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With Reclaiming the Don, Jennifer L. Bonnell unearths the missing story of the relationship between the river, the valley, and the city, from the establishment of the town of York in the 1790s to the construction of the Don Valley Parkway in the 1960s.
High Park, Scarborough Bluffs, the Humber Valley, the Port Lands. These are among the special places of Toronto. Each is a unique ecosystem within the busy urban region. Even though Torontonians think of the city as almost entirely built up, savannah or wetlands are only a subway ride away. Special Places explores the changing ecosystems of the Toronto area over this century, looking at the environmental conditions that influence the whole region and at the surprising range of plants and animals you can still find in many of its natural spaces.
Featuring tributes from award-winning writers In a city sometimes referred to as “The Big Smoke,” Toronto’s extensive network of sunken rivers, forested vales, and expansive shoreline has been too often overlooked, neglected, or forgotten. However, the last 25 years has seen these distinctive landscapes rediscovered and even embraced as great civic spaces. Commissioned by the City of Toronto to chronicle the wonders of these wilderness parks, renowned photographer Robert Burley looks at these sites as integral parts of urban life, from breathtaking lake views of the Scarborough Bluffs to glimpses of the densely wooded trails in the Carolinian forests of Rouge Park, Canada’s first and...
Pollution of air, soil, and waterways has become a primary concern of urban environmental policy making, and over the past two decades there has emerged a new era of urban policy that links development with ecological issues, based on the notion that both nature and the economy can be enhanced through technological changes to production and consumption systems. This book takes a new look at this application of "ecological modernization" to contemporary urban political-ecological struggles. Considering policy processes around land-use in urban watersheds and pollution of air and soil in two disparate North American "global cities," it criticizes the dominant belief in the power of markets and...
No matter where you are in Toronto, you are close to a ravine. In these often-hidden places you can find an astonishing diversity of birds, flowers, and trees. Jason Ramsay-Brown has spent twenty years exploring the more than one hundred ravines, parks, and urban forests within Toronto's boundaries. For this book he has selected the thirty natural areas most rewarding to visitors, and provided accounts of what you will encounter there — and what you can learn of the city's history as well. The variety of flora and fauna is astonishing. In one park alone, the Leslie Street Spit, more than three hundred species of birds have been identified since the turn of the millennium. The increasingly ...
It is difficult for Todmorden Mills Museum visitors to imagine that this site so close to the busy Don Valley Parkway was once home to an important mill. As early as 1793 Governor Simcoe recognized the industrial potential of this portion of the Don River. By 1795 Skinner's sawmill was under construction, initiating an era of technological development that spread beyond the valley of the Don into what was then Muddy York. Today, Todmorden serves to remind us of Toronto's industrial heritage and the spirit of the time. This invaluable local history confirms the significance of early mills and later factories along the Don River and recognizes the roles played by Timothy Skinner, Parshall Terry, George Playter, William Helliwell and other settlers and entrepreneurs of Governor John Graves Simcoe's time and beyond. Eleanor Darke, assisted by Ian Wheal, presents us with an informative account of the people, their lives and their creative influence.
In the more than two decades since the publication of Ontario Since Confederation: A Reader, Ontario, Canada, North America, and the world have experienced a whirlwind of profound changes. This new edition brings together leading scholars to present a new and expansive view of Ontario’s social, political, and economic history. Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition reflects on the dramatic changes in historical practice and understanding that have marked the last two decades. Taking a chronological approach and broadening the theme of state and society, the book explores important topics such as the environment, gender, continentalism, urban growth, and Indigenous issues. This timely update to Ontario Since Confederation features new and revised chapters, as well as new discussion questions designed to stimulate and guide readers to make connections between and across the entire book. Bringing together a wide range of perspectives, approaches, and frameworks, Ontario Since Confederation sheds light on historical changes in Canada’s most populous province across more than one and a half centuries.
If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, food-security concerns, how chefs are trained: how a city nourishes itself might say more than anything else about what kind of city it is. With a cornucopia of essays on comestibles, The Edible City considers how one city eats. It includes dishes on peaches and poverty, on processing plants and public gardens, on rats and bees and bad restaurant service, on schnitzel and school lunches. There are incisive studies of food-safety policy, of feeding the poor, and of waste, and a happy tale about a hardy fig tree. Together they form a saucy picture of how Toronto – and, by extension, every city – sustains itself, from growing basil on balconies to four-star restaurants. Dig into The Edible City and get the whole story, from field to fork.
Toronto has over 600 public outdoor sculptures, works of art that provide a sense of the rich variety of life and work in the city, its peoples, cultures and aspirations. Interest in commissioning public sculpture began slowly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but increased rapidly after the 1950s.This is a book about the sculptures and how they disclose the city to itself. Creating Memory’s two introductory sections examine the factors behind this expansion over time and the changes in style as one generation of sculptors succeeded another. It looks at the reasons behind the changes as sculptures were conceived, sculpted and erected. More than 10 categories of sculptures are defined and discussed, including Founding the City, Natural Environment, Immigration, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activities, Disaster and Calamity, War And Conflict, Leaders, Ordinary Citizens, Community Life, and Works of the Imagination.
A colourful look at Toronto's pioneer roots, tracing the history of three neighbourhoods from their farming days to modern day. Includes: Don Mills: From Forests and Farms to Forces of Change As recently as 1970, wheat crops were grown at Don Mills — and no small amount, but enough to line Toronto’s grocery-store shelves with baked goods. Single-herd milk was also commonplace, thanks to this last vestige of the city’s agricultural past. By 1980, it had been paved over, but Scott Kennedy offers a glimpse of the way things used to be. 200 Years at St. John's York Mills: The Oldest Parish in Toronto St. John’s Church at York Mills was built in 1816 on land that had been donated by pione...