[URBAN NOTE] "The weird and wonderful concrete river in Toronto": Derek Flack on Black Creek

[rfmcdonald]

In a photo essay for blogTO, Derek Flack takes a look at Toronto's thoroughly channelized Black Creek. He took some very nice photos, too.

Toronto's river system has been profoundly altered by the growth of the city over the last century. From straightened channels to buried creeks, development has tended to envelop the city's waterways in concrete. Nowhere is this more dramatic than at Black Creek, a sub-watershed of the Humber River that winds down from Vaughan to just north of Dundas St. West before joining the larger waterway.

Black Creek has many different faces. In some areas it remains natural, in others it culverts under major roadways, and in the section southwest of Weston Rd. and Humber Blvd. North it follows a concrete channel that seems wholly bizarre in Toronto.

It's been noted elsewhere by Jake Tobin Garrett that this portion of Black Creek is something like a mini-version of the LA river, that famous concrete waterway that's played host to so many iconic moments in cinema, from Chinatown to Terminator 2.

More at blogTO.