1

“Peace to his ashes”The Death and Life of the River Don

K.B.C. Closs

Mark Kuhlberg

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HIST 5156 – Themes in Canadian HistoryDecember 10, 2014

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A river that runs through a city is always the first victim

of metropolitan growth. The Don River, which once marked the

eastern border of Toronto, is a waterway that has paid the

ultimate price for human progress. Since industrial development

began in the early nineteenth century, the river has carried raw

sewage, industrial waste, and agricultural runoff from its

headwaters in the Oak Ridges Moraine to Toronto Bay where it

flows into Lake Ontario. As early as 1875 a citizens’ petition

complained about the noisome Don, referring to it as “that

receptacle of every kind of filth.”1 More than a century later

the Don Watershed Task Force identified the Don as “one of

Canada’s most degraded rivers.”2 From the effluent of the first

tanneries, refineries and rendering plants, to the road salt,

heavy metals and pesticides of the post-war period, the Don has

suffered the worst abuse that a city can perpetrate. Once the

nourishing heart of a hydrologic system 36,000 hectares in size,

this vital waterway has become the epitome of the debauched urban

1 “Water Commissioners,” The Globe, December 15, 1875.2 “Forty steps to a new Don, executive summary,”

http://trca.on.ca/dotAsset/25858.pdf (accessed December 5, 2014), 2.

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river.3 Fouled, buried and channelized, the Don River is now a

moribund symbol of nature sacrificed to progress.

But this unimposing river is more than just another

environmental casualty; when viewed through the lens of The Globe

newspaper archives, it appears as a central (if morbid) character

in the city’s story. The earliest mentions of the river are

reports of an accidental death and a dangerously dilapidated

bridge.4 As the city grew, so did the Don’s notoriety, with

ubiquitous drownings (usually of children),5 viaduct suicides,6

floods,7 and crushing ice jams.8 As one navigates The Globe, the

Don develops its own disreputable yet potent character (and not

just due to the unpleasant smell). But while the waters of the

Don Valley have certainly made a convenient commode, it is the

river’s impact on Toronto’s development as a functioning

metropolis—not its function as the city’s toilet—that has proven

to be its legacy.3 “Don River Watershed,” Toronto and Region Conservation for the Living City,

http://trca.on.ca/the-living-city/watersheds/don-river/ (accessed December 7, 2014); “Forty steps,” 2.

4 “Dangerous Roads,” The Globe, September 24, 1850; “Article 5,” The Globe,April 2, 1853.

5 "A Boy Drowned in the Don," The Globe, May 31, 1860.6 “Killed Himself in Despair,” The Globe, July 4, 1892.7 “City News,” The Globe, March 8, 1876.8 “Another Freshet,” The Globe, February 17, 1857.

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Writers have tended to either ignore or disparage the Don

River. In Progress Without Planning,9 historian Ian Drummond mentions

it only in passing while in Peter Baskerville’s Sites of Power10 the

Don does not come into the story at all. Popular and scholarly

media tend to fall into condemnatory or apologetic narratives,

focusing only on the ecological tragedy.11 Environmentalists and

artists are inclined to romanticize river valleys, overlooking

the seedier charms of urban systems.12 This essay, however, will

show the river as an actor in Toronto’s economic evolution. The

mouth of the Don was originally chosen as a safe and pleasant

site for the future commercial capital of Upper Canada.13 But the

river would quickly become the principle nemesis of Toronto's

business and political elite. It collected and concentrated

9 Ian M. Drummond, Progress without Planning: The Economic History of Ontario from Confederation to the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 173.

10 Peter A. Baskerville, Sites of Power: A Concise History of Ontario (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2005), 169-70.

11 Forbes Gilbertson, “The Don: An Urban River Struggling for Survival,”Canadian Geographic Journal 84, no. 2 (1972): 67; Jack Lakey, "The Fixer: More clean up remains for stinky Don River," The Star, http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/the_fixer/2010/05/03/the_fixer_more_clean_up_remains_for_stinky_don_river.html (accessed December 9, 2014).

12 “The Day the Earth was Moved,” http://www.esemag.com/archive/0903/0903ed.html (accessed December 13, 2014); “The Wooden Sky River Song,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWwfXcn53ss (accessed December 12, 2014).

13 Baskerville, 83-84.

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noxious waste, frustrated the city’s maritime aspirations, and

blocked east-west transportation routes. Eventually, though, the

river became central to Toronto’s infrastructure. As Canada’s

enormous resource wealth began to flow, Toronto and its harbour

were ideally situated to take advantage of it. Unfortunately for

the ecology of the Don, the valley and delta first had to be

transformed into an economic system rather than a biological one.

The river’s new function as a mover of capital demanded the fatal

disruption of its role in the ecology of the watershed.

If we accept that the tale of the Don is one of an

“ecocide,” then the river’s obituary was surely written by J.

McPherson Ross on January 8, 1918.14 Ross was a Toronto artist

and horticulturalist who, at the age of 68, looked back at the

river of his youth in an essay published in The Globe.15 He

remembered Toronto Bay as a “safe, marshy, woodland retreat … a

place of recreation” where the strains of folk songs sung on

moored boats drifted across the water on “moonlit nights.”16

Before becoming “soiled and destroyed by the sewage and filth of

14 J. McPherson Ross, "Picturesque Ashbridge's Bay Makes Way for Industry," The Globe, Jan 8, 1918.

15 “Obituary: J. McPherson Ross,” The Globe, April 16, 1924.16 “Picturesque.”

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the encroaching city,” the lower Don Valley was a place of

“primeval abundance and purity of nature.”17 But industry, Ross

lamented, had transformed the delta into an “abomination of

abominations—a place to be shunned.”18 Surveying the state of the

river in 1918 Ross concluded sadly: “All that [is] nasty [has]

found an abiding place over the Don.”19

Ross’ wistful reminiscence, however, is inaccurate. When his

family emigrated from Scotland in the 1850s, Toronto had already

grown from a “pastoral village” to a thriving industrial centre

with a population of nearly 40,000.20 The distilleries and mills

that would make Toronto Bay an “abomination” were well

established in Ross’s youth.21 When the Don was christened in the

eighteenth century by John Graves Simcoe (after a river in his

home of Yorkshire) the winding thirty-eight kilometre route must

have indeed been a place of bucolic splendour. But by the time of

17 Ibid.18 Ibid.19 Ibid.20 “Population of British American Cities, 1861 Census,” Statistics Canada,

http://www65.statcan.gc.ca/acyb02/1867/acyb02_1867001901-eng.htm (accessed December 7, 2014).

21 Gilbertson, 65.

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J. McPherson Ross’ carefree boyhood, the Don River was well on

its way to a premature death.22

As a living waterway the Don’s decline began in the early

1820s. River-based industries were then multiplying, as thousands

of new Canadians flooded into the region.23 As mass-immigration

swelled the population of the British province, mills, abattoirs

and tanneries sprang up near the river’s marshy delta.24 Oil

refineries, rendering plants, and glue factories soon added to

the congestion.25 Toronto’s General Hospital opened west of the

river in 1854;26 the Don Jail followed ten years later.27 Both

institutions, along with schools, public buildings, tenements,

and private homes discharged their effluent either into sewage

beds (which soon found its way to the river) or directly into the

slow moving waters. By the 1870s, the Don, now supporting the

industrial economy of a growing metropolis, was rightly

22 Idem, 66-67. 23 Baskerville, 68.24 “The Wool,” The Globe, January 3, 1871; “The Fiery Element,” The Globe,

June 14, 1881.25 “A New Factory,” The Globe, April 5, 1899; “General Local News: The

Water in the Reservoir Still Rising Slowly,” The Globe, July 27, 1887; “Jarvis’Coal Oil Refinery,” The Globe, February 15, 1862.

26 Jennifer L. Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto's Don River Valley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 80.

27 “City News,” The Globe, March 22, 1864.

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considered “a nest of disease.”28 What had been a boon to York in

the days of tall ships and tenant farming was a detriment to

Toronto in an age of stream and mass manufacturing. “All the

blood, entrails and refuse” of a city that was rapidly expanding

in every direction had already pushed the Don to the brink.29 The

chronic pollution, however, was spurring city planners into

action and initiating the first stage in the river’s rebirth as

an economic artery.

In 1878, Toronto Councillors, facing a public health

crisis,30 voted to construct a main trunk sewer line. The new

system collected the bulk of the city’s waste water and deposited

it in the centre of the river near its mouth.31 The Don was now

officially part of Toronto’s sewage infrastructure. But while

consolidating the city’s sewers made the streets and lanes more

sanitary, it did not completely solve the disposal problem. For

however far out into the Don the waste was poured it tended to

sit in the listless, swampy stream and putrefy. In order to eject

28 “City Council,” The Globe, May 23, 1876.29 William Davies, "Communication: Packing-Houses at the Don," The Globe,

August 2, 1873.30 “City News,” The Globe, September 15, 1873.31 “City News.” The Globe, February 13, 1878.

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Toronto’s waste further out into Lake Ontario a stronger current

was needed. The slow, snaking course of the Don thwarted a river-

based sewage removal scheme. Therefore, in the early 1880s,

further plans were developed to divert the Don, at the Grand

Trunk Railway (GTR) crossing, just north of the river’s mouth,

and channel it into Ashbridge’s Bay.32 Channelization, it was

reasoned, would flush the sewage through the bay and out into the

lake where it could be carried away by the currents. The creation

of the one-thousand metre Keating Channel would mark the first

attempt by Toronto to remake the Don in its own gridiron image.

Ashbridge’s Bay was a marsh that lay east of the natural

egress of the river. This extensive wetland adjoined the harbour

but was isolated by a long spit of land which jutted out from the

Don’s east bank toward Toronto Island. North of Ashbridge’s Bay

was the village of Leslieville; further east was the resort area

known as The Beach, and beyond that were the Scarborough Bluffs.

By the time channelization of the Don was proposed, Ashbridge’s

Bay was already beginning to show signs of contamination from

32 "The Sewage Question: Comparative Advantages of the Two Water Front Sewers," The Globe, August 16, 1882.

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nearby cattle yards.33 Leslieville residents, who still fished

and recreated in the bay, felt that diverting the Don through the

marsh would make matters worse.34 The Globe archives show an

ongoing and sometimes rancorous debate about what to do with

Toronto’s waste. One contributor proposed the “Boston method” of

sewage treatment (separating the solid from the liquid and drying

it). The letter reveals a very modern environmental perspective

of preservation for future generations:

At whatever cost we ought to cease polluting the lake, vast as it is, from which we drink. If our city population grows in the next twenty years as it has done in the past, we shall, if our present course is pursued, have done an injury which it will be hard to repair. Instead of constructing [a channel] so that its contents may be pumped up and poured into Ashbridge's Bay, to the deadly injury of present and future generations, give it a more suitable destination upon the land.35

The Keating Channel was eventually completed; the Don diversion

scheme, however, was abandoned but not because of citizen

opposition. While Councillors and local residents quarrelled

33 “Those Byres: Meeting of the Ratepayers of St. Lawrence Ward, EasternDivision,” The Globe, October 18, 1883; “Public Health Board: Report Bad Discussion on Ashbridge’s Bay,” The Globe, December 1, 1883.

34 "The Sewage Question: Proposed Diversions of Sewage from the Bay," TheGlobe, August 22, 1882.

35 "Polluted Waters or Restored Land," The Globe, August 15, 1883.

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about whose backyard should take Toronto’s sewage, federal

politicians were thinking much bigger.

In 1881, Samuel Platt, brewer and MP for East Toronto,

introduced the Don River Improvement Bill in the House of

Commons.36 The bill outlined a plan for “widening, straightening,

deepening, and otherwise improving the Don River.”37 The river,

from its mouth to Gerrard Street, would be channelized, creating

over a kilometre of “docks and piers.” The Don’s shallow, winding

course would be dredged and straightened while its steep, sandy

banks would be made into wharves to accommodate commercial

seagoing traffic. The bill was first and foremost designed to

bolster Toronto’s economy.38 The new channelized river “would

accommodate factories of all kinds” and make room for a much-

needed rail yard.39 The city’s pollution problems would also be

solved as the new route sped the Don out into the lake, clearing

the “fever breeding miasma” that hung over the stagnant delta.40

36 “Dominion Parliament: Fourth Parliament,” The Globe, February 16, 1881.37 “Our Militia,” The Globe, January 8, 1881.38 “Parliamentary Committees,” The Globe, March 11, 1881.39 “Straightening the Don: A Meeting at Riverside to Consider the

Matter,” The Globe, December 7, 1881.40 “The City Council: Resolution of Condolence,” The Globe, October 4,

1881.

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Platt’s bill was passed in the house and made it as far as the

senate, where a “storm of opposition” stalled it. Most concerning

to river residents was the large land acquisition that would be

necessitated; the Grand Trunk Railway also objected to the swing

bridges that would delay their trains.41 Questions were asked

about whether the harbour improvements would benefit all of

Toronto or just Platt and his factory-owning friends.42 In the

end, the project was deemed unworthy of its one million dollar

budget and the bill was withdrawn on March 10, 1881.43 Ultimately

a much grander scheme would be required, one that placed the city

and all of its systems, natural and artificial, at the centre of

Ontario’s growing economic engine.

At the turn of the millennium the population of Toronto had

ballooned to over 200,000 and its economy had grown apace.44

Wealth from expanding mining operations in Sudbury had injected a

much needed new source of capital.45 It was now feasible to 41 “The Don River: Its Conversion Into a Navigable River Discussed,” The

Globe, October 10, 1881.42 “Don River Improvements,” The Globe, October 11, 1881.43 “Notes from the Capital: St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary,” The Globe,

March 11, 1881.44 Drummond, 413; “Toronto Grows from Day to Day,” The Globe, November 17,

1906.45 "Sudbury Notes: Additional Men Working at the Murray Mine," The Globe,

April 2, 1892.

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consider Toronto as an alternative to Montreal as Canada’s main

transportation hub. At a March, 1904 meeting the Transportation

Commission heard the views of the Board of Trade, the

Manufacturers Association, and City Council.46 Representatives

were gathered “to consider the whole question of transportation

with a view to placing Canadian products in the best possible

position to reach the markets of the world.”47 A “flood of trade”

between Montreal and the rapidly expanding north-west was

bypassing Toronto because of its nascent rail infrastructure.48

Furthermore, the Soo Locks, open since the 1850s, connected Port

Arthur (and the Canadian West) with Chicago and Detroit, creating

a link with American rather than Canadian consumers.49 The

Welland Canal facilitated an east-west water route but “large and

laden vessels,” many carrying much-needed coal, could not enter

Toronto’s harbour.50 Whether as a port of call along the way to

Lake Erie or as the head of an “air line” route to Georgian Bay

or “New Ontario,” the city’s future hinged on one thing: “the

46 “Toronto and the Trade of the West,” The Globe, March 24, 1904.47 Ibid.48 Ibid.49 Ibid.50 Ibid.; “Peril Harbour’s Future: Waterways Commission Discuss Raising

of Lake Levels,” The Globe, September 16, 1905.

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disposal of the Don River.”51 For Toronto to finally become an

economic powerhouse, the Don River would have to be fully

repurposed for transportation.

The capital required to transform the Don would come from

industrialists. The Canadian Pacific Railway’s vision for

Toronto, as reported in The Globe, was all-encompassing. A double-

track that followed the Don along its east bank would connect the

GTR to the CPR line at St. Clair Avenue;52 the newly proposed

Union Station and a vast new rail yard at the centre of town

would link all of Toronto’s factories and mills to a modern rail

system;53 a drained and back-filled Ashbridge’s Bay would provide

the much needed real estate to expand the city’s manufacturing

sector;54 a dredged harbour and channelized river would allow for

larger ships to access a fully realized industrial port

city.55All routes were now converging at the mouth of the Don

River. Industrial capitalists were employing all their means and 51 “The Utilization of the Marsh,” The Globe, April 15, 1909.52 “May Divert Don River,” The Globe, November 19, 1906.53 “Harbour Board Plans New Railway System,” The Globe, November 27, 1913.54 “Exploitation of the Marsh,” The Globe, February 4, 1907; “Diverting

the Don: Application Now Before the Legislature,” The Globe, January 25, 1904; “Something May Be Done: Committee Has Report on Marsh Reclamation,” The Globe, June 25, 1909.

55 The Money By-laws,” The Globe, June 8, 1906; "Will Spend $294,900 at Mouth of the Don," The Globe, December 17, 1913.

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moxie to assure that Toronto Harbour would become the centre of

Ontario’s (and Canada’s) economic life.56

Federal and municipal politicians necessarily followed

corporate Canada’s lead. An upgraded sewer system (with modern

new filtration stations), and power plants were soon on the

drawing boards of city planners.57 A developed Don valley became

the natural route for hydroelectric infrastructure.58 Dozens of

simple wooden bridges were replaced with concrete and steel

viaducts which would soon carried freight, automobiles, and rapid

transit vehicles across the Don.59 Cecil B. Smith, Toronto’s

chief engineer, oversaw plans that superimposed an economic

arterial system over the existing natural geography.60 What had

so recently been a lacustrine marsh was being transformed into “a

hive of industrial activity.”61 There were voices that protested

56 “Viaduct and New Station to be Built in Three Years,” The Globe, June 27, 1913.

57 “City Spending Large Amounts: Almost Six Million Dollars on Three Schemes,” The Globe, March 12, 1910.

58 Ibid.; “Radial Entrances Defined by Experts,” The Globe, December 1, 1915.

59 “Want Bloor Street Viaduct,” The Globe, November 14, 1906; “Get Authority to Cross Twenty-four Streets,” The Globe, June 29, 1910; “City’s Proposed Plan for Crossing the Rosedale Ravine,” The Globe, December 29, 1910.

60 “City Granted Three Months: Eastern Entrance Application Heard at Ottawa," The Globe, January 17, 1907.

61 “The Utilization of the Marsh,” The Globe, April 15, 1909.

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the industrialization of the river’s delta especially from the

cottagers and resort owners in the Beaches to the east.62 But

capital in Canada had reached critical mass and the chain

reaction was engulfing every natural system in its path. The

vision of a prosperous and progressing Toronto was simply too

powerful to resist or oppose. The Globe, in the first decade of the

twentieth century, reveals the optimism of politicians, planners

and industrialists blinded by the beauty of a modern future.63

The Don River had become a part of a technological vision; its

natural purpose was no longer part of the plan.

When J. McPherson Ross composed his fanciful ode to the Don

he did more than reminisce. He also foresaw that, for better or

worse, the Don would always be a hybrid of human and natural

systems. After mourning the loss of his favourite haunts and

pastimes he threw off his nostalgia with a flourish. “But let’s

forget it,” he wrote, “and turn to what will be the proper

future.”64 Ross seemed to understand that the river would have

62 “Prompt Action is Necessary: Or Railways Will Gobble Whole Water Front,” The Globe. January 3, 1907; “Lost Business Through Sewage About His Place,” The Globe, May 2, 1913.

63 “A View of Toronto Harbour,” The Globe, October 17, 1910.64 “Picturesque.”

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to become part of an economic rather than an ecological system.

“Wonderful indeed have been the changes that money, machinery and

man have accomplished. [...] We welcome the new order that has

transformed this waste of waters and marshes into a busy hive of

industry.”65 This “new order” was global capitalism. Every

community, every culture, every ecosystem had to be squeezed into

a new international construct that circulated wealth not life.

The Don’s waters would continue to flow but the valley would

serve an economic imperative. Ross’ essay is a sign-post along

the river’s journey from a safe and pleasant harbour to a conduit

through which Canada’s resource wealth would flow. The Don would

ever be reserved for its new purpose in an industrial world.

Pollution would always plague the river but sewage infrastructure

had to conform first to the valley’s use as mover of capital.66

Citizens would continue to complain about flooding and siltation,

but city engineers would now design solutions with only the

movement of money in mind.67 Transportation routes would more and65 Ibid.66 “Clean-up of Don for Beauty Spot Urged by Tories,” The Globe, November

5, 1927; Sewage Controversy Will Be Aired Today,” The Globe, March 8, 1926; “New Officers Elected by Horticulturalists: Riverdale Society Requests City Council to Clean Up Don,” The Globe, January 12, 1928.

67 "Old Resident Blames Board," The Globe, March 2, 1918; “City Facing Damage Suits Result of Don River Flood,” The Globe, May 6, 1925.

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more dominate the river and in the 1950s the vast Don Valley

Parkway fully realized this ideal. The old Don River was dead to

Ross by 1918 but its new life was about to begin. Mr. Ross could

only offer a final prayer to its passing: “Peace to his ashes.”68

68 “Picturesque.”

20

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23

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24

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25

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