BY Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon & Desirée Zagbai
A lone weathered bench overlooks a small pond, encircled by a few scattered shrubs and trees. The thin yellow branches of weeping willows droop downward towards the still frozen water, almost as if reaching out to it.
Linuz Castro, a high school student at the nearby École Secondaire Caroline Dawson (formerly known as Nouvelle École Secondaire Lasalle), sits on this bench, as he’s done nearly every week for the past two years.
In Castro’s lap gingerly rests a sketchbook, its smooth black cover adorned with various graphic stickers. He opens it to a blank page, and selects one of the many coloured markers from his backpack: a vivid orange. Castro pauses to think, then begins sketching his next design.
“I like to sketch names, because my [art] style is graffiti,” he explains.
Linuz Castro is a high school student who frequents Angrignon Park to draw in his sketchbook. Photo by Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon.
Since January 2024, Castro has been regularly visiting this bench, located in Parc Angrignon. His favourite green space is only a five-minute walk from his high school and a 15-minute bus ride from his home.
“I like the convenience of it,” he says.
For Castro, Parc Angrignon is his escape; it’s a safe space, one where he can practise his hobby and passion: sketching.
“I come here to be alone, to listen to music, to sketch, it’s what I do when I’m bored or stressed. It’s therapeutic.”
Castro is just one of many Montreal residents who regularly frequent a green space. However, that number may be significantly lower than what it could be.
In a 2023 study published by a RE/MAX group, Montreal ranked 24th out of 29 “green” Canadian cities. It also trailed behind other major metropolitan areas such as Toronto and Calgary in total amount of green space, with 6,446 hectares—a figure that was unchanged two years later in the Canadian City Parks Report.
The Quebec government defines green spaces as predominantly natural environments. However, they allow cities and municipalities to redefine this definition as they personally see fit.
Miguel Escobar, an urban planner with the Order of Urban Planners of Quebec, explains that green spaces can be divided into multiple categories, including parks (i.e., those with grass, shrubs, trees, etc.), marshes, bogs, lakes, and river shores.
As a large metropolitan area, Montreal’s number of green spaces is lower when compared to those of other big cities. However, the city makes up for this in other ways.
Angrignon Park is one of Montreal’s largest parks. Photo by Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon.
“I think Montreal is more of a walkable city when compared to Toronto. Because even though they might have the numbers, they don’t have the quality that we do,” says Escobar.
Both community—and citywide efforts are currently underway to grow the city’s current amount of green spaces.
Lisa Mintz is the executive director of UrbaNature Éducation and an environmental activist. Mintz founded the non-profit organization in 2017, a program through which she and her team help introduce Montreal residents to their local green spaces.
“I felt that the most important thing that I could do was teach other people to teach environmental education, passing it on in a ripple effect so that we end up having an army. And it’s working,” she explains.
Mintz’s end goal is to create a greenbelt, which she has partially achieved through her previous non-profit organizations, such as Sauvons la Falaise and Sauvons l’Anse-à-l’Orme.
“Saving one little green space is not good enough. We need a lot more than that,” says Mintz.
Both initiatives were ultimately successful, as their corresponding areas now belong to major parks managed by the city—the Parc-Nature de l’Écoterritoire de la Falaise and the Grand Parc de l’Ouest, respectively.
As for Montreal, it has implemented the 2050 Land Use and Mobility Plan, which aims for 40 per cent of the city’s territory to consist of green spaces by 2050, with a network of green corridors spanning over 70 km.
Louise-Hélène Lefebvre, the director of Montreal’s Service des Grands Parcs, du Mont-Royal et des Sports, explains that to contribute to this goal, her department has its own 2030 Nature and Sports Plan, through which they are working on five green corridors: Saraguay–Angrignon, de l’Est, Espace pour la Vie–Mont-Royal, de la Rivière des Prairies, and Falaise-Fleuve–Bridge-Angrignon.
Currently the Parc-Nature de l’Écoterritoire de la Falaise, this green space will become part of the larger Falaise-Fleuve–Bridge-Angrignon green corridor. Photo by Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon.
“Building green corridors is a demanding task, one that requires rethinking mobility, rethinking certain traffic zones to give a little more to nature or create a shared space where active mobility can take place,” says Lefebvre. “So we have to work on it. A project, an opportunity, a plot of land for sale, a development with a private partner who would agree to grant us a right-of-way so we can connect to the network.”
The Service des Grands Parcs is also responsible for both the full and partial management of Montreal’s existing green spaces. As of now, there are 22 in total, with 14 under their direct management.
An interactive map displaying the distribution of Montreal’s parks and greens, along with the different levels of city management. Infographic by Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon.
The department has prioritized the use of green corridors, as they allow larger green spaces to be linked to smaller, local ones, creating an extensive network throughout the city that benefits both the environment and biodiversity.
During the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (or COP15), a goal was set for Montreal to reach 10 per cent of protected green spaces.
According to Emma Despland, a professor at Concordia University’s Department of Biology and an ecologist, that number has not yet been reached.
Despland explains that a high presence of green spaces isn’t just necessary for maintaining healthy biodiversity levels, but also in today’s context of climate change.
Green spaces can provide a sustainable and cost-efficient solution to both increasing temperatures and flooding. They help reduce the intensity of heat waves and allow for more floodwater absorption. Green spaces can also drastically improve air quality and physical and mental health.
Despland also believes it’s crucial for Montreal to fully commit to the plan.
“In general, there’s a long-standing tradition of making commitments towards environmental goals and then not meeting them,” she affirms. “Staying the course, in terms of investment in green spaces and active mobility, would be really key. And not let it be diluted by the people who don’t like it.”
Urban sprawl has been increasing significantly for decades. This affects farmers, who lose agricultural land, and it reduces access to services for people living in rural areas. Video by Desirée Zagbai.
According to Miguel Escobar, however, there are no concrete rules and regulations regarding green space creation and management, due to ever-changing policies. What exists are more guidelines than anything else.
“I haven’t seen any policy that obliges council or planning departments to follow a certain schedule of development for parks, budget by budget,” he says.
As for his thoughts on the plan, Escobar remains apprehensive about its feasibility.
“In the end, a lot of these projects are not done, because you don’t have the resources, you don’t have the money, you don’t have the people,” he says.
Before moving closer to Parc Angrignon, Linuz Castro used to live in the Côtes-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough. He would sometimes visit Parc Martin-Luther-King (formerly known as Parc Kent), a locally managed green space. To him, there was definitely room for improvement.
Linuz Castro sits on a bench in Angrignon Park to do some sketching. Photo by Mélanie Tremblay Turgeon.
“The public restrooms became abandoned because homeless people would go there and then do drugs inside,” recalls Castro, “There was this one time when my friends and I went there just to take a look for fun. We saw so many condoms [and] syringes.”
“It was just kind of left to rot. I think it’s because of a lack of money,” he adds.
A 2025 study published in the online journal Geographies highlighted a significant gap in green space accessibility between neighbourhoods. Researchers used the 3-30-300 index, which requires that: 1) a minimum of three trees must be visible from every home; 2) each neighbourhood should have a tree canopy cover of at least 30 per cent, and every person should live within 300 metres of a park and/or green space.
They found that only 19.4 per cent of neighbourhoods met all three criteria. Additionally, 39.3 per cent of Montrealers live beyond that 300-meter threshold, with the highest concentrations being in peripheral areas such as the Northeast.
In general, wealthier areas tend to have larger, safer, and cleaner green spaces, versus lower-income ones which are more limited.
“The presence of green spaces, it’s definitely not consistent between neighbourhoods,” says Emma Despland. “There’s often an inequality there, which is problematic because access to public, safe green spaces is more important for people who don’t own their own backyard.”
Louise-Hélène Lefebvre believes that the next logical step would be for boroughs to actively participate in re-greening efforts. This could mean transforming a small abandoned parking lot into a viable green space.
That way, every Montrealer may eventually be able to enjoy them.
