[URBAN NOTE] "The ugliest side of Toronto’s ravines"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Donovan Vincent notes that Black Creek is doing badly.

When Franca and Natale Nardi look out the front window of their cozy west-end home they see a park with a large stand of mature trees and mowed grass.

But that idyllic green space hides an unpleasant reality directly behind: a dark, putrid-smelling stew that flows west along an ugly man-made channel, emptying into the larger Humber River. Ducks float along this toxic brew of phosphorus, chloride and industrial run-off, dipping their heads in the water at their own peril.

The Nardis have lived in their Alliance Ave. home in this working-class community near Weston Rd.and Eglinton Ave. W. since 1958, metres away from Black Creek. But they never see the creek as an option for a stroll.

“We don’t go down there,” says Franca Nardi, 65. “It is what it is. What can I do about it?”

Her husband, Natale, 70, a retired manager in a grocery store, doesn’t expect the problem to ever be fixed.