Canada is building new National Urban Parks. What are they?

Adam Churchill takes a ride down his group's Oceanside Trail, near Quidi Vidi in St. John's. (Garrett Barry / CTV News)

The volunteer-run biking trails north of Quidi Vidi Harbour in St. John's are among the most scenic in the country.

No sooner had organizer Adam Churchill bragged of the whales, icebergs and cruise ships that could be in view than a pod of curious porpoises emerged to follow a boat out of the harbor and towards Cape Spear.

"It is absolutely stunning," Churchill said. "And to have the ability to have this network within five, 10 minutes of downtown … you can get a bus to here. It's truly incredible."

For years now, Churchill and the Avalon Mountain Bike Association have worked to get some stability for their trails, which were built, groomed and maintained near popular hiking trails in St. John's without ever securing formal permission.

So on Monday, when they were invited — and even mentioned — during an announcement that the City of St. John's and the federal government would work together to create a national urban park, it was another good sign.

"We're feeling positive and very confident that it will land where we want it to," Churchill said.

The federal government is promising to create a system of national urban parks — it has pledged to create six more by the end of 2025 — building off its first, the Rouge National Urban Park, established in Toronto in 2015.

Rouge has everything you'd expect from a national park: hiking, walking, guided tours, a beach and even the only campsite within Toronto's city limits.

"The major change is that a lot of the physical elements of the park have become a little bit more accessible," said David Lawrie, who works with Rouge Valley Foundation. "A lot more trails, in essence, development."

His charity was established in 1984 to push to protect the area before a national park was even established on the land.

Since taking ownership of the site, his group's relationship with Parks Canada has been mixed, he said.

While Parks Canada has successfully expanded the area under protection, Lawrie said his charity doesn't get as much communication as it would like.

"Now that the federal government is there, it's a very rigid process and they don't need as much help from the local communities," he said.

In 2021, the federal government put together a plan to create national urban parks across the country. Sites currently under consideration include the Meewasin Valley near Saskatoon, the Ojibway Prairie Complex near Windsor, Ont., and the Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes area near Halifax.

Officials have emphasized that flexibility is a key component of their urban park plan — there's no minimum size required for consideration, nor a minimum distance from an urban area.

According to government policy, each park may have different ownership structures, too. Parks Canada has proposed, however, that each park be accessible by public transportation, and receive significant support and participation from Indigenous groups who live nearby any proposed site.

Monday's news conference in St. John's was short on details, with no timelines or answers on what areas would be considered.

But St. John's Mayor Danny Breen did say the mountain biking trails, and the hiking trails they are built around, are safe bets to be considered.

"That could be developed into a world-class bike trail," the mayor said.

That's just what Churchill wants to do: He said the protection and guarantee of a national park would allow his volunteer group to move forward, get more professional equipment, and start building amenities like signage and buildings throughout the trail system.

"The sky's the limit, to use that phrase," he said.

"Demand has really just exploded, to the point where we are really struggling to keep up," he added, explaining his group is eager to work on "getting the trails back to that standard, to the high standard of what you would come to expect."

With files from NTV