Reviving a River in TO

                                             

                                                       The Toronto Don Lands, reimagined

Degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

from Inversnail --Gerard Manley Hopkins

 I've been following the waterfront development in Toronto with considerable interest. It's called the Lower Don Land Project, a 1.3 billion dollar reclamation plan for a 400 hectare area that had been filled in over several centuries to extend the city into Lake Ontario. Straightening the Don River and eliminating marshlands created a dangerously flood-prone area and made this portion of Toronto's watefront either industrial or uninhabitable. 

This project is massive in scope and has involved some of the best urban engineering and architectural minds to bring it to fruition, not to mention an ongoing commitment from different levels of government. New bridges have been built and put into place, long-term plans are unfolding for housing, trails are imagined. Now water it being slowly pumped into the rerouted river to gently equalize levels and pressure. 

                                                             Newly installed Cherry St. Bridge

I've enjoyed hearing the enthusiasm of Don Forbes from Waterfront Toronto as he describes what has transpired and his sense of vision for the days, months, and years ahead. I've also pondered how this was made necessary by the hubris and folly of human beings who thought they were smarter than the natural ecosystems that existed when Europeans arrived. We know that Indigenous peoples lived here and that the name could be Iroquois for "meeting place" or "where there are trees in water", referring to a weir for catching fish. 

The mouth of the river would have been wetlands, habitat for many species, as well as natural flood protection. The reintroduction of water to the cleverly engineered urban river coincided with World Wetlands Day last Friday. 

I applaud what is unfolding in Toronto, but this is also a cautionary tale about taking away wetlands in the first place. We live in an area of marshes and wetlands, many of which have been removed from protection recently by the current provincial government in Ontario. The stanzas from a poem by 19th century poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, are a timely and empassioned plea to let the wild places be wild -- long live the weeds and the wilderness yet! We might give a shout-out to the Creator while we're at it. 

                                                          Water flows into "new" Don River