Mississauga’s prohibition of street sports was preserved when a slim majority led by Mayor Carolyn Parrish decided earlier this month to keep it in place. Children play a game of ball hockey in Vaudreuil-Dorion, west of Montreal, on Dec. 24, 2015.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
The simple act of practising a wrist shot, kicking a ball or swinging a cricket bat is illegal on the suburban cul-de-sacs of Mississauga.
On the face of it, that doesn’t make the city west of Toronto an outlier. Such rules limiting childhood fun are in place in municipalities across the country. But Mississauga recently had a chance to allow children to play on the street – and decided not to.
This was an own goal, a missed opportunity to be a positive example to other cities. It’s a decision that can’t be justified at a time when concerns are being raised about childhood obesity, about children spending too much time on screens, about childhood loneliness.
A wealth of research on over-protective parenting shows that this behaviour, while meant well, has real downsides. According to one meta-analysis, “the excessive focus on avoiding harm limits the child’s opportunities for the development of healthy independence and psychosocial skills.”
So when parents are willing to open the front door, governments shouldn’t be standing in the way with unnecessary rules. A no-sports bylaw will scare off some youthful fun and turn other kids into scofflaws, while solving nothing. And a ban has the added downside of giving ammunition to malicious neighbours who want to stir up trouble and settle scores.
Mississauga’s prohibition of street sports was preserved when a slim majority led by Mayor Carolyn Parrish decided earlier this month to keep it in place. Prior to the vote, politicians had raised concerns about liability and Ms. Parrish floated the impossible standard of the city having “airtight” protection should an aging driver press the wrong pedal and run over a child.
But Mississauga city staff acknowledged during that council debate that there had been no injuries among those children who have been breaking the rules and playing on the street. If a child were to be hit, that would be tragic. Still, allow us to add a needed sense of proportion to the debate. Pedestrians are killed in crosswalks. This is not a reason to ban them.
If the concern among cash-strapped cities is really about liability, the evidence on that front is reassuring.
Toronto amended its bylaw in 2016 to allow sports on residential roads. According to city staff, there have been no legal actions brought in relation to playing in the street.
In Ottawa, street hockey and hopscotch are allowed as long as the flow of traffic is not impeded. This rule has been in place since 2007. And here as well, the city reports no legal troubles. Kingston allowed street hockey in certain circumstances from 2008 through 2022, before amending the bylaw to deregulate all forms of playing in the street two years ago, and reports no issues.
Beyond liability, part of the concern for cities may be that sports equipment will clog roadways. And it’s true that basketball hoops and hockey nets should not be left in the middle of the road. But that’s a matter of simple courtesy, best enforced by the social contract of a neighbourhood.
If the social contract fails, and a household consistently blocks traffic with their gear, there are existing bylaws to deal with that. Try leaving a dumpster without a permit on the road and you’ll find quickly enough that cities have the power to remove obstructions and levy fines.
The bigger issue in many cities is that drivers don’t want to be slowed down – not even by kids having fun. Mississauga is one of the original sprawl suburbs. It is criss-crossed with wide arterials, a prototypical car-dominated city. But drivers need not be concerned about their commute. There’s no reasonable scenario in which a bunch of kids are going to set up their hockey net on four-lane Derry Road, where the speed limit is as high as 70 kilometres per hour and thousands of people drive to work every day.
Instead, kids will play on the quietest street near their homes. And on those streets, drivers should not be going fast anyway. In residential neighbourhoods, drivers should assume that there may be children around and drive alertly, with caution.
Mississauga had the chance to set an example for other municipalities, and it whiffed.
Let kids be kids. As cities grow, the public street is an important shared space. It should be an extension of home, and a place to play out a rite of childhood.