Good luck getting to the Toronto Islands
The Toronto Islands can’t seem to get a break. One of the greatest city parks in Canada, it manages to feel rural and wild, but with a front-row view of Canada’s biggest metropolis.
That’s a wondrous feat to pull off, but twice in the last three years high water levels kept the islands closed to most visitors for a big part of the summer season. That, coupled with erosion, has also shrunk some of the island beaches, particularly Hanlan’s Point, a mere sliver of what it used to be. A shame, as it is has been a special place for Toronto’s queer community since the 1970s. This year, the coronavirus kept the island closed to visitors.
It’s cottage country for those without cottages. Despite it being such a vast public space on the doorstep of downtown, the antiquated ferry system has proven to be a perennial bottleneck getting people to and from their park, another case of something that was a problem before the pandemic evolving into more of a problem during and after it. A break did come when Mayor John Tory announced ferry service would resume, albeit each vessel reduced to 50 per cent capacity and only 5,000 reserved tickets available per day. In normal times, 1.4 million people head to the island per year, and on peak summer days more than 20,000 might be on the island. You can begin to see a problem here.
On those glorious summer days before the pandemic, days that are meant to be spent on the island, getting there could be an exercise in unpleasant long lines, crammed in the holding pens that are the ferry waiting terminals. Demand was high then. Reduced service will make it worse. Some people surely like fewer people on the island, and like that it can be hard to get to. That’s an elitist inclination.
Recently, some friends and I rented kayaks at Harbourfront and went for a paddle across the Toronto Harbour to the island. Holding a double-sided paddle means physical distancing is built in, and being on the open water was an antidote to so much time spent indoors. Once we reached the island, we paddled the shallow channels, finding secret lagoons only accessible by small boats and floated around islands most visitors don’t see.
Apart from us in rental kayaks that, at $45 for two hours are not the cheapest way to reach the island, we had it to ourselves but for people in larger cabin cruisers and sailboats. Private watercraft were moored on dock walls and their occupants had what amounted to a private park. If you can afford a way over, the islands were never closed off.
We’ve already seen the demand placed on mainland Toronto beaches during warm days recently, triggering yet another round of panic and shaming the people using them. A beach party is definitely not a good idea right now, but the freak-out over simply the sight of people, even lots of them, outdoors, in the same park or beach, needs to stop.
If you’ve got an opinion on this while sitting in your private back yard or at your cottage, maybe keep it to yourself. As ever, beware of telephoto lens photos that compress large public spaces making them seem more crowded than they are.
The scarcity of quality public spaces for people in a city of small apartments — places to spread out — has been made more profound now. This constant battle for public space is exhausting and depressing. Barrie’s city council recently voted to triple the price of parking at its beaches after residents complained out-oftowners were using them.
Does Ontario, the province we all live in, presumably together, even exist or matter any more? Perhaps it’s time to rethink road tolls on the highways and arterials that are bloated with lanes allowing “out of towners” to drive into Toronto.
At any rate, a solution within Toronto is needed. Though the city has more than 50 kilometres of shoreline, there are relatively few places to actually swim. Mark Mattson, the Lake Ontario waterkeeper and president of Swim Drink Fish Canada, an organization that does water quality testing, says there are untapped places on our waterfront where swimming can happen, like Ontario Place, where the water is deep and clean.
That, and long-term solutions to island access are needed, as these problems won’t go away when the coronavirus does. Romantics love the ancient ferries, but what worked literally 100 years ago doesn’t work any more. They’re also costly for families simple going to a city park.
Keep a ferry running for those romantics, but a bridge or extended Island airport tunnel is needed for this city of three million. At the very least, new ferries should be purchased and run like they do in Amsterdam, with multiple, non-stop boats going back and forth that load and unload in just a few minutes.