Is This How Our City Cares for Our Parks?

I took a walk along the walkway along Stephen Juba Park and Fort Douglas Park on May 27, 2026 to check out how the city was doing with their new encampment bylaw passed in November 2025.

The good news: I saw no occupied encampments from George Ave to Bannatyne Ave!  I don’t know if the City found housing for those who were there in the spring, or if they moved to other locations, but there were none on this day. 

The bad news: the forest is a disaster!  Judging it to be safe to walk through what’s left of the forest area in the one block section between George Ave. and Galt Ave., usually a ‘fully occupied section’, I headed into the trees and what’s left of the bush to walk the river path.  What I found was garbage, litter and destruction everywhere.

While the City has not committed to remove people from encampments, they have pledged repeatedly that when an encampment is unoccupied, the area would be cleaned.

Looking at the video I shot on my walk, you will see that this urban park has not been cleaned in a long time.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/102668_55a528bc8e2b426986ff9109f18b5445/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Video of my riverbank walk through the encampment garbage remains

While East Exchange residents have been regularly cleaning garbage from vacated encampments along the riverbank at Stephen Juba Park, that is not happening further north in Fort Douglas Park.  This should not be the job of residents.

These are city parks. Our taxes go towards maintaining such parks and given that these two parks, on a contiguous section of the riverbank along Waterfront Drive, is the only green space in the East Exchange, it is important that they be maintained.

I again ask those responsible for our urban parks to do their job.  This would not be the case in Assiniboine Park or Kildonan Park, so why is it okay to leave this devastation in our two parks?