Toronto Harbour - ten grand
At the conclusion of my last outing the number of photos on
my Panoramio site stood at around 9,900 and change. How fitting, then, that my breaking of the 10,000 mark should coincide with a trip to the
ten grand quays which comprise the city's central harbour! ...Alright, "grand" might be a bit of a stretch for some of them at the moment (as might "ten", depending on your definition of a "quay"). But there are, no doubt, grand visions for the future of this area, as well as grand histories. The whole story of the harbour is one of grand and constant change - from its gradual, physical growth out from Front Street and into the lake, to its existential evolution from a busy, working port to an urban-friendly "waterfront".
I begin at the corner of land once known as the East Wharf, where the Keating Channel meets the Parliament Slip, and where the Don Lands meet the Port Lands. Future plans for this currently desolate site include the
3C Waterfront development. Previously, however, it was home to the Victory Soya Mills Plant, the largest of its kind in Canada while still in use. A portion of its once massive silo complex doggedly remains on the property, and has stood here since 1943:
Across the Parliament Slip one finds the largest of the harbour's quays (with the relatively new "Corus Quay" office building occupying a mere fraction of the total site). Known originally as the Queen Elizabeth Docks, this area now falls under Waterfront Toronto's heading of the "East Bayfront Precinct" - which, in addition to Corus Quay, now also houses
George Brown's new Waterfront Campus,
Sherbourne Common Park, and the future
Bayside residential community, now currently under construction. Prior to all this redevelopment, some may remember this as the site of the Waterside Sports Club with its inflatable tennis dome, and Marine Terminal #28; initially a shipping warehouse that was later converted to a studio which served as the shooting location for numerous films and television shows, including Chicago (2005), the first movie ever shot in Canada to win an Oscar for best picture. Incidentally, this is also the spot where I took some of the first pictures with my current "expendable" point-and-shooter, back in October of 2012 - making it, by far, the longest lived of all my many Urban Wilderness cameras (perhaps its about time to finally get another "real" camera?):
To the west of Corus Quay is the recently minted Sugar Beach, which provides a fantastic view of the Jarvis Slip and Redpath Sugar Refinery. Redpath is the only industrial institution to have remained at its harbourside setting since moving to its newly constructed quay in 1959:
West of Redpath there once stood Marine Terminal #27, but it was demolished in 1988 to make way for a new Automotive Terminal - otherwise known as a parking lot. Back in 1970, however, John Letnik, a Yugoslavian refugee, docked a decommissioned fire tug named the MS Normac beside MT27 and opened Captain John's Harbour Boat Restaurant. Five years later he replaced the Normac with the MS Jadran, a former Adriatic luxury liner which remains moored in the Yonge Street Slip to this day. Unfortunately, Captain John's set sail about a year ago after a series of financial problems and failed health inspections:
As one exits Queens Quay streetcar station you approach the section of waterfront where the whole re-purposing of the harbour really got started in earnest - Harbour Square. Starting in the mid-1970s the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel, Harbour Square Park, and a cluster of still controversial condo towers began springing up on this plot of infill best known, until then, as the site of the City/Bay Street Docks (home port of the Toronto Islands ferry fleet and the recently renamed Jack Layton Ferry Terminal), and the infamous Pier #9 where the SS Noronic caught fire in 1949, killing between 118 and 139 passengers:
From the York Slip, west to Bathurst, we enter the vast revitalizing/rebranding project known as Harbourfront - an initiative of the federal government begun in 1972, but largely unrealized until the 1980s. You may be forgiven for thinking that most of the prominent structures in Harbourfront are contemporary post-modern buildings, typical of the era. But, in fact, many are conversions, such as the 1936 Direct Winters Transport Building which became the York Quay Centre in 1985, and the 1983 Queens Quay Terminal conversion of the 1926 Toronto Terminal Warehouse - which, aside from being the largest single unit warehouse in North America at the time, was also the first poured-concrete structure built in Canada. This blending of old with new continues along the waterfront as tall ships and steamers mix in with modern pleasure boats and giant floating cowboy hats:
Amsterdam Bridge spans the Simcoe Slip and connects with John Quay and its most famous resident, the Pier 4 Storehouse. Originally known as Transit Shed #4, it was built in 1930 to hold cargo for the Tree Line Navigation Company. From 1977 until 2012 this facility served as the Pier 4 Restaurant whose menu included "the largest private historical nautical artifact collection in Ontario". Today it continues on as a "brewpub", or some such thing. On the other side of the quay one will find the Toronto Police Marine Unit Station and the Rees Slip Canoe & Kayak Centre:
West of Rees the twin Maple Leaf Quays bestride Peter Slip - the only slip in the harbour that breaches Queens Quay. The quays take their name from the Maple Leaf Mills flour silos that stood here from 1928 until 1983. Now they are the site of the two new HTO Parks, both East and West, as well as Toronto Fire Services Station #334 and Toronto EMS Station #36:
Crossing Spadina Slip we come to the Spadina Quay Wetland and
Toronto Music Garden - "a reflection in landscape of Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007." ...Obviously. Conceived in 1997 by cellist Yo Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy, it replaced a parking lot which, itself, replaced the Bathurst Street Wharf; once one of the city's largest shipyards, churning out vessels semi-continuously from 1890 to 1945. The area's maritime tradition lives on in the form of the Spadina Quay Marina (Marina Quay West) and various charter cruises operating out of the Bathurst/Portland Slip:
Bathurst Quay is the last of the lot, and home to one of the biggest reminders of the harbour's industrial past - the long abandoned Canada Malting Silos. Built in 1928, and unused since the 1980s, these silos have been the subject of numerous redevelopment schemes that have yet to amount to anything (the Metronome musical theme park, a municipal history museum, etc.) The fenced-off construction area currently surrounding the site would have you believe that something is finally in the works. But all the fuss is merely for a continuation of the
Water’s Edge Promenade around the silo structure. Past that is Little Norway Park, so named for a Norwegian Air Force training base that was briefly here during World War II:
From the site of a former WWII airforce base, one is treated to views of the current island airport across the Western Channel, named for WWI flying ace Billy Bishop. I continue down the Stadium Road dock wall which has stood since 1910 (long outliving its namesake baseball stadium that was demolished in 1968), before heading back into the National Yacht Club Mooring Basin, and ending my trip through harbour history at the HMCS York Naval Reserve Division in Coronation Park:
Elegy for IMO 7619654
I cannot claim to have been there
When sails took in Aegean air
And oars compelled amphorae on
To Sinope or Emporion
Nor did I ever ply so far
As Berenice or Malabar
In spice ships laden with their trade
In times before these streets were laid
Yet those who did, in my defence
Cannot claim my experience
For never did they encounter
A Seawaymax bulk carrier
Two hundred meters end to tip
Unloading at the Jarvis Slip
Commanding all that one might see
By old Redpath refinery
Such is the sight that I may boast
Of anchored great behemoth boats
Obliging cranes ten storeys tall
Discharging ballast waterfalls
As crews engaged in their travails
Like mice upon a surfaced whale
Send freight to sky while moon-like gulls
Orbit a planetary hull
And whether red or brown in hue
Or deep Algoma Central blue
Or green as though a forest ark
(Patina leaves on rusted bark)
The plumes of payload wafting 'round
Remain in colour ever sound
A yellow-whitish powdered rain
Of raw unprocessed sugar cane
This mist, when mixing with the lake
Concocts a sickly-sweet intake
A scent that almost shouldn't be
Enticing birds and those like me
The former seeking such to eat
The latter only vague conceit
Some rigger's rope or mooring chain
To link all harbours through time's plane
Was I not there somehow, somewhen?
Was there not here, or now not then?
Are not all ports and tides in kind?
Perhaps they aren't...though still I find
A Chinese ship, a Maltese flag
A Russian crew, all seas to brag
And from Brazil their prized cargo
Stirred up in Lake Ontario
I cannot claim to have been here
When Front Street spined with jutting piers
And wharfingers maintained their stores
While this spot still was far off-shore
But I stood here ten years ago
When here had since rose from below
To form a quay of rock and earth
And watched the Strange Attractor berth
A black-hulled vessel much the same
As those of any other name
That one might see at dock today
Except that this one's cast away
Passed on like many other things
Lured off beyond where Sirens sing
Where all are drawn in unity
Through time, to dark eternity