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 lyrical chart, a local alderman, Daniel Lamb, pushed to straighten the meandering Don. Instead of finding its way to the lake through a wide mouth full of herring, salmon, turtles, and frogs, the confined river would take a sharp right turn at what is now the Keating Channel, to be funnelled into the harbour. While this project made room in the valley to the north for Riverdale Park, much beloved today, it also led to seasonal flooding and a seriously degraded waterway. Then, in the 1910s, came the decision by Toronto and Ottawa to “reclaim” Ashbridge’s Bay, filling it with dirt and transforming it into a vast industrial wasteland bisected by an underused shipping channel and turning basin.

When I was still racing marathons competitively, I spent countless hours in what came to be called the Port Lands, where I could do mile intervals and tempo runs without having to worry about traffic. There wasn’t much to look at, other than potholes and empty parking lots, and there was often a headwind off Lake Ontario, but I took advantage of this paved paradise. Occasionally I would glimpse the imposing Royal York Hotel across the harbour, and even fatigued I would remember Robert Kroetsch’s The Words of My Roaring. “All those lights — the whole city — it was sitting on the water,” his Depression-era protagonist Johnnie Backstrom says of Toronto. “That’s a God’s fact; squatting on the water. It fouls the water, by Jesus, I thought.”

I don’t move as quickly through the Port Lands as I once did, and thanks to an ambitious revitalization of the area — funded by municipal, provincial, and federal governments — I tend to forget about Kroetsch’s “great Who‑er” defiling the lake. In fact, this once depressing swath of Canada’s largest city now gives me hope in a world beset with war and hunger, tariffs and graft, wildfires and AI slop.

The centrepiece of the ongoing transformation is Biidaasige (Bee-DAW-si-geh) Park, which opened a year ago with twenty hectares of grassland, trails, and a Lower Don River that can once again find its way to the lake with ease. The name comes from the Anishinaabemowin for “sunlight shining toward us,” and the place sure is bright. Here I have witnessed the seasons change, with mallards, egrets, and loons keeping me company. Running on the thankfully soft trails, I have stopped in my tracks to watch beavers investigate their new surroundings and have smiled at herons fishing in the shallows. Bald eagles have flown overhead, surely eyeing the salmon that have returned to the resurrected ecosystem. Even long-buried seeds since uncovered have brought ancient sedges and bulrushes back to life.

In late July, another four hectares of Biidaasige Park opened to the public, boasting native flora alongside unparalleled views of a rapidly growing skyline. I like to think it’s the striking juxtaposition and not just my age that slows me down when I run through this miraculous landscape. I like to think that maybe all is not lost.

We hear a lot about building Canada Strong, about national resilience in a time of uncertainty. Several billion here for a road or bridge; several billion there for a pipeline. New forward operating bases in the North; submarines that can finally patrol under the ice. Biidaasige Park is a testament to a gentler resilience — equally important and a relative bargain as part of a larger $1.4-billion tripartite effort.

Perhaps we wouldn’t have needed even that much money had Daniel Lamb’s original vision for the area prevailed. He dreamed of parkland connecting the harbour with Woodbine Beach five kilometres away. A map from 1912 shows the proposal: a broad stretch of naturalized waterfront, perfect for runners, birders, and sundry other creatures. Many plans like Lamb’s were rejected throughout the twentieth century in the name of “progress.” Canadians should applaud those trying to realize, whether in Toronto or elsewhere, progress of a better kind.