It’s been a few months since I made an entry in my sporadic series on great public squares, so I wanted to go local for this one. Berczy Park is a small 0.4 hectare plaza and green space located behind Toronto’s Gooderham Flatiron Building, at the intersection of Wellington, Front, and Church Streets. Formerly a parking lot in a rather drab part of town, Berczy Park was opened in 1980 and named after William Berczy who helped found what is now the City of Toronto alongside John Graves Simcoe.

In 2015, Berczy Park was closed for a revitalization project, which opened up the plaza more, added more places to sit and linger, and incorporated the park’s most popular and whimsical feature, the dog fountain:

The fountain consists of 26 dog statues arrayed around the fountain, who are all transfixed by the golden bone at the top of the fountain, and also has a small trough running around the outside that real dogs can drink from.

There’s one additional statue around the fountain that doesn’t care at all about the bone at the centre, though…

The cat statue is instead staring off to the north, at a lamppost a few metres away from the fountain. If you follow the cat’s gaze, you might spot a couple of small additional statues perched on the lamp:

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour of one of my favourite spots in the city. Have a great day, everyone!