{"id":52534,"date":"2015-08-27T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=52534"},"modified":"2015-08-27T09:22:53","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T13:22:53","slug":"exploring-black-creek-torontos-mini-la-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/08\/27\/exploring-black-creek-torontos-mini-la-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Black Creek, Toronto’s mini-LA River"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading a lot about the LA river recently because of the\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0that Frank Gehry is working with the City of Los Angeles on plans to revitalize the river (plans that\u00a0some say<\/a>\u00a0may clash with previous plans to renaturalize part of it.) So I decided to check out one of Toronto\u2019s own mini-LA rivers, Black Creek.<\/p>\n

My first glimpse of Black Creek was before I knew it was Black Creek. I saw it as I passed by on the new UP Express on my way to Newfoundland for a friend\u2019s wedding last month. There, outside the window of the train, I saw a large concrete channel marching down the centre of a street, a trickle of water down its middle. What is\u00a0that<\/em>, I thought.\u00a0It looked so un-Toronto to me.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6385\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turns out it\u2019s part of Black Creek, one of Toronto\u2019s most\u00a0polluted waterways<\/a>\u00a0and the smallest subwatershed of the Humber River, into which it flows.<\/p>\n

According to this little history on the\u00a0Black Creek Conservation Project website<\/a>, Black Creek was channelized following Hurricane Hazel in 1954 as a way to prevent flooding and whisk stormwater away faster. It was apparently fully surrounded\u00a0in its open concrete channel by 1965. The effect is pretty dramatic. It\u2019s horrific and beautiful at the same time, in the way that weird, concrete urban things often are where nature has started to reinsert itself in all the little nooks and crannies.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6393\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not all of the creek is this austere, however. What makes Black Creek so interesting is how its concrete channel passes through different landscapes. Following the\u00a0section where it slices down the centre of a road, the creek passes through a series of parkland before it runs through a golf course and then meets up with the Humber River.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6392\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here the creek\u2019s concrete channel winds its way through mowed grass, willow trees with their boughs hanging low over the water, and alongside tennis courts, children\u2019s playgrounds, and ponds with green water so still that their surfaces appear solid. In some places rocks have been placed in the channel to break up the water, creating more of a natural look. Geese hang around on the concrete like bored teenagers.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6384\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While signs warn people about the potential dangers of flooding during rainstorms, there is no fence to keep you from going down into the channel. The banks are sloped gently and the base of the channel is flat and wide on either side of a trench cut down further where the water flows past. It\u2019s almost like two sidewalks.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6394\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are other creeks in Toronto that have been corralled into concrete channels like this one. Shawn Micallef has written about two others,\u00a0Lavender Creek<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mimico Creek<\/a>, both of which have been at least partly channelized.<\/p>\n

These concrete streams are\u00a0a weird mix of nature and the hardest parts of urbanity. LA\u2019s\u00a0plans<\/a>\u00a0are to get rid of the concrete for the LA River and soften the banks in the hopes that this restores some of the natural elements to the river itself. But Gehry, perhaps not surprisingly\u00a0given his architecture, is interested in preserving the concrete portions of the river,\u00a0calling it<\/a>\u00a0an \u201carchitectural feature.\u201d<\/p>\n

All environmental concerns aside, I can kind of see his point. Concrete is ugly and brutish, but that\u2019s part\u00a0of its appeal, especially in contrast to the soft, green of the parkland around it. There is something weirdly lovely in an almost dystopian sense about seeing Black Creek wind its way through the city\u00a0in its concrete chute on its way to the Humber.<\/p>\n

originally posted on This Land is Parkland<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading a lot about the LA river recently because of the\u00a0announcement\u00a0that Frank Gehry is working with the City of Los Angeles on plans to revitalize the river (plans that\u00a0some say\u00a0may clash with previous plans to renaturalize part of it.) So I decided to check out one of Toronto\u2019s own mini-LA rivers, Black Creek.Continue reading “Exploring Black Creek, Toronto’s mini-LA River”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4097,"featured_media":52549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[591,22095],"class_list":["post-52534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parks","tag-black-creek","tag-toronto-parks"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nExploring Black Creek, Toronto's mini-LA River - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/08\/27\/exploring-black-creek-torontos-mini-la-river\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exploring Black Creek, Toronto's mini-LA River - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been reading a lot about the LA river recently because of the\u00a0announcement\u00a0that Frank Gehry is working with the City of Los Angeles on plans to revitalize the river (plans that\u00a0some say\u00a0may clash with previous plans to renaturalize part of it.) 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