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rfmcdonaldLast Canadian Thanksgiving, I set off to explore the Toronto Islands solo. This Thanksgiving, I decided to recruit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
finfin for a Discovery Walk down the Don Valley (PDF format), planning on following the Lower Don Riverand the Don Valley Parkway more-or-less to the sea in a direct way under blue sky. The sky was grey, today, and it was intermittently spitting rain, and the walk didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped, but it went.
We began at 2 o'clock at Todmorden Mills, a former industrial site--mill, distillery--abandoned when technology outpaced the site's offerings and then restored as a community history site in time for the centennial of Confederation in 1867. The Mills struck me as an interesting sort of site, the building restored to something approaching ideal conditions using modern technologies, aiming to deliver a historically authentic experience even as the roar of the traffic and Toronto was discernable all about us. Everything was closed, unfortunately, and so nothing delayed us as we headed west on Bayview and along the west side of the Don, past an interesting-looking oil pipeline jutting out of the soil and protected by a chain-link fence.
The Don Valley Brick Works is the site of a remarkable effort as environmental restoration. As the Lost Rivers points out, the Brick Works was the site of a major clay quarry and world-renown brick factory. "In 1882, 25 year old William Taylor tested clay from digging fence post holes, and by 1889 he and his two brothers opened this brickyard that was to become pre-eminent in Canada. Their Don Valley Brick Works used rock and clay extracted from the quarry and water from Mud Creek to manufacture much of the bricks used to build Toronto. Buildings such as Casa Loma, Massey Hall, the Ontario Legislature, University of Toronto buildings such as Hart House and Convocation Hall and many homes throughout the city, were constructed using bricks from the Don Valley Brick Works." From the mid-1990s on, the City of Toronto has been going to great lengths to restore a natural ecosystem in the vast crater-like gouge in the Earth's surface, building up a network of marshes in the deepest part of the gorge to filter inflowing water even as a layer of topsoil is created and the steep slopes anchored against erosions by grasses and bushes. We puttered about there for a bit, taking a look at the spectacular view of downtown Toronto offered by some of the higher points at the Brick Works before we headed south.
The trail on the west led us into the the painfully wealthy houses of Rosedale. For some few moments we feared getting lost, but thankfully we managed to exit by the Castle Frank TTC station. We tried to get back down onto the trail. We first headed onto the grounds of the decidedly 70s-style Rosedale Heights School of the Arts only to find that the grounds were fenced off from the Don Valley below. We next went down another street, a rich one where couples leaving chatted, as they entered their exopensive European import cars, not of the cost of the house but rather of the attractiveness of the architecture. Finally we gave up and headed east across the Bloor Street Viaduct, noting as we went the Luminous Veil anti-suicide fencing and wondering how a determined jumper could still jump.
We stopped for dinner at the New York Café (757 Broadview Avenue) on the southeast corner of the Danforth and Broadview. The New York Café is a New York-themed greasy spoon, one artifact of many representing Toronto's aspirant and envious relationship with that American metropolis. As I watched the street scenes, the gentlemen behind me were debating where to take a date of indeterminate gender, one man recommending an Irish bar: "The beer's 50 cents more a glass, but it's classy." The open-face roast beef sandwich I'd ordered wasn't the best, since instead of chunks of roast beef the cooks used rather salty deli meat while I was informed that the spanakopita was unusually flat, barely over a centimetre in width. It's a greasy spoon, though: Why should I expect more of it?
South again down Broadview, past the deciphered Cyrillic lettering of the Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church, through Riverdale Park East north of Gerrard and Broadview back onto the path. The Don River looked deeper there, although it was still shallow--I doubt that I'd have gotten my knees wet. Further south towards the Gardiner, then due west towards the Distillery District, a collection of a old distillery buildings recently restored and transformed into a trendy art complex. Imagine the confusion of our modern-day counterparts, told that a nasty industrial area could become a trendy artistic and residential community. Thence further west on the Esplanade, coffee, and the TTC to our respective final destinations.
finfin for a Discovery Walk down the Don Valley (PDF format), planning on following the Lower Don Riverand the Don Valley Parkway more-or-less to the sea in a direct way under blue sky. The sky was grey, today, and it was intermittently spitting rain, and the walk didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped, but it went.We began at 2 o'clock at Todmorden Mills, a former industrial site--mill, distillery--abandoned when technology outpaced the site's offerings and then restored as a community history site in time for the centennial of Confederation in 1867. The Mills struck me as an interesting sort of site, the building restored to something approaching ideal conditions using modern technologies, aiming to deliver a historically authentic experience even as the roar of the traffic and Toronto was discernable all about us. Everything was closed, unfortunately, and so nothing delayed us as we headed west on Bayview and along the west side of the Don, past an interesting-looking oil pipeline jutting out of the soil and protected by a chain-link fence.
The Don Valley Brick Works is the site of a remarkable effort as environmental restoration. As the Lost Rivers points out, the Brick Works was the site of a major clay quarry and world-renown brick factory. "In 1882, 25 year old William Taylor tested clay from digging fence post holes, and by 1889 he and his two brothers opened this brickyard that was to become pre-eminent in Canada. Their Don Valley Brick Works used rock and clay extracted from the quarry and water from Mud Creek to manufacture much of the bricks used to build Toronto. Buildings such as Casa Loma, Massey Hall, the Ontario Legislature, University of Toronto buildings such as Hart House and Convocation Hall and many homes throughout the city, were constructed using bricks from the Don Valley Brick Works." From the mid-1990s on, the City of Toronto has been going to great lengths to restore a natural ecosystem in the vast crater-like gouge in the Earth's surface, building up a network of marshes in the deepest part of the gorge to filter inflowing water even as a layer of topsoil is created and the steep slopes anchored against erosions by grasses and bushes. We puttered about there for a bit, taking a look at the spectacular view of downtown Toronto offered by some of the higher points at the Brick Works before we headed south.
The trail on the west led us into the the painfully wealthy houses of Rosedale. For some few moments we feared getting lost, but thankfully we managed to exit by the Castle Frank TTC station. We tried to get back down onto the trail. We first headed onto the grounds of the decidedly 70s-style Rosedale Heights School of the Arts only to find that the grounds were fenced off from the Don Valley below. We next went down another street, a rich one where couples leaving chatted, as they entered their exopensive European import cars, not of the cost of the house but rather of the attractiveness of the architecture. Finally we gave up and headed east across the Bloor Street Viaduct, noting as we went the Luminous Veil anti-suicide fencing and wondering how a determined jumper could still jump.
We stopped for dinner at the New York Café (757 Broadview Avenue) on the southeast corner of the Danforth and Broadview. The New York Café is a New York-themed greasy spoon, one artifact of many representing Toronto's aspirant and envious relationship with that American metropolis. As I watched the street scenes, the gentlemen behind me were debating where to take a date of indeterminate gender, one man recommending an Irish bar: "The beer's 50 cents more a glass, but it's classy." The open-face roast beef sandwich I'd ordered wasn't the best, since instead of chunks of roast beef the cooks used rather salty deli meat while I was informed that the spanakopita was unusually flat, barely over a centimetre in width. It's a greasy spoon, though: Why should I expect more of it?
South again down Broadview, past the deciphered Cyrillic lettering of the Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church, through Riverdale Park East north of Gerrard and Broadview back onto the path. The Don River looked deeper there, although it was still shallow--I doubt that I'd have gotten my knees wet. Further south towards the Gardiner, then due west towards the Distillery District, a collection of a old distillery buildings recently restored and transformed into a trendy art complex. Imagine the confusion of our modern-day counterparts, told that a nasty industrial area could become a trendy artistic and residential community. Thence further west on the Esplanade, coffee, and the TTC to our respective final destinations.
