Withrow Park is a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...

in the Riverdale neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Laid out and constructed in the 1910s, at the same time that the surrounding community was built, Withrow Park is among Toronto's large multi-purpose parks. The park is bounded by Carlaw Avenue on the east, Bain Avenue on the south, Logan Avenue on the west and McConnell Avenue on the north.

Withrow Park is named after John Jacob Withrow (1833–1900), a local landowner and builder, who also served as a city alderman and was one of the founders of what would become the Canadian National Exhibition. The park gained nationwide notoriety in 2004 when hot dogs laced with

carbofuran Carbofuran is a carbamate pesticide, widely used around the world to control insects on a wide variety of field crops, including potatoes, corn and soybeans. It is a systemic insecticide, which means that the plant absorbs it through the r ...

were left in the park, killing one dog and poisoning 15 others. While the poisonings were under criminal investigation, the City closed most of Withrow Park by surrounding it with a chain-link fence, causing controversy in the neighbourhood. No charges were ever laid. In February 2008, the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team held a practice in Withrow Park, to mark the recent refurbishment of the park's ice rink and related facilities.Wattie, Chris.
Leafs take it outside, in Riverdale
'.

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with M ...

. February 11, 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-12.

References

External links

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Dictionary of Canadian Biography - John Jacob Withrow
{{Parks and squares in Toronto Parks in Toronto