March lays bare city’s landscape
It was just a quick glimpse from a moving car, but for a moment I could see what Toronto looked like before Toronto was there.
A few weeks ago, when snow was still on the ground, I was a passenger in a car heading east on Bloor St. as it descended into the Humber River valley. It’s a long way downhill that you may not notice in a car, but you certainly do if you’re riding a bike: coast in one direction, work hard in the other.
As Bloor St. curves gently past Old Mill subway station, the bridge over the Humber River comes into view. For some reason that day I noticed the long slope into the valley, perhaps remembering bike rides last summer, and as we began to cross the bridge span itself I looked north towards the east bank of the river valley.
In other seasons this whole area is covered in dense foliage, but in winter, without leaves, the steepness of the valley wall here was clearly visible. The snow on the ground that day provided a sharp contrast to the trees and houses that climb up the bank. I’ve skied, snowshoed, walked, run, biked and kayaked up and down this valley, but it was not until this moment that I felt I could see its full breadth and understand, at least a little, what it was like before the city was built in and around it.
The great thing about this time of year is the clear view it offers of the city’s topography. March may be the ugliest month: dead looking trees; defrosted mud; mountains of cigarette butts where snow piles melted; and a coating of filth on everything. The city is without its clothes right now, naked, baring all, and we can see things we can’t at other times of the year.
I returned to Bloor St. and Old Mill last week to see if I could see what I saw from the car, but I couldn’t. The snow was gone and the muddy brown winter hues didn’t highlight the land as well. Worse, the pictures I took were lousy: flat and boring.
As an amateur with just a camera phone, it’s hard to take good pictures of landscapes as complex as a city. A building or individual object, all things easy to Instagram, are not such a challenge for a serviceable picture, but capturing the whole landscape, both its drama and subtlety, is near impossible. The depth of vision is incredible in person but unremarkable when I try to snap it. There’s a reason why proper photographers with the right equipment still matter: they can more closely catch what we can see.
Last week, I was stopped at the intersection of Rogers Rd. and Glenholme Ave., a block west of Oakwood Ave. The view north was incredible as the neighbourhood dipped into a valley, one perhaps carved by buried Lavender Creek long ago, then climbed up the other side, affording strange and wonderful backyard views that would be obscured in the summer. Again, it was impossible to capture with a camera phone, but Toronto looked like the hilly neighbourhoods of San Francisco here, as it does in much of the pre-amalgamation City of York.
Though a hilly city, we’ve rendered it a seemingly flat place that is easy to traverse. Think of all the bridges that cross ravines where, unless you peered over the side, you’d never know there was a vast chasm below. The unrelenting street grid was not designed with the view in mind, just like Ontario’s 400 series highways manage to obscure a fair amount of this province’s subtle beauty. We’ve annihilated our topography, though there are exceptions.
Take a visit to Don Mills before the bushes bloom. Sometimes called Canada’s first post-war suburb, it was designed with a deft hand, unlike many subdivisions today that bulldoze the land flat. The streets and buildings in Don Mills follow the contours of the land, especially on the east side, closer to the Don Valley. March is a good time to see it all.
Last week after failing to see the Humber Valley the way I did that day in the car, we walked through Park Lawn Cemetery, which wraps around the King’s Mill Park section of the valley. At the southeast corner of the cemetery, a few steps from the residential intersection of Glenaden Ave. and Riverwood Pkwy., the valley was something to behold, with a fine view through the trees across to Old Mill.
Also visible was the storm water infrastructure sunk into the valley. A bit of concrete rising out of the forest floor and a utility hole cover where there shouldn’t be one: even when it seems natural, these are partially manufactured landscapes and right now, the signs of human intervention are more visible than they will be in a couple months.
Maybe the city isn’t at its prettiest in March. Perhaps it’s at its worst, like it woke up with bed-head and a bad hangover. If you can deal with all that, there’s a lot to see as the city is at its most honest right now.
Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef