Toronto now has a park in an underpass (and Rob Ford hopped on a jungle gym to celebrate)

Rob Ford usually makes news for acting belligerent or defensive, so it was nice to see news agencies covering his enthusiastic endorsement of the newly opened Underpass Park. (The mayor even scaled a jungle gym while a group of children chanted, “Go mayor! Go mayor!”) The park is under the Eastern Avenue, Richmond Street and Adelaide Street overpasses between Cherry Street and Bayview Avenue, and the mayor lauded the innovative project for turning that “neglected space into a community hub.”  Though Ford didn’t explicitly congratulate Waterfront Toronto, the government agency behind the project, his praise—and his very presence at the opening—seems like a conciliatory gesture. There’s a long history of bad blood between the mayor’s camp and Waterfront Toronto; Doug Ford has called it a “boondoggle” and Ford’s administration battled with the agency over control of the Port Lands revitalization. So, oddly, Ford’s kid-friendly behaviour at the park was somewhat mature. [Toronto Star]