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Keep off the grass: Queen’s Park to become a festival-free zone

Twenty years ago Afrofest became the first event to be staged north of the legislature at Queen’s Park. This year organizers Music Africa were denied a permit to use the park, leaving it scrambling to find another venue.

The Toronto Freedom Festival, which hosts the annual Global Marijuana March, was also initially denied a Queen’s Park permit this year. But organizers for the controversial event made some concessions in order to get permission to hold the festival at the legislature site for at least one more year.

There’s still a chance that Afrofest will go ahead as planned at Queen’s Park on July 9 and 10. Organizers have re-submitted a proposal to the city’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation department, but city officials say the reality is the event has simply grown too large, and the annual crush of Afro-music lovers is destroying the legislature’s lawn.

In a January letter to Afrofest organizers, the Parks department cited six permit violations, in addition to “significant turf and compaction damage due to vehicles and other event-related use” and “complaints from the surrounding community re: damage to the site, noise, and violation of private property … due to the size of the event.”

But something smells fishy to Music Africa’s Michael Stohr. He feels most of the permit violations the city cited were unfounded or easily rectified, and he wonders why, despite raising the issue of park degradation for years, the city has never taken steps to preserve Queen’s Park. For instance, fences around trees could help lessen root damage. “The city’s not doing to anything to combat root compaction,” he said.

When asked if the city might have a grudge against Afrofest, Stohr said “It feels like it. I think they find us an annoyance. We’re very independent. We don’t have massive corporate sponsorship, we’re not really part of the system. (Afrofest and the Toronto Freedom Festival) are two of the independent festivals. I think they respect you less.”

As for an alternative venue, Stohr says the message from the city has been “Choose any park in the city you want, as long as it’s Downsview.” That simply wouldn’t be a good fit for Afrofest, he said. “Afrofest is about African culture being recognized. It goes against the grain to push us to the outside” of the city.

On the other hand, Toronto Freedom Festival organizer Gabe Simms concedes his event has grown “astronomically” in recent years, with 30,000 people flooding the 15,000-capacity space. “Their concerns we took as being extremely valid,” he said. “If those concerns were voiced last August, and they worked pro-actively to relocate the festival, we would have had very little ground to stand on.” Instead TFF only found out last month that their permit had been rejected.

In the end, Simms managed to convince the city that at this late date thousands of pro-marijuana protesters were going to show up at Queen’s Park on May 7 anyway and it was in everybody’s best interest to have festival organizers there to control the crowd. But while TFF won a reprieve this year, their chances of returning to Queen’s Park post-2011 are about as flimsy as a moistened Zig Zag.

Next year, major renovations are planned for the park. “We’re going to be rebuilding the base of the King Edwards Monument,” said Ward 27 Councillor Krystin Wong-Tam, “and looking at reconnecting the different trails, possibly holding a public art contest to replace all the benches. So the park will be under construction next year and just about every festival is going to be relocated during that time.”

After all the hassle this year, in 2013 it’s a good bet Queen’s Park will be renovated and beautified, but also Afrofest- and TFF-free.

Besides park preservation, the provincial authorities have other reasons to be happy to see TFF relocate. Having thousands of people show up to flaunt marijuana laws at the seat of provincial government each year has always been a bit embarrassing, and there’s no better illustration of the conflict in values than the timing of TFF. The festival has always been held on the first Saturday in May, and organizers have repeatedly attempted to expand into a weekend-long event.

The problem is that the first Sunday in May is the traditional date of the annual OPP memorial ceremony, held on the other side of the legislature at Queen’s Park South. And nothing spoils a solemn police ceremony like marijuana smoke wafting over the legislature and a couple of hallucinating stoners gawking at the proceedings.

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