Displacement In the age of globalism and mass human migration, Canada has emerged as a society built on tolerance and multiple values. It has more than 200 ethnic groups and the world’s second highest proportion of population born outside the country. In Toronto, 44 per cent of the population is foreign-born. Displaced from their birth- place and disconnected from ancestral ties, people from all backgrounds must re-identify themselves in Canada. An emerging generation of Canadians have compound identities that defy physical and national boundaries. In the last decade, cross-cultural marriages have increased by almost 40 per cent in Toronto, significantly furthering the cultural complexity of the present and future Canadian population. Likewise, inter-faith marriages are on the rise, as are same-sex marriages. Like its displaced citizens, Toronto’s physical topogra- phy is a historical register of both natural and artificially displaced earth, rock and water. Grooves and ridges carved by retreating ice sheets millions of years ago cre- ated a web of streambeds and river valleys that take water to Lake Ontario. Specifically in Toronto, 7000 years of drifted sand and rock have made a thin peninsula that encloses a natural harbour protecting the city. Within this harbour, sediment from the Don River emptied into marshlands at Ashbridge’s Bay creating an ecosystem that supported a large bird and waterfowl population. Since European settlement two centuries ago, dramatic alterations have been made to the mouth of the Don River. The lower Don River has been transformed from a natural serpentine stream into a hard-edged concrete channel. The concrete banks of the late nineteenth century Don Improvement Plan further isolated the river and its val- ley from the urban fabric. The addition of the Belt Line Railway (now part of the Canadian National Railways) in the early 1900s, along with the construction of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, Don Valley Parkway and the Bayview Avenue Extension in the 1950 and 60s have cre- ated barriers all around the Lower Don. The construction of the port lands completely eradicated Ashbridge’s Bay marshes, and in the process, more than 20 million cubic metres of material from the harbour floor was dredged and relocated. Today, the Don River terminates in a right- angled bend at Keating Channel. Polluted from sewage and surface run-off, the murky water at the mouth of the Don languishes amidst a web of infrastructure. urban waters new life for an old lifeline: re-imagining the Don
infrastructure | multicultural opportunities in reclaimed landscapes by yvonne lam
industrial landscapes urban rivers derelict land reclamation public space
‘Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.’ In his book Landscape and Memory , Simon Schama contends that every landscape is psychologically framed by cultural constructs
1
2
1 The present Don environment: industry, expressways, railways — a lost landscape 2 The mouth of the Don River, Toronto 3 The potential of the Don River to be an extended, public, sustainable urban lifeline.
3
on site review 17
61
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator