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Here's where people who learn something about Ontario's trails, via Ontario Trails Council are from.The Beltline trail keeps growing: Micallef
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SHAWN MICALLEF / SPECIAL TO THE STAR
One of the nicest spots on the Beltline trail, according to Shawn Micallef, is when it crosses Dufferin St. Beneath the bridge the former Coats and Paton yarn mill is now an art deco condo
The Beltline Railway was a late-Victorian folly, but a large part of it has become the Beltline Trail today, an oblique route through the middle of Toronto for runners, walkers and cyclists. Losing rails is a melancholy thing: so much effort made to establish civilization erased, the only upshot being some right-of-ways are converted to trails.
Opened in 1892, the railway lasted only two years as the expected residential development in the north of the city didn’t materialize. As the name suggests, the Beltline was a commuter loop that began at Union Station and ran up the Don Valley, veering northwest at the Brickworks through the Moore Park Ravine to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. After crossing Yonge St. it followed a diagonal path through Forest Hill to just north of Eglinton and continued west to what is now the Barrie GO train line by Caledonia Rd., where it headed back to downtown.
The best-known section is the oldest stretch of trail between Yonge St. and the Allen Rd. It’s named the Kay Gardner Beltline Park after the local activist and city councillor who, along with then-mayor David Crombie and others, saved the right-of-way from development in the 1970s. The Forest Hill section seemingly ends at the Allen Rd. sound barrier with little to suggest it continues on, but those who know cross over the Allen on either the Elm Ridge Dr. or Aldburn Rd. bridges and find the beginning of the York Beltline trail west of Marlee Rd., though the entrances can be difficult to discover.
“The York Beltline isn’t as accessible as the Kay Gardner section,” says Councillor Josh Colle, whose ward begins at Marlee. “It’s quite hidden and sheltered and there are people who’ve lived in the neighbourhood forever who don’t know the trail is there.”
Colle says there are plans in the works for better signage and even a grand gateway entrance this year, and the trail will be extended to Marlee as the city still has an easement where it currently dead ends at community gardens belonging to an adjacent TCHC building. The gardens will be relocated nearby.
There still remains a linear patch of land between Marlee and the Allen that could one day complete the trail here and Colle says the environmental assessment for the Allen Rd. could potentially include a conversation about a dedicated bridge connecting the two sections of trail.
There are also studies looking into making street crossings easier along the entire Beltline; right now trail users must cross most streets without a light or crosswalk. In the east trail, accessibility will be improved with the Chorley Park switchback, though some Rosedale residents are holding that process up right now.
Back on the west side, the York Beltline passes through a hodgepodge mix of residential and industrial buildings and the cluster of interior design stores around Castlefield Rd. The trail ends at Bowie Ave. by the new Canada Goose Down factory that recently opened in the old Hilroy school and office supply building, and Colle would like to see some kind of connection made to the nearby Caledonia Rd. station that will open along the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
Until the 1990s this stretch was used as industrial spur railway but today it’s marked with occasional shelters fashioned as old train stations with maps and the image of railway tracks laid into the paving bricks. The railway was in use so recently here that there are still signs on Fairbank Ave. telling motorists that the street continues on the other side of the tracks.
The bridge over Dufferin is one of the nicest bits. Toronto Parks installs flower boxes on it each summer and a new mural underneath pays homage to the former Coats & Paton yarn mill, an art deco gem converted to condos just east of here that overlooks the beltline itself.
Toronto’s lucky to have such Victorian follies; if only there could be more.
Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter@shawnmicallef.
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Mimico Creek is Toronto’s most elusive waterway. More accurately, we’ve turned our back on it, weaving as it does between subdivisions, golf courses, industrial zones, and right through the massive Hwy. 401-427 interchange. The creek begins in Brampton and is without fanfare or much public access for most of its course, but it ends in much better shape.
The mouth of Mimico Creek is one of the rather nicer bits of the Toronto waterfront, with wetlands and abundant waterfowl, with the East and West Humber Bay Parks, deltas of human-made landfill that, from above, are reminiscent of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands that were built out into the Persian Gulf.
Here, the single, leaning arch of the Mimico pedestrian and cycling bridge is a subtle but elegant sibling to more prominent Humber River Bridge further east. Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava had a hand in designing it, too, though he’s better known here for his soaring Brookfield Place atrium downtown. Opened in 1998, the bridge is proof that on occasion, Toronto can build nice things when it wants to.
Until recently, all of this was in an “in-between” bit of the city, not part of any established neighbourhood. Across Lake Shore Blvd. is the shuttered Mr. Christie plant, and the now demolished old Motel Strip was just east of here, but now a completely new neighbourhood is rising, home to thousands already, with thousands more coming.
North of Lake Shore, new condos have gone in on either side of the creek. One is called “South Beach.” Located as it is on the north shore of Lake Ontario, the South Beach is part of Toronto’s long tradition of naming residential buildings after places that are much warmer than Canada.
A sidewalk between this building and the Lakeshore rail corridor leads to the top of the Mimico ravine. Though the sidewalk dead-ends at the crest, there is a good view here of the work the Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) did to restore and replant the creek and ravine.
There’s no public trail here now, but the TRCA also has plans to create an accessible trail beginning at Lake Shore Blvd. and continuing north under the railway trestle, complete with three bridges that leapfrog the currently impassable curving creek.
Walking north under tracks along Park Lawn Rd. it’s possible to slip down to the creek again, taking a path from the service road beside the QEW. Here the creek is completely encased in concrete, a smaller version of the famously paved Los Angeles River; recalling the drag race scene in Grease, which was filmed there.
Though it’s about as unnatural as a creek can get, it’s a fantastic concrete landscape, with graffiti on the paved creek banks and on the pillars holding up the various QEW bridge spans. Concrete is about as heavy a building material there is, but in places the huge slabs have buckled and heaved as if a catastrophic earthquake occurred here, a testament to the power of fast-running Mimico water during storms.
North of the QEW, the creek returns to a semi-natural state. A path through a meadow adjacent to it runs up the Queensway. Seen from here, the brand new Mimico skyline is impressive: a wall of light and human beings where there wasn’t any until recently. This will be their near-wilderness.
When the path is completed, residents will have a direct connection to the shops and restaurants along the Queensway via a 10-minute creekside walk. Hopefully they’ll want the trails to continue north, revealing more of Mimico. One day, maybe we’ll be able to walk all of it.
Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef
