Rerouted

On one of my go‑to running routes, I proceed east from my front door, in Toronto’s Riverside, largely along Lake Shore Boulevard to Leslie Street, where I turn south to the Pan Am Path that parallels Unwin Avenue. From there, I head three kilometres west to Cherry Street, veering north to King Street and back to my house. Along the way, I pass the unmarked site of the bygone St. Nicholas’ Anglican Church, which sat on the sandbar previously known as Fisherman’s Island and now part of Cherry Beach, and I cross what was once the treacherous McNamee’s Cut, where too many Torontonians drowned before a swing bridge was eventually built. Essentially, I circumnavigate what used to be Ashbridge’s Bay, a “deep swamp, full of intricate channels and extensive ponds through which the Don finds an outlet by a breach in the sands,” as Richard Henry Bonnycastle explained on his 1833 map of the town and harbour of York, Upper Canada.

Five decades after Bonnycastle compiled his...