Spaces and places to play: the formation of a municipal parks system in London, Ontario, 1867-1914.

Abstract

How a municipal parks system formed in London following Confederation provides insight into the struggle that existed between public recreation and those who championed its provision, and political leaders concerned with the expense of providing public parks. Victoria, Queen's and Springbank Parks, all formed in the 1870s, provided Londoners with public spaces to recreate. Each park came into being for different reasons and served specific recreation and leisure roles. Not until the turn of the century, however, did growing pressure from external and internal social reform movements such as national playground initiatives lead London to organize their parks into a coherent system through the formalization of a recreation bureaucracy.

Resume: De la lutte qui eut lieu entre ceux qui defendaient l'idee de developper une politique de loisirs publics, et ceux qui s'inquietaient des depenses que la realisation d'une telle politique entrainerait, le cas des parcs municipaux etablis a London apres la Confederation est particulierement significatif. Les Parcs Victoria, Queen's et Springbank ouverts dans les annees 1870, ont offert aux habitants de London des espaces de loisirs publics. Chaque parc fut cree pour des raisons differentes et repondait a des fonctions de recreologie et de loisirs diversifiees. Ce n'est qu'a la fin du siecle que les pressions de plus en plus importantes exercees par des mouvements sociaux aussi bien internes que externes, comme par exemple les initiatives nationales pour l'etablissement de lieux de loisirs, ont conduit la ville de London a organiser ses parcs dans un systeme coherent par la mise sur pied d'un service administatif special charge de les gerer.

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Colonel Mahlon Burwell, the surveyor who prepared London's town site, bequeathed a parcel of land south of Stanley Street between Wharncliffe and Wortley Roads to the town as a recreation ground before his death in 1846. This land was later named St. James' Park. (1) Despite this generosity, by 1856, the land donated by Burwell had not been improved and remained vacant. To correct this situation, London City Council entered into a six-year lease agreement with Mr Thomas Francis, the former City Inspector, with the stipulation that he improve the property by planting, trees thereon. (2) In 1861, as Mr Francis' lease ran out, council learned that he had not met the conditions of the lease and had grown only potatoes on the land and no trees. Shortly thereafter the lease was terminated. Subsequently, Lon-don City Council re-leased the land to a Mr Coleman. When attempting to take possession of the property, Mr Colman had to physically remove the former tenant, Mr Francis. (3) It is not clear how long Mr Coleman remained the leaseholder of the property, but the city did hold onto the land until 1878 at which time the 'park' was sold for building lots with a portion of the profits being set aside to finance improvements at the city's newest park, Victoria Park. (4) Thus, London's first piece of property designated to be a public recreation area ultimately never served its intended purpose. This first attempt at providing public land for recreation in London illustrated that this contested terrain often pitted the interests of elite citizens and the city corporation against the needs of the local citizenry.

The above account of the brief history of St. James' Park provides some indication of the marginal priority attached to the provision of recreation land by London City Council prior to the early 1870s. No discernible interest in improving land owned by the city, or in purchasing new property to be used as a public park, existed through the 1850s and 1860s. This situation likely existed, in part, because city politicians did not view such extravagances as a priority when faced by the more pressing concerns of building and managing a growing city. Yet, as the population of London increased with the expansion of the mercantile and industrial base during the 1860s, some citizens began to recognize the need to provide publicly accessible land within the city that would be available for use by residents. (5) This early growth of opinion brought this public desire to the attention of the city's governors, suggesting that it was the city's responsibility to provide publicly accessible space for recreation to its citizens. This pressure exerted by groups and individuals within London soon became part of the larger desire to build a city of the first order. To this end, by the early 1870s, the need to provide publicly accessible parkland in London became an issue that the city's leaders could no longer ignore or neglect.

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