[URBAN NOTE] "Angling for dinner in Toronto’s Humber River"

[rfmcdonald]

This morning, I shared three pictures of Toronto's Humber River. The last of these was included an angler under the Old Mill Bridge. The Toronto Star's Daniel Otis wrote about the thriving amateur fisheries in the river.

Wearing waders, Matthew Saieva stands knee-deep in the Humber River gracefully casting a homemade fly into a pool under the 99-year-old Old Mill Bridge. Bands of gold shout through the grey dawn. A cormorant bobs on the cool, shallow water. The nearby tennis courts are vacant and the river’s muddy banks are dotted with footprints: raccoons, ducks, herons and rubber boots.

“When I’m fishing, my mind is blank,” says the 20-year-old Toronto angler. “I’m not thinking about anything. It’s very soothing. It’s very good stress-relief.”

It’s a perfect escape from his hectic family home and the pressures of university.

I’m joining Saieva and David Clark to fish for a Toronto trout to eat. The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change’s Guide to Eating Ontario Fish states most of the city’s fish are safe to eat. I can’t help but find that a little surprising.

Toronto’s rivers and lake don’t exactly conjure up images of aquatic delicacies. Growing up in the city, I shared the prevailing urban opinion that Lake Ontario and its tributaries were as filthy as waterways could be. While this was more-or-less true when my folks were young in the 1950s and ’60s, contaminant levels have since declined. Still, many of my millennial friends won’t touch the lake.