From a Toronto Star article in 2013:
At first glance Rowntree Mills Park seems like a fantastic green space in the Humber River Valley between Kipling and Islington Aves., just south of the Vaughan-Toronto border. The paved trail here meanders all the way to Lake Ontario along the river.
It should be an active hub, but in 2009 the local city councillor, Giorgio Mammoliti, had the park gates closed to cars, due to criminal activity and loud, rowdy parties where people would trash the park.
Closing Rowntree to cars has turned a once-busy place into a nearly deserted expanse of grass and forests. In the midday sun, the empty parking lots and unused picnic tables have a spooky, too-quiet feeling, though many people live nearby.
The park is still closed to automobile traffic twelve years later but one is able to walk in to this lovely natural area.













Some botany:



















NATURE POETRY
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! – Wordsworth
Miles Hearn
What an interesting place! Personally, I’m in favour of car free park-ing–but that’s easy for me to say, I don’t drive! Thanks, Miles!