Dog Stranglers in the Park?: National and Vegetal Politics in Ontario's Rouge Valley

The advent of the new Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto's northeast corner offers an important moment to reflect on many contested elements of national park politics, including ideas of wilderness and ecological integrity, changing articulations of nation and nature, the effects of neo-liberalization, and the role of parks in a globalizing, urbanizing environment. In addition, however, the Rouge highlights the intersecting question of plant/human relations, specifically concerning the rapid spread of the so-called aggressive invasive species dog-strangling vine (Cynanchum rossicum, known as DSV) in many portions of the park. DSV acutely calls into question ideas of nature and nation undergirding Parks Canada's mandate, and in so doing, demands that we attend to the actual physical and political history of the Rouge, the ways that history has afforded DSV with ideal conditions for its flourishing, the limits of current biopolitical discourses of invasive species management, and, for the new Rouge Park, the need for a more thoughtful, respectful, democratic approach to plant/human relations and to larger questions about what an urban park might be.