history of the land. My neighbourhood was developed on an agricultural field, and, if one were to glance at my street, one could say that it does not have any distinct characterdefining features to link it with an identity informed by geography, history, and ecology.

01/ Greater distribution of hedgerows in the neighbourhood, along the Speed River, and by the Guelph Lake trails IMAGE/ Courtesy of Google Earth, edited by Michal Laszczuk

02/ Distribution of existing hedgerows in the neighbourhood surrounding Golfview Park

02 But behind the houses and along the edge of Golfview Park, there is a series of hedgerows that are populated primarily by American linden (Tilia americana), poplar (Populus tremuloides), some American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and crabapple (Malus sp.), and a lot of buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). Though the latter species is an invasive pest, these trees and shrubs have been embraced by the neighbourhood as prime features of residents’ backyards and as incredible places for children to play.

As a child, the hedgerow in the park by my house was a site of discovery, and I used to traverse the trails and map every portion and arrangement of trees. I spent a lot of time gazing up at the American lindens, admiring their twisted trunks, which look so different compared to the same species planted in gardens or parks. Due to these hedgerows, I have known the tremendous value of nature in play since childhood, and many people who grew up here hold a deep personal connection to these landscape features.

Though the hedgerows are important in an aesthetic and emotional sense, residents become so accustomed to them on an everyday basis that they often are seen simply as groups of trees, even though they have a distinctive linear arrangement along the edges of properties. If marked on a satellite map, the hedgerows trace the form of the agricultural fields that existed before residential development. Unfortunately, not all hedgerows in my neighbourhood remain; if they did, then the linear bands of trees would extend beyond my street throughout the urban fabric of the suburbs across the north end of Guelph.

Beyond the neighbourhood, by the Speed River and Guelph Lake trails, most of the hedgerows are still intact and form a striking contrast with the surrounding red pine (Pinus resinosa) plantations introduced in the 1970s. There, you can get a taste of how visually powerful hedgerows could be if they received more emphasis in community and landscape design.

In 2013, the removal of the buckthorns in the park’s hedgerows sent a sobering reminder that these features are ever changing. Even though I understand that this invasive species had to be removed, I sorely miss the buckthorns—their dense configuration provided a perfect place to play and explore when I was a child. Thankfully, the lindens remain, but they are not long-lasting, as their wood is not very strong. If a replanting scheme were introduced to ensure that new trees and shrubs would maintain the dense character of the hedgerow, I would be completely comfortable with the hedgerow as a continually evolving landscape entity. Unfortunately, though, the city’s replanting scheme has left many parts of the hedgerow between the lindens empty, with turf, in an attempt to make the hedgerow more park-like. I wish that more shrubs, such as dogwood (Cornus sp.), had been planted as a reference to the dense configuration of buckthorn that used to exist. However, the integrity of the hedgerow is generally intact, as long as the American lindens remain and care is given to ensure that successor trees, such as young American lindens, poplars, and bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), take over.

With these hedgerows, I see my neighbourhood and other similar suburban areas as cultural landscapes. Terms used in cultural landscape assessment, such as integrity and character-defining features, can

03 04 highlight the significant cultural importance embedded in these vernacular landscape features in a type of neighbourhood that is usually seen as being devoid of historical identity. It is through this approach— which I first thought about when reading Anne Whiston Spirn’s The Language of Landscape—that people can learn to read the suburban landscape in order to form a closer attachment to place. Along with this historical dimension, if native plants were introduced to bring back the dense form of vegetation once defined by the buckthorns, then the hedgerows could better function as greenways to bolster ecological connectivity across the suburban landscape.

A few years ago, the Wilson farmhouse in my neighbourhood was a heated topic of debate throughout Guelph. People were divided as to whether or not the farmhouse should remain as an icon of the agricultural heritage of the area. There was not enough interest to repurpose it for use as a home or community centre, and, ultimately, the house was destroyed. Thus, the hedgerows now remain as the only remnants of the neighbourhood’s agricultural heritage. The edges of the landscape have retained a critical cultural and ecological dimension in the area, and this is the only place where one can look for clues pointing to the heritage embedded in the landscape. My hope, then, is that hedgerows will be seen as cultural landscape features across neighbourhoods in Ontario, with better management and design practices and a recognition of their contribution towards both environmental and cultural sustainability.

BIo/ MIcHAL LASzczuk STudIEd ARcHAEoLoGY FoR HIS BAcHELoRS dEGREE AT THE unIvERSITY oF ToRonTo And IS cuRREnTLY A MASTERS oF LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTuRE STudEnT AT THE unIvERSITY oF GuELPH. HIS InTERESTS LIE In THE InTEGRATIon oF cuLTuRAL LAndScAPES And ARcHAEoLoGIcAL HERITAGE wITH conTEMPoRARY dESIGn APPRoAcHES In LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTuRE. RELATEd InTERESTS IncLudE 3d ModELLInG, vISuALIzATIon, And uRBAn dESIGn.

03/ For the planting design within the hedgerow in Golfview Park, much of the hedgerow was replaced with turf in order to appear more park-like. IMAGE/ Michal Laszczuk

04/ This hedgerow provides an ideal place for children to play and explore local natural surroundings even though species such as buckthorn, present here, are detrimental to the ecological health of the hedgerow. IMAGE/ Michal Laszczuk

Reflections on a forest bathing walk

TExT BY REAL EGucHI, oALA, And RuTHAnnE HEnRY, oALA In the spring of 2016, Ben Porchuk invited us to participate in a guided forest therapy walk called Shinrin-Yoku. This translates from the Japanese into English as “forest bathing.” It took place in Sunnybrook Park, Toronto. We both had been interested in this practice since hearing about it several years ago. After a small amount of pre-walk research, and as seasoned landscape architects, we were skeptical to varying degrees in thinking that this could in any way be a profound, therapeutic experience. Ruthanne has walked in forests for more than four decades and Real has engaged in nature-related activities since childhood. But we remained open and agreed to leave our skepticism outside the forest.

Ben started the walk with a quick introduction as we entered the forest. As an experienced ecologist as well as a forest bathing guide, he explained that this was not going to be a cognitively based interpretive/educational experience. Ben indicated that we likely would not cover very much ground, so this was not focused on physical exercise either. We were told that we would be invited to share in a series of experiences and we could accept or decline any invitation.

For the first of these invitations we sat in a circle, focused on our breath, and shared our name and what we were grateful for based on what we were sensing and the feelings that arose in that moment. We felt a sense of group connectedness within and to the forest.

The second invitation found us swaying our bodies, listening, with our eyes closed, while feeling supported by the ground. We were grounded. After this we allowed the forest to be slowly revealed to our sense of sight. In this meditative state, the forest was startling in its renewed beauty, with magical shafts of sunlight spraying down through the many layers of foliage. In the stillness, we connected deeper with nature and to ourselves.

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The third invitation was to mindfully walk with full visual and vestibular awareness while intensely noticing “movement” around us. We walked with “intention” on the pathways and at our own pace through the forest. We witnessed the breeze gently blowing in many different locations on numerous elements of the forest in an integral and connected way. We felt the subtle nuances of the air grazing our skin. We experienced the extensive activity of flora and fauna at every scale. It was an entranced feeling, similar to snorkeling around a coral reef, everything in constant moving harmony with the current. The forest revealed itself as a large interconnected organism, our heightened sensory perception engaged in its slow motion.

Another activity had us standing on rocks within the refreshing cool of a small brook, fed by groundwater. We felt the water with one hand in stillness—above, within, and below the flowing water. This included immersing our hand in the substrate. Our hand was uniquely bathed.

There were other invitations such as trusting each other during a partner exercise near the top of a ridge and feeling quite vulnerable in our bodies. In that exercise, we deepened our connection with the nature around us, with each other, all the while awakening our awareness of our own bodies.

After each invitation and experience, we shared what we felt, and, in so doing, clarified and confirmed our experiences in each moment.

We ended our forest bathing walk in a closing circle while sharing a tea that Ben made from a couple of abundant forest plants he collected along the way. He assured us that we did not negatively impact the local ecology. We drank the forest, literally, again deepening our alignment with the forest by yet another direct sensuous and nourishing experience of the nature we were immersed within.

Shinrin-Yoku is a therapeutic experience, in essence a moving meditation encouraging full sensory immersion. It offers an approach to reducing stress in our challenging urban life by connecting us to the rhythms and processes of nature. The outcome of the session left us alert and calm.

Landscape architects are relatively well informed about natural phenomena and processes because nature has always been central to our work. In addition to enhancing our own rejuvenation and restoration, the regular practice of forest bathing provides us with an additional somatic framework for understanding nature, thus potentially helping us to be more mindful of the medicinal, meditative qualities that others may experience in the landscapes that we help steward.

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BIoS/ REAL EGucHI, oALA, IS A PRIncIPAL oF EGucHI ASSocIATES LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTS/BREAL ART + dESIGn. HIS kEY InTEREST IS “SuSTAInABLE BEAuTY,” An AESTHETIc THAT dERIvES FRoM THE TRAdITIonAL JAPAnESE SEnSIBILITY oF wABI-SABI, AwE, And cuLTuRAL TRAuMA In THE conTExT oF nATuRE. PRIncIPLES SucH AS IMPERFEcTIon And IMPERMAnEncE HAvE LEd HIM To A cREATIvE PRAcTIcE THAT coMBInES SoMATIc HEALInG, MIndFuLnESS IMPRov dAncE, EARTH-BASEd SPIRITuALITIES, And LAndScAPE ARcHITEcTuRE And ART.

RuTHAnnE HEnRY, oALA, IS An ARBoRIST And LAndScAPE ARcHITEcT wHo HAS SPEcIALIzEd FoR MoST oF HER cAREER In FoREST-RELATEd LAndScAPE PRAcTIcE, SucH AS HABITAT RESToRATIon, FoREST conSERvATIon, And MInIMIzInG IMPAcTS RELATEd To InFRASTRucTuRE dESIGn In SEnSITIvE EnvIRonMEnTS.

FoR MoRE InFoRMATIon on THE ASSocIATIon oF nATuRE And FoREST THERAPY GuIdES And PRoGRAMS, SEE www.SHInRIn-Yoku.oRG. FoR InFoRMATIon on THE cAnAdIAn cHAPTER, HEAdEd BY BEn PoRcHuk, vISIT www.FAcEBook.coM/SHInRInYokucAnAdA oR www.RESToRATIvEnATuREExPERIEncES.coM/ BookS.

01/ Ben Porchuk shared tea, made from abundant, sustainably harvested forest plants, at the end of a recent forest bathing walk. IMAGE/ Ruthanne Henry 02-03/ Ben Porchuk (left) and Real Eguchi during a forest bathing walk IMAGES/ Ruthanne Henry 04/ The forest context for Shinrin-Yoku

IMAGE/ Ruthanne Henry

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Urban Wilderness and Cultural Heritage Landscape

TExT BY HEIdY ScHoPF

01/ The Leslie Street Spit is a manufactured landform made from construction waste and dredgeate, and now colonized by an incredibly diverse community of plants and animals. IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives 02/ The Leslie Street Spit jutting out of the headlands, 1980-1998 IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives 03/ Concrete mixing plant in Toronto, 1922 IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives 04/ A Toronto brick pit in 1928, now filled in and rehabilitated as Monarch Park

IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

The Leslie Street Spit, also known as Tommy Thompson Park, is a five-kilometre-long peninsula that extends from Toronto’s old industrial lands into Lake Ontario. It is an entirely manufactured landform, composed of construction debris and dredgeate. The Toronto Harbour Commission (now Ports Toronto) began dumping construction waste and lake dredgeate in Lake Ontario in 1959 with the aim of creating a harbour for an anticipated shipping boom. The shipping boom never materialized but the dumping continues to the present day. The Leslie Street Spit is now more than 500 hectares in size.

The rubble of the Leslie Street Spit has been gradually colonized by seeds and plant matter dispersed by wind, birds, water, and deposited material. The Spit has undergone a dramatic transformation, the result of both natural process and ecological regeneration efforts by Ports Toronto and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). Now, it boasts wildflower meadows, cottonwood forests, coastal marshes, (brick) cobble beaches, and sand dunes, and has been colonized by more than 390 plant species and 290 animal species. The Spit is also a globally significant birding area, an important stopover during migration for songbirds, raptors, waterfowl, and shorebirds.

While the ecological success and significance of the Leslie Street Spit is of incredible importance, the site also has an interesting, but lesser known, cultural history: the construction material found at the Spit can be tied to specific areas of Toronto and to retired and active aggregate sites both within and beyond the city. Linking the Spit to demolition episodes in Toronto gives us an understanding of what was lost and who was displaced. The slum-clearing demolition activities of the 1960s resulted in the displacement of entire lower-income neighbourhoods, such as Alexandra Park, and the loss of nineteenth-century buildings and urban landscapes. The demolition of downtown structures to make room for office towers in the financial district in the 1980s resulted in the loss of many nineteenthcentury buildings, including small theatres, arcades, bank branches, and downtown residences. In all cases, the demolition of neighbourhoods and individual buildings in the city raises questions of social justice and highlights the need for careful planning decisions as we face another development boom in Toronto. Currently, high development pressure threatens some of the remaining historical residences, commercial buildings, office buildings, and streetscapes in the downtown core.

The connection of the Leslie Street Spit to aggregate sites within and beyond the city is also significant. The Spit is linked with a number of active and former aggregate sites, as bricks marked with the company names associated with these sites are found in abundance at the Spit. Historical (retired) aggregate sites associated with the Spit include: the Don Valley Brickworks (Toronto), brickworks in the vicinity of Greenwood Avenue (Toronto), the Cooksville Brickyard (Mississauga), Streetsville Brick Plant (Mississauga), Canada Brick (Ottawa), Phippen, Quinlan & Roberston (Belleville), the Milton Pressed Brick Co (Milton), and the Ontario Terra-Cotta and Pressed Brick Co. (Campbellville). Currently active aggregate sites associated with the Spit include: Hanson Brick (Streetsville, Aldershot, and Burlington) and Canada Brick (Streetsville, Aldershot, and Burlington). Tracing the origins of the brick found at the Leslie Street Spit allows us to connect the site with aggregate production and disposal cycles, and serves to highlight the environmental costs of construction and demolition activities: the bricks, telephone poles, chunks of sidewalk, rebar, and concrete that make up the landscape clearly illustrate the brief life cycle of seemingly permanent urban fixtures.

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05/ Tommy Thompson Park IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto 06/ Logan’s Brick Yards on Greenwood Avenue, Toronto, 1912 IMAGE/ Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives 07/ Pouring concrete on Yonge Street, Toronto, 1954

IMAGE/ Brook McIlroy 08/ Downtown Toronto, as viewed from the Leslie Street Spit IMAGE/ John Vetterli

06 08 Given its history, and ties to the city of Toronto and broader Ontario landscape, can the Leslie Street Spit be viewed (or better yet designated) as a cultural heritage landscape? An evaluation of the Spit against criteria set out in Ontario Heritage Act O.Reg. 9/06: Criteria for Determining Cultural Heritage Value or Interest—design or physical value; historical or associative value; and contextual value—suggests that it can (and probably should) be defined by its heritage value as well as its ecological value. For example, the Spit has design and physical value because it is a unique landform that was started as a dump but has since evolved to become a valued and ecologically rich landscape. The dumping at the Spit follows a specific design that responds to wave action from Lake Ontario and creates protected beaches made of rubble and brick. The design also includes three “cells” that have been capped and converted into naturalized wetlands using ecological restoration best practices to create thriving terrestrial and wetland habitats within this manufactured landscape.