Winter 2025/2026 Newsletter

Winter 2025 Newsletter

Winter 2024 Newsletter

Winter 2022 Newsletter

Stewardship begins at home – Invasive species information

In the last issue of the NRRA Newsletter, we provided an overview of the great achievements of the park stewardship team that met weekly through three seasons last year to work on the Roxborough Parkette.  This work will continue in 2022, with a focus on ensuring the invasive plants are kept at bay, making room for indigenous plant varieties to thrive.  After last year, the infestations of buckthorn and knotweed were knocked back on their metaphorical heels, but we probably haven’t heard the last of them.  There is always room for more people to participate as stewards at this site, so if this is of interest please get in touch with Toronto Nature Stewards through the ”contact us” link on their web site.

Not many people are aware that a significant proportion of Toronto’s treasured ravine system (40% to be exact) is located on private property.  More to the point, plant varieties (whether indigenous or invasive) pay little attention to property lines.  So, all the efforts to curtail the spread of invasives in a ravine section can be for naught if similar actions are not taken on adjacent private lands.  With that in mind, this year Toronto Nature Stewards is issuing a new guide for stewardship on private land.  TNS is providing a detailed web-based resource with guidance on how to identify and remove invasives, as well as how to select, plant, and nurture plantings of native varieties in private gardens.  This is an excellent resource and should be of interest to anyone with responsibility for a garden, whether directly adjacent to a ravine or not.  This new guide can be found at the following link:  TNS Guide for Private Property.

 

 

Spring 2025 Newsletter

Spring 2024 Newsletter

Spring 2023 Newsletter

Sample Letter concerning Garden Suites for Tory & Layton

mayor_tory@toronto.ca            

councillor_layton@toronto.ca

April 2022

To the offices of Mayor John Tory and Councillor Mike Layton: 

I am writing to you as a concerned resident of North Rosedale.  Recently (Feb 4, 2022) you passed Garden Suite zoning by-law, but you unexpectedly included duplex, triplex, fourplex and low-rise apartment properties.  

I am very aware that the city of Toronto has a housing crisis and as a largely single family residential area we are not going to be the solution to address affordable housing.  However, we do want to stay on the radar as an area that should be considered and protected as we bring something special to tapestry of the city of Toronto. 

Fontra, CORRA and TO Residents Association have asked you to re-open the matter of Garden Suites due to what is deemed an over-reach with the inclusion of duplex, triplex, fourplex and low-rise apartment properties along with further concern surrounding the following: 

  • New Garden Suites by-law will allow for the destruction of primary residences -as a heritage district, we are always concerned about any zoning that makes it easy for developers to outbid folks and teardown to build duplex, triplex or larger in the middle of our heritage and single-family home areas.
  • This by-law does not go far enough to protect the loss of tree canopy and green space.
  • “One size fits all” does not protect the variances that make our neighbourhoods special and unique and that must be protected.
  • Any by-law that impacts so greatly should be communicated more broadly to those impacted. 

I would like to lend my voice to support Fontra, CORRA and TO Residents Association in asking you to protect neighbourhoods of both homeowners and renters while you drive to ensure the city’s health in making it easier and faster for builder, developer, and speculator to address affordable housing.  

Please reconsider Garden Suite zoning by-law and remove duplex, triplex, fourplex and low-rise apartment properties from this by-law. 

Sincerely yours,  

Remembering WWII

North Rosedale resident Jack Rhind recounts the ‘indescribable’ brutality of the second world war.