19 June 2025 – Forget the dragon. That is so 10 centuries ago! These days, St. George — or, anyway, our St. George — is all about urban/eco sustainability and livability.

I’m first bounced onto this theme by a graffito on a waste bin. One that I initially think disrespectful of the human origins of the slogan…

but then reconsider, as I look smack across the street.

I’m on East 7th, heading farther east, and I’m staring into the busy abundance of this community garden stretching on north to East 6th. All lives matter, yes? We humans and plants are woven into the same eco-system.

This little local garden is very much of this neighbourhood, with its neighbourly values. A place with low-rise homes, many of them vintage wooden structures; a place where a kicked-off toddler’s shoe…

is carefully displayed at sidewalk’s edge by some later passer-by, in the hopes it may yet be retrieved.

I drop down to East 6th, look north as I cross Guelph, think how much I like this human scale — but have no illusions it will last much longer. Let your eye travel down the row of modest bright-painted houses…

to that equally bright-painted construction crane down below. That’s the future, and increasingly the present.

But!

St. George is at work.

Well, the St. George Rainway. It’s been a long time coming, but now here it is, nearing completion — with its (and I quote} “green rainwater infrastructure features like rain gardens that incorporate plants, trees and soil to manage rainwater…”

I step up to the mini-plaza with its rock, its signage mounted on a plinth…

adorned with a Wood Sorrel cut-out…

and lots of information.

Go ahead — spread the image, track its elements; I’ll wait.

Together, we learn that the Rainway along St. George celebrates a Lost Creek, a tributary to False Creek that has long since been buried underground. (For that matter, this final eastern end of False Creek, into which the lost creek ran, no longer exists either.)

While you’re exploring that handy map, please note not just the Lost Creek, left-above “You are here,” but also China Creek on the far right, and E. Broadway (East Broadway), three streets to the south.

I admire the rain garden that parallels the sidewalk immediately to the south …

then cross East 6th to admire this sign in the rain garden running on north…

and feel more vindicated than ever in making my peace with the “Plant lives matter” graffito. “Thriving in diverse communities” sounds like the prescription for healthy life, period, whatever form of life we happen to be.

You’ll understand why, with that thought fresh in mind, I fall over laughing at the dumpster graffito I see immediately afterwards.

On I go, on to China Creek North Park. (See? That’s why I wanted you to locate it on the map.)

I am heartened, as I approach the edge of this large park, to see fresh new vine fencing woven into the woodlands periphery. (It had become very scruffy.)

At first, looking down the slope, the basin of the park appears generic and banal. Old fashioned, even.

All that mown grass. And baseball diamonds.

But then, as always, I reconsider. The top of the slope is lined with benches, and they are well used, in diverse ways. At the moment, for example, the bench on the left hosts Headset Guy, who in fact is reading a real, physical book…

while the bench on the right hosts Music Man, who strums his acoustic guitar so softly it is almost subliminal. A woman just out of frame is hunkered down, motionless & meditative, and the woman you can see walking past the benches is about to start down the winding path that snakes its way to the playground at the lower level.

And I am about to join her.

This park is another “Lost Creek” — or, more precisely, a Lost Watershed. Before this last bit of False Creek was filled in, a whole network of creeks tumbled through here to feed its waters. Once filled in, the area at one point became a garbage dump, but was subsequently rescued and turned into parkland.

The slope is now naturalized, and it is wonderfully, exuberantly, messy.

With signage to justify the mess.

At the bottom of the path, I peer down the final bit of slope, the bit with a slide and (here) a mesh climbing ladder…

and, down there at the very bottom-bottom, swings and a pirate’s ship and other kiddy delights.

All this diversity! Social plants, social humans, thriving in diversity.

Walking homeward, more happy plant/human interaction…

in this volunteer-managed street corner garden, part of the City’s Green Streets Program.

And then… a reminder that not everything is happy-happy.

That some current trends are jarring and disruptive, and will damage both humans and nature.

Taped to a tree on quiet, residential East 10th just west of St. George — with its fellow trees all around — a warning about the effects of the redevelopment now being pursued under the City’s Broadway Plan.

I may know more about the correct use of apostrophes (i.e., not to form noun plurals) than the author of this plea, but these tenants, in the adjoining notice…

teach me a new word. “Demoviction.” As in, the eviction of tenants from a building, so that it may be demolished, usually for redevelopment. A phenomenon integral to the Broadway Plan. And gaining pace.

I read a testimonial, also taped to the tree, the words of a woman who has been a tenant here for 22 years: “This affordable home allowed me to continue to raise my daughter here after my husband passed away. It provided a safe community and a stable, comfortable home.”

Right next door, the specific redevelopment being proposed: Rezone from Residential to Comprehensive Development category, and, on this street of two-storey homes, put up a 17-storey tower.

Hmm. Used to be, dragons breathed fire and wore scales. Now they may instead breathe rezoning, and clad themselves in 17 storeys.