[URBAN NOTE] "The Scarborough Bluffs are rarely seen — but there’s a plan to change that"

[rfmcdonald]

Marcus Gee's article in The Globe and Mail highlights the real problem with accessing the Scarborough Bluffs at all. I would add that accessibility is also an issue: In my trip last year to the Scarborough Bluffs, to actually get there I has to first transfer to a bus from the subway and then walk twenty minutes or so through suburbia.

The Scarborough Bluffs, now as then, are Toronto’s most striking physical feature, dramatic in a way no other part of our understated landscape can match.

As high as 90 metres, they rise from the water like cliffs in some places; in others they show deep ridges like the folds in a blanket; in others they soar to spires and pinnacles; in still others they are broken by wooded ravines and gullies.

Yet, most Torontonians never see them. It is hard to get a full view of the bluffs unless, as with Mrs. Simcoe, you go out into the lake by boat. The shore beneath them can be tricky to reach and the lands at the top hard to navigate.

They can be dangerous, too. Emergency services come out many times every year to rescue people who have been trapped on the slopes or at the base.

Conservation officials hope to change all that, making the Bluffs safer and easier to visit. They want to shore up dangerous bits, put in more trails and create habitat for wild animals and fish. A study is already under way, with a first set of options to be presented to the public next month.

It is an exciting project, a once-in-a-century chance to open up the whole of the Scarborough shore to a broader public. It is also a delicate one. Officials face the challenge of giving safe access to the Bluffs without destroying the wild quality that lend them their magic. Some people want them left alone altogether. Others want to see a continuous shoreline trail as you might have in an urban waterfront.