Category: Meta

2019 marked a milestone in exploring local metroscapes. 2018 was the first full year under the new brand, and when my walk planning was starting to get really organized. So this past year was about covering as much ground as I could; I was in the groove, but I had the inkling that this may be my last year in Toronto. I tried to cover off all that I could, but it’s hard being a father and working full time.

While I made some initial reflections of my time in Toronto, I decided to conduct another year-in-review, and bring in some of the ground I covered in the tri-city. I will go over the stats, the neighbourhoods and watersheds covered, and look ahead to the next decade.

Statistics

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I did not top 2018’s total walking distance, but considering everything going on in my life, I still covered a good amount of ground.

• Over 26 walks, I covered 407 kilometres (321 km Toronto / 86 km KWC), a little longer than driving between Niagara Falls and Kingston. This is a decrease of 150 km from 2018.
• The average walk was 15.6 km, an increase of 1.7 km from 2018. This is the same distance as walking between Keele and Main Street subway stations in Toronto, or between Conestoga Mall and Mill Stations in KW.
• The longest walk was the last one of the year (December 7), coming in at 23.7 km. This was following the proposed ION Stage 2 route, which is longer than the actual route because of the detours.
• Most months were an average of 30 km total, the outliers being March (57 km) and June (77 km).

Neighbourhoods

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There were 118 Toronto neighbourhoods covered in 2019, 84 of them which were truly walked through, down from 166 and 143 last year, respectively. Half decent coverage of the city, especially Etobicoke and west Toronto-East York North York was a bit of a void. 2 walks went beyond the City of Toronto borders, 3 of them in the Pearson airport area.

As for the tri-city, in which I completed a neighbourhood project for, I covered 41 neighbourhoods, 32 which were truly walked through. Many of them are concentrated along the regional north-south spine, as this happened to be the features I explored. 1 walk went beyond the borders of the tri-cities, when following the Grand’s west bank technically took me through North Dumfries.

Watersheds

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Note: A watersheds project for Kitchener – Waterloo – Cambridge is still in progress, so this only reflects watersheds for Toronto walks. This section will be updated once KWC Watersheds is completed.

Last year, I was able to cover all 7 watersheds in Toronto. This year, I technically walked through all of them again, but fewer of my walks traced watercourses.

• I covered 9 first-order rivers and creeks of 4 main watersheds (Lower / West Etobicoke, Lower / West / East Humber, Lower / West / East Don, East Highland).
• 10 second-order or lower streams were followed (Black, Lavender and 4 tributaries, Mud, Curran Hall, West Hill and tributary).
• 1 lost river was traced: Russel Creek, which drained straight into Lake Ontario.

Looking ahead to 2020

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2020 will be a big year for exploring the metroscapes of the tri-city. I have lots of opportunities to go beyond the spine I’ve covered so far, and hit the far reaches of each city. In total, I have almost 500 km of walk plans. This includes:

• 16 in riverine systems
• 6 in hydro corridors
• 3 along rail corridors
• 2 along highways

In addition to that, I still have some unfinished business in Toronto, so I may fire down to the T Dot a couple times to try and cover more ground. This includes checking out some new stuff, such as Garrison Crossing and the new East Don Trail.

Aside from the walks, I have a lot of project work to do as well, and for starters I will finish and publish KWC neighbourhoods. I also have to get my head around KWC watersheds; it’s a bit of a different beast from Toronto, as it will be a number of subwatersheds of the Grand River.

I also hope to figure out a better mapping solution. I have been using Google My Maps as a primary tool, and MapHub for posting and sharing screenshots (since it’s open source). They’re free, which is the primary reason I’ve used them, but both are becoming limited in the scale and capacity I want to use them. I may move to a GIS tool if I have the time and energy amongst the rest of life’s demands.

Thanks for following, and I’ll see you in 2020.

A massive valley with towering apartments on the top of the slope.

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The remnance of where a river swept an entire crescent of houses away.

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Thick forest followed by a massive train trestle overhead.

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A sweeping shoreline leading to a downtown core.

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These were the sights along my first walk after moving to Toronto, from Cruickshank Park to the lake. While this was something to occupy myself for the weekend, it started a fascination with how Toronto’s natural and built environments collided.

That said, the walks were aimless and kinda shallow. It wasn’t until November 2017 that it became a brand, and a focused effort to document Toronto’s best walks and biggest opportunities. All in all, from what I could remember back to April 2016, I racked up over 1,300 kilometres over 111 walks.

For now, my journeys across Toronto have reached a hiatus. My housing needs have changed, and I was driven out by the high cost of rent. I have now moved on to new pastures in the tri-city, but I will continue exploring the local metroscapes there.

I thought it worthwhile to take a look back, and make some initial reflections.

2019 in Toronto

2019 was a pretty fruitful year. Despite only completing half as many walks as last year (306 km, or a drive from Toronto to Chatham), I did go further on average (16.4 km; a Lakeshore West GO train ride from Union to Dixie Road). More important than the stats, however, is that I feel like I went on some particularity special walks.

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One was certainly the Leslie Spit. Dreary weather can make for a dreary day, but sometimes it makes the colours in the landscape pop a little more. That certainly was the case with the Spit’s brick-laden shores, wetlands in their infancy, tall barren trees and still harbour waters. There’s nothing else like it.

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Another was the impeccably timed documenting of The Toronto Islands. This happened about a month before Lake Ontario broke water level records set just two years prior, and ended up becoming an indepth analysis and a new set of knowledge for me.

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Finally, there was walking the Beltline, which was a bit of coming full circle. It mixed the midtown trail that was an integral part of my last 4 years in Toronto, and the valley that fills faint memories from the first 6 years of my life. It’s objectively beautiful without context, but it was a very spiritual trip for me.

Looking Back and Forward

I can’t pick those three walks and say they were my top 3 for 2019, or that any of them were the best of all time. Even when I have an incident(e.g. heat exhaustion, falling through ice, or getting lost), every walk has its moment. Despite my bitterness with the circumstances I had to leave under, these adventures will stick with me for years to come.

I’m just happy that I’m able to share all of this. Whether it’s looking up ideas for your own walks, referring to older pictures as the city continues to grow and change, or using analysis to further improve the walking environment of the city, I will strive to maintain this website as a resource for current and future Torontonians.

That said, the Toronto section of the site is not going to be completely static going forward. I still have work to do in the Projects section, and I will return to the city on occasion to visit and take care of some unfinished plans.

So this isn’t goodbye Toronto. More like “See you later.”

I’ve commented on a few public draft documents or projects using this blog as a medium: The Meadoway, Toronto’s Parkland Strategy, and the TRCA’s Trail Strategy. This will likely be a re-occurring thing, so I have rebranded and categorized these posts as a “Public Review Series,” and will do the same for future posts.

Greetings!

Metroscapes has historically been a bit of a personal soapbox of mine, a place to vent about transit and other city issues. The posts were usually fueled by concern or frustration, so the content was usually negative, sometimes repetitive, and often sporatic.

However, following the lead of some other Toronto tweeps, I have been doing a lot of storytelling through Twitter as of late. It’s now a regular hobby of mine to spend my weekends exploring corners of Toronto (and sometimes a bit beyond the border) that I haven’t been to yet. These usually involve ravines and the infrastructure within, across and under them, but it can also bleed into the concrete jungle, or get deep into the thickest of the intact natural areas.

It has actually been an enlightening exercise. I have come to realize what my passions are in life, and what I am driven to do: simply put, I like wandering around, exploring natural and built environments, and the intersections between them.

I am a nomad with a passion for exploring metroscapes.

With that in mind, I am refreshing this website to organize my walks of Toronto, doing additional research on some items, and sharing more of the pictures I take along the way. I will be doing this for past walks, and going forward. Looking forward to sharing my adventures with you.