David J. Widmann

Beyond its picnic areas, tennis courts and manicured gardens, High Park is a thriving ecosystem. The Western Ravines and Beaches Discovery Walk explores some of the park’s wild areas, as well as some of the neighbouring regenerated wetlands.

The walk starts at the Bloor Street entrance to High Park. Passing the picnic areas and a concession stand, the Discovery Walk signs lead you down into a ravine beyond the domain of cyclists (in theory) and the park’s iconic trackless train. The path through the ravine takes you to the shores of Grenadier Pond. It’s hard to believe that the marshland at the northern tip of the pond, a place of dense cattails and lily pads, is part of the same body of water lined by the short grass and benches most park visitors are familiar with.

Continuing south, the walk exits the park, crosses the Queensway, passes under the Gardiner Expressway, and takes you to the shores of Lake Ontario. After lingering on the beach with the joggers and the Canada geese, take Ellis Avenue back north. You’ll see a concrete staircase leading back down into the ravine system. This is where you’ll find out if you made the right choice of shoes or not. A narrow, often muddy trail runs along the eastern shore of another area wetland, Catfish Pond. This part of the walk is especially slippery after a rain, so be careful. But don’t spend so much time looking at your feet that you miss out on the enjoyment of this quiet, spring-fed marsh.

From Catfish Pond, it’s up through Rennie Park to Morningside Avenue, and back to Ellis Avenue. From the winding streets and lofty trees of this neighbourhood, it’s back into High Park towards the end of this walk.

By tying Lake Ontario to the wetlands in and around High Park, the Western Ravines and Beaches Discovery Walk underscores the relationship between the city’s varying bodies of water. Also, being early fall, there is a lot of activity going on for folks who like to watch migratory birds as they prepare for their journeys. The map of the walk can be downloaded here in PDF format.

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Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks as well as providing the maps required for self-guided tours. This week, Torontoist checked out the Dovercourt Park and Neighbourhood tour.

The walk itself is short, but it is very well storied. Toronto Tree Tours has done a fantastic job of collecting the arboreal lore of the area. Beginning in Dovercourt Park, participants begin under the branches of hundred-year-old silver maples, and are surrounded by new trees planted in 2003 that will be ready to offer shade when their older counterparts have reached the end of their lives. The greening of Dovercourt Junior Public School’s playground is chronicled, as well as several stories of how non-native tree species came to the city.

The tour also goes beyond trees, pointing out some of Dovercourt Village’s surviving farmhouses and a squat yellow building that is believed to have once been an ice house.

Taking a self-guided Toronto Tree Tours tour does take a little bit of planning. While all of the material you’ll need get the most out of the walk is available on their web site, they haven’t yet assembled downloadable packages that can be easily carried on a walk. If you don’t have a wireless PDA, a good way to make the tour materials more portable is to cut-and-paste the text into a word processor and print it out. When printing, don’t forget to reduce the font size or print multiple pages onto one sheet of paper. Let’s try to minimize the tragic irony of killing trees in order to appreciate them.

The next Toronto Tree Tours event takes place on September 29 in Kensington Market as part of Nuit Blanche. The next scheduled walk is the Bendale Tree Tour in Scarborough on October 14.

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The city’s Discovery Walks program, while extensive, doesn’t cover every nook and cranny of Toronto. For instance, there is very little ground covered east of the Don River.

Great Country Walks Around Toronto by Elliott Katz fills in many of those blanks. This pocket-sized guide covers parks and trails from the Humber River Valley to Rouge Beach, the Islands to Black Creek. This week, Torontoist follows Katz’s guide into Taylor Creek Park.

Taylor-Massey Creek (Also called, at different times in its history, Silver Creek and Scarboro Creek) is a tributary to the Don, and was once home to paper mills and other industries. Its headwaters, now buried by Highway 401, are near Pharmacy Avenue. This walk starts at Victoria Park Avenue and runs five kilometres to the Forks of the Don.

From the Victoria Park subway station, walk north, cross at the Crescent Town Road intersection, and continue walking until you see a set of stairs heading down into the ravine. As you descend, the street and towering apartment buildings around you melt away, replaced by trees and a paved multi-use path. The path winds through Taylor Creek Park, following the newly-naturalized riverbed and passing a series of manicured parklands and picnic areas. If you can avoid the temptation to explore the many side paths that split off from the main trail, you’ll pass under the O’Connor Street bridge and cross a few foot bridges criss-crossing the creek before reaching a parking lot just before the Don Valley Parkway. This is where Taylor Creek meets the East and West Don Rivers.

Passing under the DVP and crossing the footbridge over the railway tracks, the walk ends at Thorncliffe Park Drive. From here, you can take the 81 Thorncliffe Park bus to the Pape subway station, take the trail back to Victoria Park, or flip to page 19 of Great Country Walks and continue along Wilket Creek into E.T. Seaton Park (a walk Torontoist will explore in a future article).

The path that serves walkers, cyclists, rollerbladers and skateboarders in the more temperate months becomes a casual-use cross-country skiing trail in the winter. In an area that was once a hub of industry for Toronto, Taylor Creek Park now offers year-round recreation with close proximity to transit, the DVP and parking. This is definitely an area of the city worth checking out.

Old Mill station offers a brief respite from the dirty grey walls of the subway’s usual monotony of underground tunnels. Crossing over the Humber River, the windows of the station offer a view of daylight and trees in either direction. Not surprisingly, Old Mill station is also the start point for another of the city’s Discovery Walks: the Humber River, Old Mill and Marshes.

From the subway station, Old Mill Road curves down past the Old Mill Inn and Spa, and into King’s Mill Park. The park was named after the first industrial structure erected in Toronto, a mill that supplied the wood that built Fort York and some of the city’s earliest buildings.

Walking across the historic stone bridge over the river and along some tree-lined streets, you come to Riverview Gardens, becoming Riverside Drive south of Bloor. Riverside is part of an ancient carrying trail used by First Nations traders to transport goods from Lake Ontario north to the Upper Great Lakes. It is also along Riverside where Anne of Green Gables creator Lucy Maud Montgomery spent the last seven years of her life, the site now marked by a plaque and a well-manicured parkette.

Continuing south, passing by a procession of grand old residences and the Humber Marshes, you finally come to the Queensway. Crossing the busy bridge over the river, you head back north along a paved walking and cycling trail past the sewage treatment plant and into South Humber Park. The trail breaks off at Stephen Drive, and picks up again a bit north, heading back into King’s Mill Park, past the Toronto Humber Yacht Club, and under the subway bridge before taking you back to Old Mill Road.

The Humber River is a rich historical and environmental resource for Toronto. The Humber River, Old Mill and Marshes Discovery Walk [PDF map] is a great way to explore this important watershed.

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There are more ways to walk and discover this city than just following the city’s Discovery Walk maps. There are an increasing number of guided audio tours that you can download from the Internet and pack into your digital music player before heading out on your expedition. One audio tour company, City Surf, has several neighbourhood tours available for about $10 each. Recently, City Surf teamed up with Waterfront Toronto to offer a free audio tour of the central waterfront area.

You can borrow an MP3 player from City Surf’s booth near Queen’s Quay Terminal, or you can download it as a zip file here. The file includes all of the audio tracks for this walking tour, as well as a PDF map you can print off and take with you on your journey.

The tour begins with a brief primer on the waterfront’s industrial and shipping history. An overview of the Port Lands, the story of the now-posh Queen’s Quay Terminal building, and the origins of the Power Plant Gallery are a few of the subjects covered at the beginning of the tour. This narrative helps to give the listener a grounding in the waterfront’s origins and a taste of what the area could be like in the future if Waterfront Toronto’s plans see fruition.

The rest of the tour is a similar mix of past, present and future as you walk west along the waterfront. As you listen, Toronto’s changing relationship to Lake Ontario is revealed. The new yellow umbrellas on the beach at HTO Park, the renaturalized wetlands at Spadina Quay, and the hulking silos of the old Canada Malting Company — landmarks passed by thousands of people every day with barely a second thought — take on new meaning in this context. (Incidentally, the walk also takes you across the Amsterdam Bridge, recently captured by Panoramaist.)

The farthest point of the tour is Ireland Park. The sculptures in here are half of an art installation, with the other half residing near the port of Dublin. It is here that your digital tour guide offers you the option of hopping onto the Harbourfront streetcar and ending the tour, or backtracking and learning more about some of the sights you’ve just passed. This last bit of the tour includes a brief history of the Toronto Islands, a bit more on the future of the Port Lands, and the story of how the Toronto Islands ferry service came to be.

City Surf has done a good job of creating a well-paced, informative tour for a sunny afternoon. It’s a little heavy on waterfront revitalization content, but it’s because of Waterfront Toronto that this tour is being offered to the public at no charge, so that’s to be expected. That bias doesn’t take anything away from the enjoyment of this waterfront walk. Besides, it’s nice to believe that the vision of parkland and walkable neighbourhoods planned for the area might actually exist one day.

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The Belt Line Railway opened in July 1892 to service the new neighbourhoods of Rosedale, Moore Park, Forest Hill and Swansea. A recession and competing rail services led to the railway’s closure only 28 months later. Parts of the railway were purchased and used by other companies over the years, but much of the old Belt Line sat abandoned for many years. In 1972, the city purchased a stretch of the railway east of Allen Road to create what would become the Kay Gardner Beltline Park. This is where the Central Ravines, Belt Line and Gardens Discovery Walk begins.

Starting just north of Eglinton West Station, the Beltline Trail follows the former rail line south, passing through several other parks along the way. After crossing a bridge at Yonge Street, the trail enters Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Torontoist never really understood the thought of a stroll through a cemetery to pass the time. Even on a bright August afternoon, Mount Pleasant looks like the setting for an old Anne Rice novel. After a while, though, the creepiness fades, the beauty of the place becomes apparent, and it’s easy to see why so many cyclists and ramblers explore Mount Pleasant’s winding trails. The cemetery is also an interesting look into the multiculturalism of Toronto, with crosses, Stars of David, Chinese dragons and other cultural symbols jumbled together.

From Mount Pleasant, the walk goes down into the Moore Park Ravine, following Mud Creek. At Bayview Avenue, south of the Don Valley Brickworks, the walk turns, following the ravines north. This part of the walk is a bit more like a nature trail than the well-groomed Beltline Trail, so hopefully you’ve chosen your footwear accordingly. Following the Yellow Creek through the dense canopy of the Vale of Avoca Ravine, it’s easy to forget that you haven’t left the city.

Heading out of the ravine and back into Mount Pleasant Cemetery, this Discovery Walk ends at Yonge Street, close to the St. Clair subway station. Although this walk is bounded by only a thin ribbon of trees for most of its length, this afternoon stroll feels like a total escape from the city. If you can’t remember the last time you heard the sound of water flowing over rocks when it hadn’t been previously recorded, give this Discovery Walk a try. The map can be picked up at City Hall, libraries and community centres, or downloaded as a PDF.

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In the summer heat, Toronto’s downtown can seem like a sun-baked, arid domain of asphalt and glass. Scattered throughout the concrete desert, however, are a few oases of green. The Downtown Discovery Walk links the squares, parks and parkettes that can be found in the city’s busy core. And don’t worry too much about the heat; there are plenty of places to duck into for shade, refreshments, and air-conditioned comfort along this route.

One of the jewels of downtown parks is Cloud Gardens. This Richmond Street spot features a tropical greenhouse overlooking a well-treed spot with a relaxing waterfall. Nestled in a little space of the Bay Adelaide Centre, it’s a favourite outdoor eating spot for nearby cubicle dwellers.

St. James’ Park is the biggest patch of green on this walk. It’s a combination of mature trees and well-manicured flower gardens; a good place to relax in the shade, picnic in the sun, or play with the kids and pets.

There are plenty of other little patches of green in the city where you can find respite from the bustle of the downtown core. This is also a great walk to take with out-of-town visitors. The CN Tower, City Hall, St. Lawrence Market, the Flatiron Building — all of the downtown tourist destinations can be found along this Discovery Walk. And while you’re downtown, don’t forget to check out Fresh Wednesdays and Tasty Thursdays at Nathan Phillips Square.

One point about this walk: currently, construction is blocking access between Simcoe Park and Metro Hall Park. You’ll have to find an alternate route, either on John or Simcoe Streets to get around this obstacle.

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Garrison Creek once ran through Toronto from its tributaries near what is now St. Clair West, to what was once the shore of Lake Ontario, past the northeast side of Fort York. Development polluted the creek as Toronto began to grow, and in the early 1900s, work began on the burial of Garrison Creek. Long since converted into a sewer, Garrison Creek has completely disappeared from view.

It has not, however, been forgotten. Evidence of the creek’s former path can still be seen, the deep ravine it once followed now lined with homes and park lands. The Garrison Creek Discovery Walk follows the path of the lost creek from Bloor Street to the waterfront, connecting neighbourhoods and green spaces with historic Fort York.

Getting to the beginning of this walk is easy, as it starts right across the street from the Christie subway station. Christie Pits Park is busy in the summer, with baseball diamonds, basketball courts, bocce, a public pool with a waterslide, and lots of room to walk those rambunctious pets. It is also home to the first-place Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club.

Across Bloor, the Garrison Creek ravine continues into Bickford Park. After that, the walk follows Crawford Street, which curves along the former path of the river. Crossing through a few smaller parks, the walk makes its way to Trinity Bellwoods Park. This is another popular spot for dog walkers, and also has a pool and recreation centre, making this a hotbed of summer activity in the West Queen West area.

If Trinity Bellwoods’ indoor pool isn’t what you’re looking for, keep going south along the Garrison Creek Discovery Walk to Stanley Park. The outdoor pool here may be small, but it’s a good place to cool off while catching a few summer rays.

The next stop along the walk is the main point of historical interest along this walk: Fort York. It’s a place where most kids who grew up in the GTA spent many a field trip exploring, but very few can actually give directions to. Take this walk, and the exact location of Fort York will be forever burned in your mind. Before Garrison Creek was buried and Toronto’s shoreline was extended, small boats used to moor where the Bathurst Street bridge now runs over the railway tracks.

It’s here where one can get a sense of what urban planners and public space advocates mean when they tell us that Toronto is a city cut off from its waterfront. Faced with six lanes of Lakeshore Boulevard and the concrete monolith that is the Gardiner Expressway, it’s easy to think of Fort York as being the end of the city and the end of this Discovery Walk. If you’re willing to brave the traffic and the agonizingly long wait for pedestrian crossing signals, the walk continues on to the waterfront and Little Norway Park. Nestled between the (in)famous Canada Malting Company silos and right across the channel from the Toronto Island Airport, it’s not the quietest park in the city, but it is a good place to enjoy some of the cool air coming off the lake.

Garrison Creek may be gone, but its memory lives on. The lost river shaped the landscape and laid the foundation for the Town of York to grow into the City of Toronto. Next time you’re playing baseball at Christie Pits or walking your dog through Trinity Bellwoods Park, imagine what life must have been like along this once-busy riverbed. Pick up the Garrison Creek Discovery Walk map at City Hall, your local library, or download it here.

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You’ve probably seen them dotting the city: those Discovery Walk signs that seem to pop up when you least expect them. Torontoist has always wanted to explore these intriguing city strolls, and this summer will be taking readers along some of these routes that connect the city’s parks, green spaces and historical sites to the neighbourhoods we live in.

A good place to begin is the Uptown Discovery Walk, partly because this route is so accessible. Museum, Yonge/Bloor, Wellesley, College and Dundas subway stations all lie along its path. Bounded by Cumberland Street to the north, Sherbourne to the east, the Ryerson campus to the south, and the University of Toronto to the west, the Uptown Discovery Walk meanders through some of the busiest parts of the city, but contains some surprising oases of tranquility.

One of the points of interest on this walk is Paul Kane House. Set back from the street behind a small manicured parkette, the house was once owned by Paul Kane, a prominent Toronto artist. It was designated a historical property in 1979, and the parkette is a popular spot for the brown-baggers from the local office buildings.

One of the city’s oldest parks, Allan Gardens is home to plenty of shade trees, making it a great place to take in some shade in the middle of a hot summer stroll. While there, don’t forget to take a tour of the famous Palm House. This Victorian-style greenhouse is home to many exotic plants, and changes with the seasons — a great place for photographers to add some colour to their portfolios.

Tucked away from the Winners store and the College TTC stop, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually a park at College Park. While condo construction around the edges of this patch of green space is evident, there’s still some peace to be found around the park’s fountain and reflecting pool. The proximity of Dominion and a well-stocked food court also make it a good spot for an impromptu picnic. If you happen to be taking the Uptown Discovery Walk on a weekday between 8:30 and 4:00, take a few minutes to walk through the Police Museum and Discovery Centre across College Street from College Park. It’s free and, if nothing else, good for a laugh at the old cop uniforms.

A highlight of this walk is the route passing through both the Ryerson and U of T campuses. It’s on the university grounds where the official Discovery Walk map gets a little confusing, especially for those of us who never attended these institutions. While this no doubt adds a little time to the walk, the intrepid explorers among us will welcome the opportunity to find a piece of public art or grove of trees that wasn’t on the sanctioned route. Both universities also conduct guided walking tours of their respective campuses for those who’d like to see more.

Connecting the neighbourhoods of Cabbagetown, Yorkville, and Church and Wellesley, passing through two university campuses, Queens Park, Allan Gardens, College Park and nearly a dozen neighbourhood green spaces, this is a great walking route whether you want to check out some parks, discovery new city hotspots, tour a little history or just do a little shopping.

Just one little note about the Discovery Walk map (which can be seen on signs along the route, or can be picked up at City Hall, libraries, community centres or here): Cawthra Square, a favourite place for dog walkers in the Church and Wellesley area, is marked as a thoroughfare on the route. Currently, however, there is some construction going on in the park, making it impossible to exit from the east side. You can get around this by skipping that part of the walk and taking Wellesley straight to Jarvis.

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Artist/writer Cynthia Gould finds warmth in Kensington Market

Cynthia Gould is a writer, spoken-word performer and painter who has secondhand shopped “since I was around 15 or 16. I discovered I could get much more for my money.”

“I like shopping, period, but secondhand shopping usually ensures that you won’t run into someone wearing the exact same outfit,” she says, “and there tends to be much more variety in secondhand stores. In new stores, they only have what is supposedly hip this season. I’ll be the judge of what I choose to wear, thank you very much!”

Over a large cup of coffee at the Organic Bhudda Cafe, Cynthia showed off one of her recent finds.

“I found this long, black cardigan with burgundy funfur cuffs and collar at Ohm Shanti in Kensington Market,” she said. “It’s very warm. I saw it on the rack out front. I was just walking by and saw funfur, so shazam!”

Cynthia can often be found haunting the storefronts and laneways of Kensington Market. She says the leisurely pace and friendly atmosphere of the neighbourhood are what attracts her to its many shops and cafes.

“It can take me an entire afternoon to walk up that street,” she laughs. “I can rarely remember the names of the individual stores, because I go through them all at once and it gets blurry.”

Cynthia also displayed one of her earliest and most treasured acquistions.

“I bought this silver necklace for a quarter when I was 16 so I’ve had it for, let’s just say a million years,” she says. “I got it at the Big Sisters secondhand store in downtown Port Hope. There’s three big silver wigglies on it where three blue jewels are supposed to be stuck in, but two of the jewels were missing. I went out and spent 70 cents on blue model paint that matched, and I painted in the other two circles so you can’t tell that their missing. I’ve worn it ever since.”

Sometimes, though, great finds are just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

“My boots are secondhand Docs that are in fabulous condition,” Cynthia says. “I was at a friend of mine’s house for dinner one day. She was cleaning her closet, and we’re close enough to the same size. That’s secondhand I didn’t even have to go to a store for.”

Of course Cynthia doesn’t spend all her time rummaging through the used clothing racks. Since moving into a new art studio space, she’s been “painting like a madperson,” to the point that the gallery section of her web site (www.cynthiagould.com) has become “a bit confusing.” She’s working on that too.

“I’m also going to be hosting some shows coming up.” she says. “I’m going to be featuring at Night of Sirens, which is an evening exploring the sensual side of women. It’s all female performers and musicians. That’s at the Renaissance Cafe on April 28.”

For more info on Cynthia’s live performances, check out http://cynthiagould.coffeehouse.ca.