[URBAN NOTE] "Vintage Toronto Ads: Please Walk on the Grass"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn shares classic ads from a 1970s campaign to get Torontonians to use their city's parks.

As the 1970s approached, Toronto seemed primed to throw off its old cold, unfriendly shackles. The puritanical laws which had cut down on fun, especially regarding alcohol or doing anything on a Sunday, were slowly loosening. The city’s increasingly multicultural mix boosted the number of summer festivals residents enjoyed, opening new worlds to tourists and long-time Torontonians alike. This thawing may have inspired tourism officials to promote our town as “The Friendly City,” even if making that a reality took baby steps.

One huge leap seen in today’s ad was made a decade earlier, one which grabbed attention across North America: erecting signs in Metro Toronto parks urging users to “please walk on the grass.”

The signs were the brainchild of Metro Parks Commissioner Tommy Thompson. Hired as the department’s first employee in July 1955, Thompson spent the next two decades cultivating the region’s natural beauty into over 7,800 acres for the public to enjoy. “We saw our job as wilderness management,” Thompson told Weekend magazine in 1972. “Letting the land express what it was meant to express.” Instead of installing elements like baseball diamonds, Thompson saw the mix of open spaces and flora as places where people could just enjoy themselves.