March 16, 2020 10am Eastern/7am Pacific On Saturday, March 14th, BC's provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry spoke to the public on ways to stay healthy while engaging in safe social distancing practices. In her announcement, she highlighted the observation that viruses do not transmit as readily outdoors. So, she suggests, 'go outside and play with your...
March 5, 2020 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific An emerging theme of recent Canadian Parks Collective for Innovation and Leadership (CPCIL) Park Leaders Development Programs is the need to support the mental health and wellbeing of people who work for park agencies, often on the front lines of climate change, natural disasters, and biodiversity loss and nearly always passionate...
Winter Walk Day is celebrated by schools across Ontario on the first Wednesday of February each year. Walking and wheeling to and from school is fun every day. We encourage you to journey outside throughout the entire month of February. This year, Winter Walk Day is Wednesday 5 February 2020. Students across the province will celebrate on...
On November 20th of last year, Outdoor Play Canada published an article titled, "If In Doubt, Let Them Out – A Child’s Right to Play," marking the 30th anniversary of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In mid-December, this article was published in The Conversation. Click here to read the article in The Conversation. ...
New research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey reaffirmed the dramatic decline in Canadian children’s fitness seen over the past 35 years with only a third of Canadian school-aged children meeting physical activity guidelines. Other research from the same survey showed that physical activity increases when children are outdoors, with each additional hour spent...
Yesterday, Dr. Mark Tremblay was interviewed by CTV Ottawa about the decline in outdoor play among Canadian children and youth and what we can do about it. Click here to view the 4-minute segment....
Check out the new documentary “Running Free: Children’s Independent Mobility”! Told through the eyes of 3 families, this 26-minute documentary explores the concept of children’s independent mobility, the benefits for children’s mental health, and challenges viewers to consider solutions to this issue. Watch it here: [vc_video link='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKOXfa8NfTY&feature=youtu.be']...
Ottawa, September 27, 2019 – Outdoor Play Canada was launched today at the Breath of Fresh Air Outdoor Play Summit in Ottawa – an open-air conference where outdoor play thought leaders, practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers gathered to exchange knowledge and best practices for promoting outdoor play. Outdoor Play Canada has a vision that outdoor play is...
A comprehensive new report from UNICEF Canada asked children how their lives are going. The results show that Canada is a tough place to grow up. Only 55 per cent of children in Canada report a high level of life satisfaction, with 27 per cent feeling sad or hopeless for long periods of time and 1 in 3...
This year’s ‘Kid’s Run for Nature’ raised over $180,000 in support of the conservation work of World Wildlife Fund Canada. The nation-wide movement, which was founded in 2015, now takes place in over 25 locations from coast to coast. Throughout the months of May, June, and July 2019, events were held in a variety of communities...
