Harbourfront

Welcome to Walking in Place. I'm your host, Ashley McDonough. If you're new here, I'm gonna take the next minute or so to introduce myself and the podcast. If you're not: welcome back, feel free to skip ahead.

So about me, I go by she/her pronouns and I'm from a mostly Irish and French settler background. I've lived in Toronto for about eight years and before that I lived in Montreal and Ottawa. I am not a historian or journalist or a scholar, just someone who enjoys spending a lot of my free time learning about the city.

About the podcast. Each episode is designed to be a walking tour that you can enjoy from home or out in person. There are 30 seconds of ambiance between each stop. These are recordings from when I did the walk myself. If that's not your thing, you can always press the "Skip 30 seconds" button to get to the next stop.

This podcast is created on and tells the stories of things that happened on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today Toronto is home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and is within the territory of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty which means that it is our shared responsibility to take care of it, an important thing to think about on these walks. Now let's get to today's episode.

When it comes to going on walks, the waterfront area doesn't typically come to mind, at least not for me. For such a nice sounding name, it conjures up images of cement and condos. But of course, it wasn't always like this. For one, the natural shoreline actually came in further north to about Front street or so. The First Nations of the land used the shorefront for many things: a meeting place, travel, fishing, foraging. But when settlers got here, they used the lake as a dumping ground- like literal sewage, as well as industrial waste. They purposefully placed industrial buildings by the water for not only this reason, but to make it easier to bring in materials and ship out goods. In the St. Lawrence Market episode, I pointed out that a lot of shops in that area are in old manufacturing buildings, and this is partially why: because at the beginning of the city, the water was a lot further north. From the 1850s to the 1950s, the shoreline was extended with infill from the lake, where they built more industrial buildings as well as shipping ports and roads- and in 1958, a highway. The Gardiner. The nail in the coffin when it came to regular citizens enjoying the waterfront, because who wants to hang out by toxic dirty water just below a busy highway.

Things started to change in the 70s when the environmental movement picked up steam. Most of the industrial buildings were out of use by that point and ideas started brewing for how to make the area more desirable to human beings and other forms of life. Through a ban on phosphorus in laundry detergents, they were able to reduce the amount of algae in the water and reduce harm to native aquatic plants that was being caused by phosphorus runoff into the lake. This combined with the implementation of fish habitats opened up the floodgates (metaphorically speaking, of course) to people-centered initiatives in the area.

So I promise, the waterfront has a lot more to offer than cement and condos. Which brings us to today's first stop. For purely logistical reasons, we'll be starting at Sugar Beach and working our way to the Billy Bishop airport area. See you at the beach in 30 seconds.

Sugar Beach is a great example of an effort to make the waterfront nicer looking and more sociable. It opened in 2010 and was designed to be a place for leisure and social activities, but definitely no swimming. It was one of the projects of Waterfront Toronto, an organization formed in 2001.

So what does it look like if you're not there? If you're starting from Queens Quay, you walk south towards the water and there's these kind of curvy looking patterns in the pavement (I read somewhere it was described as candy stripes) which eventually break into a sandy beach area that is full of Muskoka chairs and these big pink umbrellas over them for shade. There's lots of other pedestrian areas where you can, you know, walk or with benches to sit. I believe at night there is lighting setup so that it's not just like pitch black and you can go hang out there in the evening if you'd like.

This particular part is called Sugar Beach but the larger piece of land here is called Corus Quay because it shares some of the space with the Corus entertainment building just to the east. Previously it was the Jarvis slip, and where Sugar Beach now stands was a parking lot for the Guvernment nightclub that was across the street. I say government like GUVERNMENT, not a nightclub run by the government.

In the summer, there's often a sail in cinema event here where an inflatable movie screen floats on the water, which sounds really cool. And if you're wondering why it's called Sugar Beach, it's in reference to the Redpath sugar factory that is just west of here. It's actually just across the water. When I was here, there was a huge ship docked at that little strip of water, presumably delivering raw cane sugar to the factory. That explains why you definitely shouldn't go swimming here. Keep walking west and in 30 seconds, as you pass the factory, I'll tell you more about it.

Redpath Sugar was started in 1854 in Montreal by a man named John Redpath, a Scotsman who was previously a stonemason there. It's one of the oldest continually operated companies in Canada. It was the first complex of its kind in Canada and it was located on the Lachine Canal in Montreal. They did first try to get the sugar industry going in Halifax, but Montreal had an advantage by having both waterways as well as access to the railway to transport the final product throughout Canada. It was around this time that sugar was all the rage. It was growing in demand in Europe and all of its colonies, which led to the development of sugar plantations in the Caribbean where sugarcane naturally grows. European colonizers enslaved the Indigenous peoples of the area, as well as brought enslaved Africans with them to harvest sugarcane to be exported to then become processed into sugar at factories like Redpath. Redpath got its sugar cane from the "British West Indies", a number of Caribbean countries that are now mostly independent of England. They include the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Guyana, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos. It's a lot of countries.

In 1930, Redpath merged with Canada's Sugar Refining Company Limited from Chatham, Ontario, and then the Redpath sugar refinery was built here in Toronto in the late 1950s, and is still active to this day.

So how do they get their raw sugar now? It's not the easiest thing to figure out. But from what I can tell, in terms of present day: in 2007, they became acquired by the ASR Group, and that company seems to source their sugar from a mix of European, American, and Caribbean sugar cane growers, most of which seem to meet Fairtrade sustainability and labour requirements. And from what I read, seeing a Fairtrade label, or a company being associated and working in collaboration with Fairtrade, means that the growers are not allowed to use child or slave labour, like they're vetted to make sure they're not using child or slave labour. Of course, that's the bare, bare minimum, I would hope that they are working with companies and farms that are paying well and have safe and good working conditions. But I wasn't able to look that far into it. Regardless, of course, it's better than it was in the 1850s. I would certainly hope so. But it doesn't erase the fact that we exploited the land and people of the Caribbean for... sugar. And that impact is still felt today.

Alright, let's keep walking west. Stop when you get to Yonge and Queens Quay.

We're standing at the foot of Yonge Street. Take a look up the street and think about all of the things on Yonge Street in this city. It's the longest street in Toronto, but its length changes depending on who you ask. To some, it's 1896 kilometers long, and it was even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest street in the world for a while. Some say It's actually 86 kilometers long, ending at a rail spur in Barrie, at which point its named changes to Burton Avenue. Others say that it's only 56 kilometers long stopping where highway 11 starts, which is before Barrie. I don't know which one is true, but I do know that it's a very long street.

If you look down at the pavement in front of the railing facing the water, you'll see city names and kilometer counts in metallic letters in the pavement. Tried as I might I could not find background or meaning for these though, of course, it must have something to do with the length of Yonge. I can't fact check any of those numbers because I really couldn't find anything about it and I also don't want to join the confusion. So I'm going to leave it to the experts. If anyone knows anything, please let me know.

In terms of history of Yonge Street. This was Toronto's first official street. The plans were made in 1794, shortly after John Graves Simcoe arrived from England in his position as lieutenant governor of York. He was responsible for designing the grid of Toronto streets and property lines, which he did largely from a military/defense standpoint. This is because, well, he was in the military, but also tension between America and England was at a high at this point with America having freshly become... America. And he wanted to build a military road making it easy for troops to travel straight through the colony. And so Yonge St. was born. As I said before, most of Toronto was a dense forest and Yonge was no exception. So they started clearing trees in the winter when there weren't any leaves obscuring the path even further. I just wanted to mention that because it's like, what an image you know? After a couple of battle-related construction breaks, they ended up finishing it two years later in 1796. And it was named "Yonge" after Simcoe's friend Sir George Yonge, who was the British Secretary of War. He never visited Canada.

Let's keep walking west until we get to Bay Street. Once there turn left and walk until you can see the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal See you in 30 seconds.

This is the main departure point from the city and it has been since the 1800s. Well, not this exact location. The terminal has always been at the foot of Bay Street, but Bay Street was extended over time along with the rest of the shoreline like we already talked about. If you're curious about where the actual original location was, it was where the Toronto harbour commission building is at Bay and Harbour streets. When the water reached up to that location, the ferry terminal operated out of the side of that building.

This building, or structure, I guess you could call it, was completed in the 70s. Before that, this area was actually a shipping slip- so a thin bit of land poking out into the water for ships to easily come and go. The city decided to fill in the Bay Street slip to build the hotel just east of here as well as the Harbour Square condos just on the other side of Bay. They also took the opportunity to build this ferry terminal. In 2012, the city voted unanimously in favor of renaming it after NDP leader and former city councilor Jack Layton. Just to the right where a park called Harboir Square Park starts there's a statue honouring him, showing him riding a bike. The park is where the ferry terminal used to be. But as part of this whole redesign, they decided to have a park here instead. This whole area -the hotel, condos, park, and new terminal- was one of the very first redevelopments of the waterfront after it was de-industrialized.

Let's venture into the park just enough to get to where the boardwalk starts so you can look eastward across the water. You might see a ferry coming or going- and that's on purpose. Let's talk about ferries for a second. Toronto started having ferries in 1833 and they were powered by horses. Yes, horses. Those ferries would bring people back and forth between a hotel that used to be on the Toronto Island. Though at the time, it wasn't an island, it was a peninsula, meaning part of the land actually stretched out and connected to the mainland of Toronto over on the east side. There was a huge storm in 1858 that cut that off, making it an island, and also destroying the hotel. At that time, there was a lot of competition in the ferry space. There were 47 of them. So we're talking mid 1800s. There were 47 ferries operating out of Toronto. Two of the most famous ferries were introduced in the early 1900s. Both were double decker mechanical ferries. One was named the Trillium and the other the Bluebell. They were retired in the 1950s, but the Trillium made a comeback in 1975 and I'm pretty sure it still operates to this day. It's now 112 years old. The Bluebell, however, is sunken over by the Lesley spit. Its hull is being used as a break wall.

I'm not going to get into the ups and downs of the ferry business in the 1900s, but trust me when I tell you that all those companies led to a lot of mergers and a lot of trading of assets. If you listened to the Sunnyside episode, you might remember me saying something about boat burnings as a form of entertainment. Where did these boats come from? Well, in all these business trades, sometimes when a company would take on another company's fleet, they would get some less than peak condition boats, and they would hand them over to be burned for the public to marvel at.

Okay, let's walk west on the boardwalk, it won't take long before it forces you to turn right and take a path a bit further north. Before you do, take this opportunity to look west across the water at what appears to be a giant cement sphere. I recommend going to check it out. It's called the Sundial Folly and it was created in 1995 by artists John Fung and Paul Figueiredo. I hope I pronounced that properly. The entryway and garden around it were refurbished in 2021. So it actually has a pretty clean, modern feel to it in case you were put off by the sound of a 27 year old concrete sphere. You can also walk inside it and see the lake through a slit in the concrete and a little bit of a pond at the bottom that connects to a pond outside of the sphere. I dunno, I really enjoyed it so check it out.

Once you're done with the Sundial Folly, follow the path west of it which forces you to walk back up to Queens Quay. When you get there walk west past the Beavertail stand, turning left right after it to follow the Waterfront Trail south back towards the water. This is called the York slip. You'll pass by the Queens Quay terminal which is one of the places you can get paddle boats and small boats to the islands. I'll rejoin you in about 30 seconds, starting where the trail curves to the right and westward. If you're following along in person you might want to pause, it'll take you a couple of minutes to get there, sorry.

Hello again! Keep walking west along the water. You'll see in the distance the Canada Malting Co. building, this big old brown factory that says Canada Maltin Co. on the side of it. We'll talk about that later. On this part of the walk. You'll also likely pass by a few city cruise boats and touristy party boats. There's a schooner usually docked here called the Tall Ship Kajama that looks like a pirate ship. I also saw a cruise boat that looked straight out of the 20s, in a pastel beach candy shop kind of way. I hope that makes as much sense to you as it does to me.

As we walk we'll also pass the Power Plant Art Gallery and some of the community spaces run by the Harbourfront Centre, including a rink and a stage. Both the Harbourfront Centre and the Power Plant are interesting places to check out if you like art and performances. This whole area is dedicated to them and their programming.

Soon the walkway forces you once again towards Queen's Quay. Before it does, you'll notice Amsterdam Brewery across the marina. Fun fact about Amsterdam Brewery: it was started in Toronto in 1986 by Roel Bramer, who is Dutch, hence the name Amsterdam brewery.

About halfway up the eastern side of the Marina is a pedestrian bridge called the Amsterdam Bridge. If you're lucky, it's intact today and you can take it across the Marina. But if the bridge is disconnected to make way for tall boats, like it was the day I went, you can drag your feet along the boring old ground up towards Queens Quay, stopping at the Simcoe Wavedeck. On your way to the wavedeck, make sure to get a view of it over the water, mainly because it's cool, but partially because it's the first of a couple of wavedecks we're going to look at today and you should make a habit of noticing how they look in relation to the water, not just how the water looks when you're standing on the wavedeck.

The Simcoe Wavedeck is the most dramatic looking of all the wave decks we're gonna look at today. If you're wondering why there are wavedecks in general, they were built to create more public space along the shoreline. It wasn't as easy just to kind of get up to the water and look out across the lake before, but yeah, the Simcoe Wavedeck is definitely the most dramatic looking, it's a boardwalk with these huge dips up and down, some so steep that you really need to be careful as you're walking down it or you might fall. At night, there are LED lights that turn on underneath and reflect onto the water.

Once you're done with this wavedeck, we'll head to the next one at Rees Street and Queens Quay. See you there in 30 seconds.

We're now standing at the Rees Street Wavedeck- less curvy than the Simcoe wavedeck, but still a cool shape with these little steps that you're meant to sit on and look out at the water. We didn't stop here to talk about the wavedeck, however. Let's talk about the namesake, Dr. William Rees. In the 1840s, he got a wharf built called Rees's wharf, just a bit further north of here, about where the convention center is now- because remember, the shoreline didn't come down this far. So it's roughly here just a bit north. It was a popular port for ships bringing immigrants into Canada, especially the Irish during the famine. We'll talk more about that later. Not far from the wharf's location were what was called immigrant sheds where new immigrants were quarantined and treated for diseases like cholera. There is speculation that Dr. William Rees, being a doctor, treated some of these people but no definite evidence. But fun fact, when the wharf was built, he was the superintendent -the first in that role- at the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, which we'll talk about another day.

Walk west until you get to the Spadina Wavedeck at lower Spadina and Queens Quay. On your way, you'll walk by another green space to your left. We're not going to go down there but feel free to take a little detour. It's called HTO Park and it's another urban beach, kind of like Sugar Beach. It has chairs and umbrellas and looks out at the water. So, if you need a break, now's a great time. See you in 30 seconds.

One last wavedeck! This one is the least visually interesting when you're on it. But it has a really interesting story underneath it. This wavedeck was built specifically to foster a fish habitat in the water. They did this by holding the wavedeck up with tree trunks to create "fish condos". Apparently fish love them, especially pike, which can often be seen here now. Just years before this was built, as well as a bunch of other conservation efforts in the lake, they estimated a few 100 pike would come to the harbour. Now that number is closer to a few million. Pike also like hanging out at thhe Spadina Quay Wetland, the nature-y area just next to the wavedeck. Let's walk there now.

In the 1970s, this wetland was just a parking lot- I think leftover from one of the industrial buildings along the waterfront. The wetland was created in 1999 as one of the Toronto Regional Conservancy Association's waterfront projects. It's allowed for a whole new ecosystem to flourish. Many different species of birds and fish like to swing by here, including pike like I mentioned. They actually use this area as a spawning ground. Lots of native grasses and plants grow here. And sometimes even a beaver or a snapping turtle will show up. There are lots of fun features of the wetland, besides just being pretty and fun to walk around in the city. At the entrance, closer to Queens Quay, at the start of a path there's a bird viewing poll. It's basically like a tall block of wood with these little metal tubes poking through it, angled diagonally toward the trees and the sky. You can use them as viewfinders to focus in on birds in the trees, which is kind of fun. There's also this cool birdhouse sculpture that's elevated on sticks, so it sits above the water during high tide. It was designed by Anne Roberts and it looks like a large Victorian building. It's quite intricate. It's not your average bird house. It represents a number of different historic waterfront buildings in the city, like the Toronto Electric Company and the Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion. There are a few paths in the wetlands if you want to meander a bit or you can just go south and walk straight along the water until you get to our next stop which is the Music Garden. You'll know it when you see it. Basically you're looking for a gazebo looking thing in a relatively open green space- there might be a couple trees around it. See you there in 30 seconds.

When I went to the Music Garden it was still cold and most of the greenery and flowers weren't in bloom yet, but I still really enjoyed it. So if you go in its full glory, I'm sure it's a treat. Walk until you get to the part of the park that has that gazebo. This part of the garden is meant to host musical performances, usually in the summer. The idea is that musicians perform under the pavilion/gazebo, usually classical music, and people can enjoy it in the green space that's facing it. The garden has multiple sections with paths weaving in and out separated by trees and plants and sometimes gates. There are a few signs in this area explaining the different sections of the garden. But obviously, I'm gonna give you a little summary.

It was built in the late 90s as part of a project created by Yo Yo Ma. He and a group of artists had created a film series called Inspired by Bach. It had six parts, each inspired by a piece, also known as a movement, within Bach's first suite for unaccompanied cello, and this garden is an extension of that film series with each section inspired by the same movements within that suite of music.

I'm going to try and explain what a "suite" and a "movement" is when it comes to music. According to classical-music.com, which seems like a highly reputable source, a suite is "an ordered set of individual pieces or movements tied together by themes or tonalities". So to me, that's kind of like an EP? Like the EP of yesteryear. Suites were designed for dancing, which is why the musical pieces included in the suite were called a movement. You know how movies set in the 16th century always have these balls where the pairs of dancers all seem to know the specific dance pattern to follow, and they all move as one across the room? This is the music they were dancing to. Each of the movements had a corresponding dance that people were expected to be able to perform at these balls. The dances or movements typically fell under these categories: the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande, and the Gigue. The different sections of the garden are designed to represent the patterns of each dance.

So where are we standing right now? If you look west of the pavilion/metal structure -to me, it's a gazebo, but like they call it a pavilion. So I don't know why just keep trying to make a compromise on what we call it. Even though nobody is actually here arguing with me. You'll notice steps in front of the gazebo may be covered in green grass, depending on what time you're there. And those steps go into that open green space I was talking about. This is the area that you're meant to kind of sit or stand to enjoy the music being played in the gazebo. These steps are meant to represent the Gigue, or you might know it as a jig or jog. I'm saying gigue, like, pretentiously because it's spelled GIGUE, which is how that type of movement is spelt. But it's clearly just the French word for jig. I read that it started as a British dance, but the French and Italians had their own version, as well as of course, the Irish, who I'm pretty sure actually invented it. But my guess is that somewhere along the line, the Brits came in and claimed that it was theirs the same way that they tried to claim Ireland itself and, like, everything else, so I don't know, maybe it's Irish, maybe it's British. Who knows. Here's a little snippet of what a jig or gigue is supposed to sound like.

The pavilion/gazebo is meant to represent a dance movement in and of itself. It's a more contemporary one. It's not one of the ones I named before. This one's called a Menuette. There are two of these in the Bach suit that Yo Yo Ma was referencing. According to toronto.ca, the "symmetry and geometry of the dance is what inspired the metalwork of this pavilion"...gazebo...whatever you want to call it. Here's a little snippet of what a Menuette is supposed to sound like.

Keep walking west in the garden area. The first noticeable section is called the Sarabande, and it has tall evergreen trees with a big stone in the middle. It's supposed to be shaped like an arch based on an ancient Spanish dance form. It was initially designed to serve as a poet's corner with the stone meant to be a stage for reading. It also has a small pool of water to inspire you with the reflection of the sky. When I was here, I saw a couple of very fat and very noisy squirrels, which I found just as inspiring as the sky tbh. This is a little snippet of what a Sarabande is supposed to sound like.

Next is the Courante. This part is cool. The path is a giant swirl through a meadow of wildflowers. In the spring and summer the flowers are supposed to bring in birds and butterflies, and in the middle there's a maypole. So if you picture these folksy European dances where people hold onto ribbons attached to a big pole in the middle and they run around in circles, that pole is a maypole. The dance, Courante, is actually from an Italian folk dance that includes running steps. The word "courante" can mean running in French, it's kind of like a verb tense thing, but in some contexts, "courante" can mean running and that's what it's referencing. That Italian folk dance evolved into a more formal court dance which brings us to these, like, classical movements. Here's a bit of what a Courante sounds like.

Keep walking west. The last section of the garden is called Allemande. It's described online as a forest grove of wandering trails. Allemande means "German" in French, and lo and behold, the Allemande is an ancient German dance. This section of the garden has a bunch of birch trees and a path that swirls inwards towards different sitting areas in the forest. I read that "in the Allemande, the dancers formed a line of couples extended their paired hands forward and paraded back and forth the length of the ballroom walking three steps then balancing on one foot. A livelier version used three springing steps and a hop." Speaking of which we are a hop, skip and a jump away from our next stop. But first, here's what an Allemande sounds like.

Keep walking west, past yet another marina and turn left before the Waterfront Neighborhood Center to walk south on the western edge of the marina. If you get there before I start talking, make sure you're looking down as you walk. Though, try not to trip. I'll tell you why I'm risking your safety in 30 seconds.

So as I mentioned, we are going to walk south all the way to the edge of the water. If you are looking down as you go, you will notice metallic engraved letters on the ground. It's a poem by Joseph Bouchette, written in 1831, with parts of it written in opposite-facing directions. But this is how the whole thing actually reads from start to finish.

"I still distinctly remember

the untamed aspect which the country exhibited

when I first entered the beautiful basin.

Beneath the luxuriant foliage

The Bay and neighbouring marshes

were the uninvited haunts

of immense cubbies of wild fowl.

The ground

for the future metropolis of Upper Canada was fixed upon.

Moving along. You might be curious about the giant old factory building we're passing on our right. You probably recognize it from earlier on when I pointed it out. It's the Canada Malting Co. building. It's one of the only vestiges of industrial life on this part of the waterfront. Canada Malting Co. is a 190 year old company that started in Kingston and later expanded to Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and then to this location here in 1928. So all these major Canadian cities, elbows deep in malt. Why, what even is malt? Malt is the process of making a grain partially germinate and then drying it out. When that process is through, it's called "malt". Malting helps the grain develop enzymes that change the grain's starches into different kinds of sugars and then creates a specific flavour. A flavour that I personally hate, by the way. Malt is used to make beer, whiskey, and candies like you might have guessed, Maltesers, the worst movie theater candy known to man. It makes a lot of sense to me that Montreal was a major hub for this company because most alcoholic beverages sold in depanneurs are exploding with malt and being from Montreal that might have something to do with my distaste for the stuff.

Anyways, you have probably long arrived at our actual stop. If you've reached the water, looking west you'll see a number of forlorn looking statues. This corner is now called Ireland Park and it was opened in 2007. It was created to memorialize the Irish immigrants escaping the famine in 1847. This location was chosen specifically because it's so close to where Rees's wharf used to be and where many Irish people first set foot in Canada. These five sculptures were commissioned for this park by the founder of the Ireland Park Foundation, Robert Kearns. He had seen similar sculptures in Dublin, created to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the famine. So he asked the artist if they would create more to be placed here. The sculptures depict emaciated figures in what I can only describe as really rough shape. They look very sad and weak. It's really hard not to feel something when you look at these. Most of them are standing, including a pregnant woman, and a man holding his arms up towards the CN Tower. And just west of the sculptures, there are black slabs of rock with the immigrants names engraved. They're positioned at an angle, so the names become clearer when the sun hits just right. When I went in March, these rocks were blocked off for some construction. And that might still be the case when you go, just a heads up, it might be related to the building just behind them, which is currently being turned into a community space/ an Irish history museum. And there's also some construction happening at Canada Malting Co. I think they're also turning the inside of that into more of a public space. So I'm excited to see that.

One last thought before we go. When I think about this time in history, I think about how often Canada and Toronto were described as a safe haven for Irish immigrants and how they were welcomed here with open arms. And that narrative isn't entirely true. Sure, they were allowed to come here but being a city largely populated by classist, Protestant British people, they weren't welcomed by a huge number of people. They also had to work really hard to build their lives back up. You see this over simplified and over positive narrative happening in real time, even today, when we take in refugees. And I think it's really important to remember how hard it is to actually start from scratch in a new country, especially one that you only came to out of necessity. And it's also good to remember where the Irish, a white, mostly Catholic group of refugees stand in society today. There's no lingering tension, no negative stereotypes, they aren't denied opportunities. Why do you think that is? Anyways, that concludes our walk of the waterfront. I could have kept going, I might post a couple extra stops on social, so keep an eye out for those

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