A decade of massive changes, for better and worse

Last summer I began updating my 2010 book “Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto” for an expanded new edition.

For the original, I walked the city and wrote about what I saw, the people I talked to, the architecture, urban design and dug into Toronto history in 31 chapters from downtown to the city limits. Psychogeography is a way of exploring and understanding the city by wandering and looking at it critically. I wanted readers to fall in love with Toronto, but also know it can be much better.

As I started walking up Yonge Street from Lake Ontario, I sensed trouble: I knew Toronto had changed in 14 years, but only in updating the book did I realize the magnitude. I was shocked, even though it’s my job to pay attention to the city.

I thought it would take two months to make some tweaks, add in new walks, and send it to Coach House Books, my publisher. However, just in the first block I could see a dozen new buildings and other things that had disappeared, like Captain John’s seafood ship. I’d have to check every detail, line by line, step by step. The entire chapter on Yonge Street needed to be “rewalked” as did the rest of the book. Two months became eight months.

Was the groundhog den I noted in Scarborough’s Glamorgan Park still there? Yep. How about the Adult O’Rama on Browns Line in Etobicoke with its private viewing booths? Nope. I was happy to find that the plaques proclaiming “Wendel Clark Day” (1994) and “Dave Winfield Day” (1993) in North York were still up in the former North York city hall, now civic centre.

Some things disappear or change, while others endure. Despite the task, it was enjoyable walking Toronto and I was reminded that even though it’s incredibly frustrating sometimes, there’s a lot to love about living here and many reasons to make it better. The updated book has thousands of changes and additions. Here are just a few.

Downtown’s radical change

In 2010, I wrote about the big parking lot on the northwest corner of Yonge and Gerrard streets. It was one of dozens, most of them created in the decades after the Second World War when cars devoured the very city they served. Aura, a supertall residential and commercial building, stands there now, and most parking lots that existed downtown in 2010 have been filled in with new buildings, unlike most North American cities that suffered the same ravaging.

There are other losses, though. Today, the southeast corner of Church and Dundas streets is one residential building with a typically bland ground floor. In 2010, this corner was a great jumble of buildings of many sorts that contained more than a century’s worth of commercial and residential history. Because Toronto forces most new development into a few places, like our main streets, leaving residential areas untouched, we have lost many beloved retail strips that made this city what it is.

Rouge Park

In 2010, Rouge Park was big — an expanse of near-wilderness on the city’s eastern edge — but today it’s even bigger. Canada’s first Urban National Park is expanding this wild corner of Toronto north of Pickering, deep into Durham Region. It was amazing before, but a massive marvel now with its long hikes reachable by TTC.

Yorkdale mall and Lawrence Heights

A chapter of “Stroll” explored the shopping centre and its environs. High-end malls such as Yorkdale are at the mercy of fashion and it has undergone multiple renovations and expansions since 2010, but so has the neighbourhood right next door.

Lawrence Heights, the large public housing neighbourhood constructed in the 1950s, is undergoing its own massive, Regent Park-style change. While we are rightly cynical about public projects like the Eglinton Crosstown taking an eternity, other projects happen incredibly quickly in comparison. The entire landscape has changed here, just as it’s changing in Alexandra Park south of Kensington Market.

The Sheppard Line

In 2010, I walked the length of the Sheppard Subway, then just eight years old and still referred to as the “subway to nowhere.” Though that wasn’t true then, it certainly isn’t now, as new buildings are appearing along its length, and a huge new, dense neighbourhood has been created between Bessarion Station, on former Canadian Tire lands, and Leslie Station. There’s a new big park here called Ethennonnhawahstihnen’, meaning “where they had a good, beautiful life” in Wendat. Entire new neighbourhoods, all over the city, in just a decade and a half is incredible.

The end of Toronto

When I finally reached Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue last summer I looked for a store I mentioned in 2010 called Bidet 4 U, one of the last shops before the city limits. It, too, was gone. Whether big changes, like whole landscapes, or individual shops that represent somebody’s life work, the overwhelming change is really thousands — millions — of human stories. Toronto is many things, but it isn’t boring. Reason to keep walking and exploring.

THE UPDATED “STROLL” IS AVAILABLE

When Shawn Micallef started to update his book on strolling Toronto, he realized the entire chapter on Yonge Street needed to be ‘re-walked,’ as did the rest of the book. What he expected to take two months ended up taking eight