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rfmcdonaldI took part in two of the guided tours of Toronto's Jane's Walk with my visiting father yesterday, the pair tracing the history of now-buried but still barely visible Garrison Creek, the first being Jon Harstone's guide to the legacies of Garrison Creek in the streetscape below Christie Pits down to Trinity Bellwoods Park and Queen Street West, the second the Homegrown National Park's guided advocacy of the remainder of the stream's course to Lake Ontario. I largely agree with the sentiments expressed in Christopher Hume's Toronto Star article "Jane’s Walk puts Toronto on display" that these walks do help people get to know their communities better, representing a sort of necessary enculturation of city and neighbourhood history for people unfamiliar with deep history.
[I]n Toronto, Jane’s Walk has special significance. In 1968, Jane Jacobs the great American author, urban observer and destroyer of mid-century planning pieties, left New York for this city, where she played a quiet yet influential role.
As much as anyone, Jacobs allowed Toronto to feel good about itself. Yes, she fought everything from amalgamation to the island airport, but more important than that, she chose to live here. In a city in constant need of approval, that counts for a lot. Little wonder that when she died in 2006 she was the unofficial patron saint of Toronto.
That’s not something anyone who knew Jacobs would have told her even in jest; she would have been aghast at such a thought. Still, one can’t help but wonder what she would make of a city that has changed so much since her death.
Although Jacobs was conservative in the non-ideological sense of the word, it goes without saying she would have been appalled by contemporary civic politics and Mayor Rob Ford, whose ignorance of the city stands in stark contrast to her lifelong attempt to understand how they work. It’s probably a safe guess she wouldn’t be convinced by Toronto’s desire to become the high-rise condo capital of the planet.
