[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s 'lost rivers' reflect how we’ve reshaped nature"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Michael Ogilvie conducted an interview with local historian Helen Mills about the buried and otherwise lost rivers of Toronto.

A little neighborhood exploration led Helen Mills to discover a waterway unmarked in the city grid. She later determined it was a lost river — the former lifeblood of a land forever altered by industry and infrastructure.

The discovery led to her creation of an effort to educate others about the city’s past waterways. The initiative has since turned into one of the most extensive walking tour groups in the province.

The Star spoke with the Lost Rivers Toronto founder and local estuary historian to learn more about six hidden currents flowing underneath our city’s surface.

My neighbourhoods' Garrison Creek is, naturally, a subject.

This west-side river’s roots, like many others, reach back to the days of the ice age. Water cut through deposits left by the massive ice sheet and flowed into the bed of an ancient Lake Iroquois.

Vegetation eventually enveloped the terrain and settled into woodland that was later cleared for settlement.

Buried since the 1920s, the Garrison now travels through a series of storm sewers and under our roads from just north of St. Clair down towards the western harbour near the historic Fort York.

For Mills, its winding channel forms the “ground zero” of Toronto’s lost river movement and where her personal journey documenting these extinct watercourses began.