Related Articles
Dangling my feet over the bank of a fast-running creek, I watched the sunlight filter through a leafy canopy above me. Here, in the middle of a city of three million people, I felt utterly alone, and though I was loath to admit it, a little disoriented. But that was why I had come.
Much of Toronto is oriented around a straightforward grid of streets. But for those who know where to look, there is an emerald city hidden inside that grid. Like the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Central Park in New York and Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, the ravine system in Toronto forms an oasis, albeit a sprawling and decentralized one.
But unlike those landscaped parks, Toronto’s ravines feel wild. Many Torontonians — let alone visitors — never descend into their vastness. Sitting on a mossy log listening to the water of Yellow Creek, I felt so peaceful, I could have been in a national park. Instead, I was a 10-minute walk from the corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets, one of the city’s main intersections.
‘Going down into a burrow’
Over two days, with fall on the doorstep, I set out to walk several of the ravines and experience a more primal and less manicured version of Canada’s largest city. Torontonians often see the ravines as a space unto themselves where underground parties, guerrilla gardening and homeless encampments coexist. And this separateness lends itself to the unexpected; in my ambles along their paths, I have encountered coyotes, nude sunbathers and, once, Eugene Levy (or his doppelgänger).
“People go into the ravines because it’s close to their home, but it’s almost like they’re going down into a burrow,” said Geoffrey Chan, a lead steward with the Toronto Nature Stewards program. Mr. Chan, along with about 800 other volunteers, works in partnership with the city to care for the 27,000-acre ravine system. Stewards pick up litter, cull invasive species and plant native ones.
On the first day, as I was scouting out my walk, I met up with Mr. Chan and Tom Connell, also a lead steward for T.N.S., outside Roxborough Parkette North, a small park in the Rosedale-Moore Park neighborhood, across from an entrance to Rosedale Ravine. Decked out in gardening gear, Mr. Connell held a long, orange object that looked like a cross between a shovel and a pickax — an extractigator, he told me, with which he planned to yank out invasive species by the roots.
“You have your street network and then you have your ravine network, and I think the city is getting better at recognizing the importance of the ravines,” Mr. Connell said. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ravines were a neglected dumping ground, and now they are prized for their biodiversity and unkempt beauty.
“We know about the ravines, but we also don’t know about them — many of us,” Mr. Chan said.
Famous holdouts
I began my solo explorations in midtown Toronto at Cedarvale Ravine, which flows out of the rolling expanse of Cedarvale Park. I followed a wide lane until it narrowed and passed under Glen Cedar Bridge.
That Cedarvale Ravine remains at all is a testament to the work of Jane Jacobs, the urban activist. Ms. Jacobs — famous for helping to forestall a Lower Manhattan highway project that would have demolished parts of Greenwich Village — moved to Toronto in the late 1960s. The city had plans for the Spadina Expressway through the city center, which would have paved over the ravines, but neighborhood protests spearheaded by Ms. Jacobs halted the project in 1971.
My path unexpectedly led to a marsh. Tall cattails and goldenrod rose up against a pale blue sky, and the buzz of cicadas filled my ears. I spotted leopard frogs in the muddy waters. Around me, families walked their dogs, couples held hands and runners sped past.
My route ended at a small park, and badly needing caffeine, I veered west along St. Clair Avenue, in the Wychwood neighborhood, home to the Wychwood Barns farmers’ market, held every Saturday in a revamped century-old streetcar facility.
I grabbed a miso-and-toffee cookie at Le Bleu Coffee and hopped over to the cocktail bar-cum-café Krave Coffee for a cortado. I then pressed on for more sugar, ordering a cantaloupe and sweet-milk twist at the gelato joint Bar Ape, where an employee told me that as a teenager, he used to party in the ravines.
Hidden portals
The ravines can be easy to miss: Their frequently hidden entrances often have low-key signage, sometimes on dead-end streets or along active rail lines.
Nordheimer Ravine, my next destination, was one of these. One minute, I was standing on crowded St. Clair Avenue across from a giant Loblaws grocery store in the Casa Loma neighborhood. Then, as I went down some steep steps secluded by trees, the air quieted and the heat subsided. These stretches of urban wilderness host 369 different species of birds, and I passed several people with binoculars.
I walked by an emergency subway exit adorned with a huge mural. Toronto’s transit agency, in partnership with the city, commissioned the work by the graffiti artist Paula González-Ossa, known as Bomba, and men from the Na-Me-Res Sagatay Indigenous transitional housing. Images of medicinal plants and native trees covered the curved geometry of the station, blending into the real trees.
These ravines are the traditional territory of many nations, including the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, Anishnabeg, Chippewa, Seneca and Mississaugas of the Credit. Parts of the network intersect with the historic First Nations trail known as Gete-Onigaming, which translates to “at the old portage,” connecting the Humber and Don rivers.
Nordheimer Ravine winds into Sir Winston Churchill Park before spilling uneventfully into Rathnelly, a neighborhood that in 1967 symbolically declared itself independent of both the city and Canada in protest of the Spadina Expressway, and street signs there pay homage to this.
A ‘Frankenstein’ network
On the second day, I swapped sandals for sneakers and headed for the central neighborhood of Rosedale. Off a dead-end street, I descended onto the Milkman’s Lane trail and veered toward Moore Park Ravine.
The leaves had just begun to turn. Tawny yellows and crisp oranges flecked the blue sky as I sloped down toward Evergreen Brick Works, a community center in a former quarry and brick factory.
The ravines have a cobbled-together quality, or what Jordan Teichmann, a Torontonian who assembled a 2018 subway-like map of them, described as “a Frankenstein nature.” They merge into tiny parks, border residents’ backyards, conceal buried rivers, and shelter vibrant, fast-flowing creeks. They are fractured by urban growth, yet they have endured.
I admired the late-blooming wildflowers as I carried on along Park Drive Reservation Trail. An elderly couple strolled ahead of me and a woman chased her toddler. It was peaceful, with fewer people than Cedarvale.
I exited at Roxborough Parkette — the place where I’d first met Mr. Connell and Mr. Chan — and crossed Mount Pleasant Road into the Vale of Avoca, an especially wild part of Rosedale Ravine. Here, Yellow Creek runs between steep slopes. Fallen trees occasionally act as makeshift water crossings, their upturned roots evidence of ongoing erosion. For hikers who prefer real bridges, there’s a charming wooden one about two-thirds of the way toward the entrance to historic Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
I paralleled the creek, listening to the rush of water. I didn’t encounter a soul in the vale. The industrial grandeur of graffiti-sprayed concrete pillars of a rail bridge emerging from the foliage echoed the majesty of the natural surroundings. I inspected an outcropping of mushrooms and stared up at the canopy of 30-foot trees. Someone had suspended a piece of slate-colored ceramic from a branch, and it caught the sunlight. I sat on a moss-covered log to take it in.
As dusk arrived with an autumn chill, I decided to forgo the cemetery route and instead climbed a steep staircase that spit me out behind some recycling bins on Shaftesbury Avenue.
I followed some railroad tracks and soon found myself in Summerhill, a neighborhood of quiet wealth that manifests in boutique butchers, cafes and clothing shops. I pressed on to Bar Centrale and ordered a baked mushroom salad and a Negroni. I wondered how many of my fellow diners had crossed a stream and navigated tree roots to make it here this evening. Leaning back against my chair, surrounded by conversation and clinking plates, I tucked my muddy sneakers under the table.
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024.
<
