Welcome to Warden Woods, mates!

Welcome everyone to my neighborhood, Warden Woods! We are talking about a place that was founded in the 1960s. This area was created as a project of the Mennonite Church and community partners in response to the needs of citizens in a new plan of the government for the Scarborough southwest area.

This neighborhood was built to host and accomodate approximately 347 families and 392 senior citizens. At the beginning, the housing project had no recreational facilities and just a few public luxuries. Today, this place is a multi-service area governed by its residents and by a local Board of Directors. Do you want to know more? So keep readign about Warden Woods and all its curiosities! Welcome, mates!

Into the Warden Woods

Warden Woods is an area of approximately 68 hectares stretching 1.8 km along Warden Avenue, north and south of St. Clair Avenue East. Warden Woods belongs to the biggest area of Scarborough.

Warden Woods is located in the midst of existing residential communities, and is served by the TTC Warden subway station, very helpful for all the residents. The subway system, the development industry and other agencies represent a significant asset for the area. The area has undergone a number of changes in recent years leading Toronto to undertake a comprehensive review.

The community is comprised of a mix of private and public lands, and there is an important variety of employment, industries, ravine system. Besides, this area includes library, school and other community facilities with a good infrastructure. A system of public streets and pedestrian walways integrated with adjoining neighborhooods will provide internal connections and will link Warden Woods to the arterial road system and public transit. Key linkages will integrate Warden Woods with adjoining neighborhooods.

Warden Woods will provide a full range of housing to accommodate a broad range of household incomes and sizes, under varied forms of tenure and with a range of building  forms. Higher density residential uses are promoted adjacent to the subway station to enhance opportunities for transit use to place of work.

Nature and activities

The natural environment will be improved by such measures as creating better public access to natural areas appropiate, protecting sensitive natural areas including Massey Creek, and removing invasive species. Warden Woods encourages green technologies such as green roof development and environmentally advanced stormwater management practices. Opportunities for significant tree planting on public lands will also be pursued. Warden Woods is a neighborhood that really cares about this.

There is a lot of activities involved with the nature in Warden Woods. Hiking, Walking, Cycling or Snowshoeing are some of them. There also are clen-up activities for all the neighborhood to keep safe the nature. Talking about upcoming events, next year all the citizens of Warden Woods and of course of Toronto will be able to participate in the "Early Spring Greens Foraging Walk". With this event, the neighborhood pretends to create a awareness about the plants, the native and non-native species of the area, and how to harvest the latter for tasty and healthy dishes to make at home!

The designation of Warden Woods as an Environmentally Significant Area would acknowledge the significant natural features in the park, communicate its status to the community as being distinct from other local recreational areas, and provide a meaningful symbol of the City’s long-term commitment to preserve and enhance the park.

Community Services and possible issues

The Warden Woods Community offers many programmes, services, special events and diverse projects for all the residents of the neighborhood. This institution has been for 40 years with a big compromise with the Warden Woods community and with the rest of the areas of southwest Scarborough. Its staff and its volunteers covering the help of children, the youth people, the adults and the old people through more than 50 programmes and services. All this work reflects perfectly the affluent cultural mosaic of this neighborhood. Like they say on this website, Warden Woods is a great place to be

Warden Woods Community Centre has a clear mission that is summarised in 4 different points:

- Linking the communities to internal and external resources

- Sharing skills of the community in order to develop resources

- Working for social justise in community life

- Services to meet emotional and educational needs in the community.

Besides, you can participate with the Centre through the social media (Facebook, Twitter and Flickr). If the readers are interested in reading more, here is the website of Warden Woods Community Centre:http://www.wardenwoods.com/home.html

After some talks with some of the neighbours of Warden Woods, we can say that there are not really big problems around the community further that some troubles in the traffic areas. This means that the services in the community are working really well. However, there´s a lot of different institutions besides Warden Woods Community Centre that provides useful programs for all the residents of the area. Below we add a list about some of them:

-Programs for women, newcomes and people with physical challenges

- Support services to build on client strenghts, to build community

- Cultural and recreation programs

- Family support and tutoring

- Kids clubs

- Heritage programs

- Homelessness Prevention Program

Local information

Today Warden Woods has the most popular newspaper of the city of Toronto. There´s a lot of stores and places in this area where the residents can get easily the news like The Star, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Sun, The National Post for instance, The Metro... This is possible due to the good communication that exists in the area. We got all this information after talking with 8 residents of the neighborhood who everyday buy at least one of this newspapers. 

However there are another ways to look for the news in Warden Woods. The most important local newspaper of this place probably is The Scarborough Mirror, a newspaper distributed every Thursday to households in the area of Toronto from Victoria Park to R.River Valley, with Warden Woods included. This media offers community features, events calendar and columns every week, being conscious about the cultural diversity of a big community of neighborhoods that has increased quickly through the years. By the way, you can take a look of the online version  http://www.insidetoronto.com/scarborough-toronto-on/

Politics of Warden Woods

The neighborhood of Warden Woods is governed by the Liberal Party. Specifically, by the politician Michelle Berardinetti. Time ago, Berardinetti used to be a political consultant to corporate community organizations and used to work as an assistant with some prominent Members of Parliament. But this was before she was elected City Councillor for Ward 35, the area where is Warden Woods (Scarborough Sothwest) on October, 2010.



During all this time, Berardinetti did a lot of good things for the community. For instance, she was the person who led the charge for the Scarborough Subway, she secured major funding for some important projects, she opened a new fire station, she expanded library hours and she improved commute times for all road users, among other successful results.

She always showed concern about this area, especially during the 2006 campaign when she wanted to make sure that the community received its "fair share" of tax dollars. After saying frases like these, the politician obtained enough votes to start to work as one of the most important person in charge of this area:

"A lot of our property tax dollars are being spent downtown, and not here. For example, a road in the downtown will get paved 2 or 3 times before one is paved out here" said.

Knowing more about... Bill Blair!

After some talks with some of my neighbours, I listened the same name again and again: Bill Blair. At the beginning I thought in writing about one of the normal residents of my community, but after that experience, I changed my mind. All the neighbours said to me that Bill is a man who really has done big things for this community. It sounded very interesting, so I started to investigate a little bit more by my own. Below I add a profile about who is Bill Blair, with some of the most interesting information about his whole career as politician and as police man.

This is Bill,  a heavy-set man with short and grey hair with the face of a disciplined man. Blair was born in the area of Scarborough in 1954, and he studied economics at the University of Toronto. Today, Blairs represents the district of Scarborough Southwest as a Member of Parliament. The past April 25, he retired as a police man after 10 years of services to the city of Toronto (he was the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police).



Blair is also known for being a controversial person. In 2013, he came into a big conflict with the ex Toronto mayor Rob Ford after confirming to the media that the department of police had obtained a video of Ford smoking crack cocaine. There was a lot of problems, and Blair always said that he was "dissapointed" in the major. Bill also was in conflict with a lot of members of the police board over resistance to work on reforms as well as his resistance to cut the police service´s budget. However, we must talk abou Bill Blair as a very compromised person with this community. For instance, in the year 2009, the ex police man began to mark a record number of tips to Crime Stoppers: "We saw a significant decline in crime last year" used to say.

Bill Blair took an easy victory the past October for the Liberal in the federal elections. Below you can see a video that shows the moment when Blar wins the Scarborough Southwest ridings.