The roof of downtown Toronto's Native Child and Family Services Centre is going green with an array of unique features designed to cater to the facility's clientele.
The centre, which offers housing, mental health, outreach, child care and other services for Native Canadian youngsters and families in the city, has contracted Ontario green roof experts Bioroof to install the new green roof.The new green roof will boast traditional aboriginal features such as a healing lodge, water area, fire pit and a garden where plants used in native rituals will grow.Norman Clarke of the Native Child and Family Services Centre said the roof was designed with the centre's mandate in mind."The services we have here are all culturally based, so we try to bring in traditional ways of doing things and providing services," he said.The roof will include natural stump seating and a true outdoor feel, while planters will allow sage, corn and tobacco - all of which are culturally significant to the Native population - to grow.The healing lodge will provide a space in which the centre's clients can participate in traditional cleansing and healing rituals."A lot of our clients are in need of healing," Clarke said.Clarke added another key feature of the green roof - a playground area - will enhance the lives of many of the centre's most vulnerable clients by offering an oasis in the busy Yonge and College streets area."We're a child welfare agency so we do have kids in our care," he said. "This will allow them come up and enjoy some outdoor play."Children will also be able to pick and plant corn and other plants used in traditional Native ceremonies.Bioroof president Rick Buist said the site posed unique challenges, partly because it's in a busy downtown area and partly because the features requested by the centre were different than on other green roofs. "The whole idea was to make it a very natural, Native setting, a unique oasis in the city," he said. "It's definitely going to be one of a kind. It's a very different green roof."While the roof will give the centre's clients a chance to maintain their cultural traditions, it also serves an environmental purpose. Hardy native plant species including cedar, wildflowers and little bluestem grass will ensure the roof prospers in the Toronto climate."With the green roof (the centre) can manage more storm water and there are cooling benefits in the summer," Buist said. "It will be a very high-performing green roof."While green roofs often go unused during the cold winter months, Clarke said the Native Child and Family Services Centre hopes to get as much use as possible out of their newest feature."We hope to be able to use the healing lodge year-round and we'll have the fire pit up here where (clients) can sit around and tell traditional stories," he said. "We'd like to be able to use the green roof as much as we can all year."