[URBAN NOTE] "Canoeing Down Toronto’s River Conservation Success Story"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Catherine McIntyre has a great photo essay, with photos for Josh Allsopp, noting the history of degradation and revival of the Don River.

In 1969, the Don River was declared dead. A solemn procession made its way along College street, guiding the Don’s remains—buckets of polluted water—in a green Cadillac hearse to its final resting place. The funeral, arranged by the nascent environmental group Pollution Probe, attracted dozens of bereaved citizens who bade the river farewell that cold Sunday in November.

Forty-seven years later, nearly 1,000 people gather to pay their respects to the Don. But the mood is distinctly different on this particular Sunday. This is not a day to mourn, but to celebrate Canada’s most urbanized watershed. Once deemed contaminated beyond salvation, through years of concerted conservation and advocacy, the Don has been resurrected.

For the past 23 years, hundreds of Torontonians get together and paddle a 10.5-kilometre stretch of the Don River, from Leslie and Eglinton to the Toronto Harbourfront, and cherish what was once lost.

The Manulife Paddle the Don is one of myriad fundraising efforts to help restore the river and its surrounding watershed to the healthy ecosystem it was before intense urbanization nearly decimated it.

The degradation of the Don Valley Watershed is entwined with Toronto’s origin story. John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor, chose to establish the city—then the Town of York—west of the Don, largely because of the valley’s abundant timber and for being “admirably adapted for a Naval Arsenal and Dock Yard.”