The Child and Nature Alliance has published their first podcast in partnership with Evergreen Brickworks and the Trillium Foundation. This is the first of a series of podcasts that will focus on highlighting the Forest and Nature School pedagogy. In the podcast, host Stephanie Smith speaks with Gemma and Natalia, two youth play animators on their...
On March 18, 2020, BBC News wrote an article entitled 'Coronavirus: Should you let your children play with other children?'. In the article, journalist Robin Levinson-King, from Toronto, Ontario, describes how families are wrestling with whether or not they should let their children play with others given recommendations on physical distancing. Dr. Angela Pyle, an assistant...
March 16, 2020 10am Eastern/7am Pacific On Saturday, March 14th, BC's provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry spoke to the public on ways to stay healthy while engaging in safe social distancing practices. In her announcement, she highlighted the observation that viruses do not transmit as readily outdoors. So, she suggests, 'go outside and play with your...
March 5, 2020 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific An emerging theme of recent Canadian Parks Collective for Innovation and Leadership (CPCIL) Park Leaders Development Programs is the need to support the mental health and wellbeing of people who work for park agencies, often on the front lines of climate change, natural disasters, and biodiversity loss and nearly always passionate...
The Canadian Outdoor Summit is an epic, national, historic project where participants are invited to excitedly co-create a reality where outdoor programs can thrive and be appreciated for their true worth. The Summit will enable the creation of a more unified, national outdoor community and begin to remove roadblocks currently affecting outdoor programming. The national outdoor community...
Winter Walk Day is celebrated by schools across Ontario on the first Wednesday of February each year. Walking and wheeling to and from school is fun every day. We encourage you to journey outside throughout the entire month of February. This year, Winter Walk Day is Wednesday 5 February 2020. Students across the province will celebrate on...
On November 20th of last year, Outdoor Play Canada published an article titled, "If In Doubt, Let Them Out – A Child’s Right to Play," marking the 30th anniversary of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In mid-December, this article was published in The Conversation. Click here to read the article in The Conversation. ...
In the fall of 2019, the 'Minimum Planning Requirements Regulations' were added to the Nova Scotia Municipal Government Act. The regulations added 'recreation facilities and public open spaces' to the list of elements that must be included in municipal planning strategies. Similar changes were made to the Halifax Regional Municipality Charter. This was an important...
New research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey reaffirmed the dramatic decline in Canadian children’s fitness seen over the past 35 years with only a third of Canadian school-aged children meeting physical activity guidelines. Other research from the same survey showed that physical activity increases when children are outdoors, with each additional hour spent...
Yesterday, Dr. Mark Tremblay was interviewed by CTV Ottawa about the decline in outdoor play among Canadian children and youth and what we can do about it. Click here to view the 4-minute segment....
