Montreal has just unveiled a sweeping new Public Leisure Policy, the first of its kind in Quebec, built on a simple but radical idea — that leisure is not a luxury, but a right.
The city now officially considers recreation as essential to civic life as housing, public safety, or mobility. From sports and arts programs to quiet parks and community gardens, every Montrealer — regardless of income, language, or postal code — is meant to have access to meaningful leisure.
For neighborhoods like Park Extension, where space is tight, incomes modest, and cultures wonderfully diverse, that declaration feels both inspiring and overdue.
A City Vision Meets a Dense Neighborhood
Walk through Park Extension on a sunny weekend and you’ll see the city’s leisure ideals in miniature: children racing through Jarry Park, parents chatting in dozens of languages, teens turning narrow alleyways into impromptu soccer fields. Yet beyond these lively moments lies a persistent inequity.
Urban studies have repeatedly shown that green spaces, shaded areas, and bike-friendly streets are scarcer here than in wealthier parts of Montreal. A 2024 study found that residents of Park Extension have five times fewer cooler green areas than those of Outremont or the Plateau. On hot days, that difference can be felt on the pavement.
So when City Hall says that every Montrealer deserves accessible, inclusive, and “inspiring” recreation, Park Extension is precisely the kind of community where that vision will be tested.
Beyond Parks and Playgrounds
Montreal’s new policy defines public leisure not just as organized activities, but as any free, personal experience of joy in public space — from reading in a library to growing tomatoes in a community garden, or simply dancing in the park.
In practice, that means recognizing that recreation doesn’t always happen in shiny new facilities. It happens in laneways turned into mini-plazas, in schoolyards shared after hours, and in community centers where language classes and dance rehearsals coexist.
In Park Extension, that could translate into support for organizations like the Table de quartier de Parc-Extension (BIPE), which already helps local residents discover cultural and leisure resources, or the Parc-Exchange project, a neighborhood network where people trade skills and services without money changing hands — a violin lesson in exchange for tutoring, or help with gardening traded for a home-cooked meal.
These grassroots initiatives reflect precisely the kind of human connection the city’s policy celebrates: leisure as a path to belonging.
Closing the Gap
The city promises to ensure that every borough receives a fair share of resources — funding, staff, equipment — to offer quality recreation. But achieving equity in a place like Park Extension requires more than resource sharing. It requires overcoming barriers of information, language, and space.
Many newcomers don’t even know that the Accès-Loisirs program offers free registration in city sports, art, and cultural programs for families with low income. Others may face online registration systems available only in French or English. And while Jarry Park remains a regional gem, small neighborhood parks like Bloomfield or Saint-Roch still struggle with aging playgrounds and limited amenities — although, encouragingly, Bloomfield is slated for renovation before the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, new traffic-calming measures announced for Park Extension — speed bumps, curb extensions, safer crossings — could make walking or cycling to these spaces safer, especially for children and seniors. A good leisure policy depends as much on how people get to the park as what they do there.
The Measure of Success
Will Montreal’s new vision succeed in Park Extension? That depends on whether policy can meet the realities of everyday life. Leisure here isn’t something abstract — it’s parents gathering under a lone tree to escape the heat, seniors chatting on a single park bench, or kids inventing games between parked cars because there’s no open field left.
If the city truly believes that leisure is a right, it must listen to the neighborhoods where that right is most fragile. That means inviting residents into the planning process, funding the small community groups that already make magic out of very little, and recognizing that cultural diversity is not an obstacle but a powerful creative engine.
Toward a Fairer City
Montreal’s leisure policy is more than an administrative blueprint; it’s a moral statement about what makes urban life worth living. In Park Extension, it could become a lever for fairness — a way to reclaim small corners of the city for laughter, music, exercise, and rest.
