RE-RELEASE: Sunnyside

Hello hello everyone, long time no talk. I apologize for my kind of hoarse-sounding voice, I haven't said a word since I recorded the last episode. Just joking. I was on a number of patios this weekend, enjoying the last few weeks of summer. I hope you've been doing the same and I hope you don't stop now because today we'll be talking about Sunnyside. Let's get going.

Sunnyside is the beachy, leisurely area on the shore of Lake Ontario at the most southwest part of Toronto up until the Humber River, after which are technically in Etobicoke which is technically still in Toronto, but everyone just calls it Etobicoke. Sunnyside is separated from the rest of the city mainly by Lakeshore Boulevard and the Gardiner Expressway to the north of the super busy autoroutes is Parkdale to the east is downtown Toronto, and Hyde Park and Swansea are to the West.

This shore of Lake Ontario and the nearby Humber River has always been an important location before the Europeans caught wind of it. It was home to the Wendat, the Anishinabe, and the Haudenosaunee. Then around 1615, a French explorer named Etienne Brule stumbled across the Humber River and allegedly befriended the First Nations living there. He helped establish a relationship between them and the French and this area became a key trading location. Cut to around 1760 or so when the British came and... you know, we know this part of the story: they fought the French over the land, blah, blah, blah, they won, quote unquote. And they started to renegotiate things with the First Nations you know, in some ways, forming new kinds of trade agreements and alliances in other ways playing the long game and strategically and sneakily stealing land and resources from them.

Now let's jump to the late 1800s slash the very early 1900s We've got a full-blown city on our hands, but the shoreline remains relatively untouched. In fact, the actual shoreline reached higher than it does now, right about to where the Martin Goodman Trail is just south -of you might have guessed- Lakeshore Boulevard. The name makes a little bit more sense now, eh?

During this time, Sunnyside was becoming a really popular spot for people to come swim. In 1910, they even built a boardwalk for people. It used to be where the Martin Goodman Trail runs right now. The area came to be known as Sunnyside because of a farm of the same name located just north of here where St. Joseph Hospital is now. The farm was owned by John George Howard, whose estate is now High Park. So yeah, you could say he was a bit of a big shot in town. He clearly owned a ton of land. He was the official surveyor and civil engineer for the government of Toronto in the 1800s. So it makes sense.

As Sunnyside beach became more popular, businesses started popping up along the shoreline. There was a hotel called the Meyers hotel which was located roughly where the Sunnyside Pavilion currently is. There was a canoe club called the Parkdale Canoe Club, which is where the now Boulevard Club is and there was a boat-building factory just south of where the Palais Royale currently is. In 1912 to 1913 or so, the powers that be started talking about reinvigorating the area (basically just scheming about how to capitalize on the popularity). They felt that the area was not well maintained and even dirty. An MP at the time was quoted saying Sunnyside was "a dirty filled hole". Kind of funny since it's the government's fault that all the rivers and lakefronts in the Toronto area were trashed and polluted pretty much as soon as the British got here, but whatever.

Anyway, let's talk about the plan they concocted. They wanted a nice clean waterfront area that was a hub for leisure and entertainment. The plans included bringing up the shoreline to make more space for beach bodies and buildings. I mentioned that the water used to come up just south of Lake Shore Boulevard. So what is now beach and grass between the Lakeshore and the current shoreline is actually manmade or man... manipulated, I guess. It was created with sand or infill from the lake as well as the Humber Bay. The plan also included demolishing and rebuilding, in some cases, any existing buildings, as well as creating a bathing pavilion and public pool (which we'll talk about later), building an amusement park (which we'll also talk about later) and adjusting the streetcar line so that it was easier to come here and visit. Kids were even allowed to use it for free to go swimming. And last but not least, adding a dance hall. Again this all started in 1913 or so they ran into a bit of a stop and start because of like World War I, understandably, but even though it was a great success. The popularity of the area only grew and from the 20s until the 40s or 50s Sunnyside was the place to be all summer long.

So what happened to it? What happened to the amusement park? We're going to talk about it. Let's officially start the tour at the intersection of Roncesvalles, Queen Street West and King Street West. I'll see you there in 30 seconds

This is one of Toronto's most notoriously wonky intersections. If you're not there or not familiar with it, Roncesvalles is a straight line running north to south and ending at the elevated bit of land that overlooks Lakeshore Boulevard. Queen and King run east and west mostly parallel to each other until they slowly curve inwards and meet right at Roncesvalles forming a narrow, rounded corner of land on the east side of the intersection. How did this happen? Well, at one point in time, the Lakeshore was actually a toll road and King Street didn't come this far west. When Parkdale officially became its own village, they decided to extend King to meet Queen so that the inhabitants could avoid the toll road below. This intersection also helps bring streetcars to High Park from the more Eastern parts of the city.

Let's talk about the little corner a little bit more. The building on this corner is one of the oldest in the city. It's now home to a Greek restaurant as well as the Easy Restaurant and it used to be a hotel. It was originally called the Schole's Hotel, but it was later known as the Ocean House Hotel which you know, a bit of an exaggeration since this is a lake but whatever, it gets, the point across. Sunnyside was such a fun summer spot that this hotel wanted to be the go-to vacation spot and I guess it needed a name to match it.

Let's head to the pedestrian bridge south of the McDonald's. Stop about halfway across the bridge and then look east for our next stop. If we can't find the bridge really just walk all the way till the end of Roncesvalles and walk west until you see it, you can't miss it.

If you've never been on this bridge and are not there now, let me paint a picture for you. It crosses above the many lanes (I think six lanes) of the busy Lakeshore going both directions. It brings you from that intersection we talked about right to the Palais Royale, which is a building on the south side of the Lakeshore and it's nearly the most Eastern point of this Sunnyside beach area. I mean it is where the beach ends technically but the Sunnyside development extended to where the now Boulevard club is. The bridge has a green railing and side details, and the walls inside and out are covered with colorful murals and graffiti. Both sides connect to the ground via a ramp so it's accessible both on foot and on wheels. Let's look eastward first. You can see the Toronto city skyline pretty much straight ahead. And no matter what time of day, you can almost certainly see a ton of cars below. To the left, you can see train tracks and to the right you can see the Palais Royale and the lake just beyond it. Now let's look west. This particular bridge was built in the 50s I think, but if you were standing right here in 1922, you would surely see in the nearby distance the outline of the Sunnyside amusement park. We'll talk about the amusement park a little bit later, but you might be wondering what happened to it? Why did they get rid of it? Well, looked down again. The answer, as with many decisions in Toronto urban planning, is that they needed to make things easier for cars. Let me elaborate a little bit. As the city kept on growing in the first half of the 20th century, more suburbs started popping up West. The Queen Elizabeth Expressway was also being built, making it easier to travel southwestern Ontario, from Toronto to Niagara and even to New York. People were using the Lakeshore to get to it and in the 1940s the area was starting to get really busy. Remember, this was still a toll road at this point. And not only that, but cars were becoming more affordable around this time and people would start to take their brand new cars and leave town during the summer and spend time in the Muskokas or the Georgian Bay. As a result, they would be spending less time in Sunnyside. By the mid 1950s, the government had officially decided Sunnyside was totally over. In 1955 The Toronto Harbour Commission ordered the demolition of Sunnyside and in 1956, a year later, the deed was done. The amusement park was specifically targeted because the proposal submitted by Fred Gardiner in 1953 had been approved to build what was then called the Lakeshore Expressway, but it's now called, as you might have guessed, the Gardiner Expressway. The park wasn't the only casualty. There was a whole neighborhood in the area too that got demolished.

Let's keep walking until we're at the bottom of the bridge right by the Palais Royale building.

So far I've mentioned a few buildings that were in this area. I mentioned a dance hall as well as a boat-building factory. Both of these things really were what is now the Palais Royale. It all started with Dean's boathouse, which built canoes and rented out boats to people that got demolished and rebuilt during Sunnyside's facelift. The new building kept Dean's in the basement. The company was now called Dean's Sunnyside Pleasure Boats, but the main floor was now a dance hall. Can you imagine going to a dance hall in the 30s and sneaking down to the basement and just seeing a bunch of like silhouettes of a bunch of half-made canoes. It's like the beach horror movie of my dreams.

Anyways, this boat factory slash Dance Hall is the building that remains here to this day. It was designed by the same team as the Sunnyside Pavilion just west of here, but it changed ownership a few times and has lost a bit of its original character both inside and out due to renovations and changes each of the owners have made. Eventually, Dean's ran out of business and the dance hall took over the whole space. Today, it's mostly used for events and weddings and things like that. I do have a few stories about the dance hall. Apparently, it was at its most popular in the 30s when they hosted big bands like Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman and the Dorsey brothers. One concert held 3000 dancing people somehow in this building. They also had a house band for about 17 years: Bert Niosi, who was known as Canada's King of Swing.

The owners of the Palais Royale were quite conservative. They didn't serve alcohol here, only soda, and the establishment was closed on Sundays because it was inappropriate to dance on Sundays. Some actual dances like dance styles were straight up just never allowed. For example, the "Jitterbug", which was considered too risque. One night in 1955, these views went too far. That summer, a Black man and a white woman were dancing together until a staffer intervened and kicked them out. There weren't any official segregation laws in Toronto at the time, but apparently it was still looked down upon to socialize outside of your race, at least in some places, and the Palais Royale was known for being one of these places. This incident didn't fly under the radar. The Black community protested and were later joined by the Trotskyists and the Toronto Citizens Constitutional Forum's youth group. Seems like they were successful! A month later, people were able to dance with whoever they wanted without trouble, at least according to the young crowd who kept going.

The dance hall itself went out of business in the 60s and the City of Toronto took ownership of the space. They were planning to demolish it, but I guess they just never got around to it. And in 1974, it became a designated Heritage Site. Like I said, it's mostly used for events now, though, the odd concert has still happened here and there. Most notably in recent history The Rolling Stones played a surprise concert here in August 2002.

Alright, let's go to beach. Let's go get a wave. That's a Nicki Minaj reference, delivered in the whitest way from a very white girl. Follow the path westward and get onto the boardwalk into Sunnyside. Before long, you'll see a beautiful garden on your left. Feel free to walk in and out of it. There are stepping stones that bring you right to the beach but we will be stopping on the boardwalk right around where the garden ends where you'll see a plaque so I'll see you there.

As you'll see right away on this plaque, in 1954 Marilyn Belle was the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. She was 17 at the time and had already been a professional swimmer for three years at that point, so she started being a professional swimmer when she was 14 years old. According to Ontario Heritage Trust, the swim was initially a publicity event as part of the CNE (the Canadian National Exhibition) in which they had offered an American marathon swimmer named Florence Chadwick $10,000 to cross the lake from Youngstown, New York to Toronto. Marilyn wasn't even invited to participate in the swim, she just decided to give it a go. Eventually she was the only one left in the lake and when word got back to Toronto, people started to gather at the CNE grandstand which overlooked the lake, waiting for her to show up. It took her 20 hours and 59 minutes, but she made it! That's 64 kilometers! Can you imagine swimming 64 kilometers over the course of almost 21 hours, without stopping, without eating, without sleeping... just wild. She was quoted as saying afterwards, "I think I must have been so exhausted. I really think I was asleep just swimming on remote control automatic pilot, I guess. I don't remember finishing. I don't remember touching the wall. I do remember shortly after the lifeguards trying to pull me out of the water because I didn't want to get out. But other than that, I don't recall the end of the swim." I don't know I'm just in awe of her. The next year she became the youngest person to swim the English Canal and amongst all sorts of other accomplishments, in 2003, she received the Order of Ontario.

Let's head north towards the monument that should be right behind you. You can't miss it. It looks like a bunch of large metal slices, kind of bending around each other reaching up towards the sky. It's got two decorative poles on either side of it (on the north side of it) as well as a big garden surrounding it. See you there.

You might not have realized but this part of Sunnyside is actually called Budapest Park. When they demolished the amusement park to expand the Lakeshore and build the Gardiner, they ended up with more land than they had planned for and created this park as well as the neighbouring Casimir Gzowski Park, which we'll talk about later. I know I keep saying that. The monument is called the Freedom for Hungary Monument and it was erected here in 1966 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution and freedom fight of 1956, which started in you might have guessed, Budapest. If you, like me, weren't familiar or aren't familiar with this event, here's a quick summary.

From what I understand, and I'm far from an expert, Hungary was under Soviet rule prior to World War II. By the end of the war, they were occupied by Nazi Germany. But then the Nazis were driven back out by the Red Army of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union regained control. But the people of Hungary had had enough at that point. And in the 50s, a student protests broke out growing into a movement of 1000s of people marching through Budapest to the Hungarian parliament building.On the way, some broke into a radio station to try and broadcast their demands on air. But they got detained and the protesters who were still outside of the building started demanding loudly that they be released and in response, from the inside of the building, State Security Police, which were a unit that took their orders from Soviet leadership, shot at the crowd killing multiple students. This just fueled the fire. News spread quickly across Budapest and Hungary and the movement turned into a full on revolution, a violent one at that. Most of them are. Protesters organized themselves into militias to battle state security as well as Soviet military troops. The militias captured state security leaders and released former political prisoners. They were successful to a certain extent the government collapsed. The militias designated or formed armed councils in an effort to gain municipal control from the political party that was in charge at the time. The leader of that party was relatively new to the role and he agreed to disband the State Security Police and said that they would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, which was one of their demands. The Warsaw Pact was a defense treaty signed by the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc Socialist Republics of Europe. If you're wondering what the Eastern Bloc is, it's the collection of governments that were the quote unquote enemy of the US and their allies, aka the Western bloc, during the Cold War, which started sometime after the Second World War ended. If you like me always find the Cold War a bit confusing, I was comforted to learn that a lot of historians do too. They don't seem to know when exactly it officially started or ended. So if that makes you feel better then just know, you're not alone. The Cold War and the Soviet Union in general, of course, had a huge impact on Central and Eastern Europe, as you can imagine. Obviously, they were still reeling from World War II, just as the rest of the world was, but the... you know, the impact of the Soviet Union predates even World War II. The combination of all of these things really is a huge reason why so many people from Eastern Europe and from Europe in general immigrated here to Toronto in the 50s and 60s, and they settled here in the West End, specifically.

If the topic of the Soviet Union role in Europe interests you there is another monument closer to where we started the tour, which commemorates the Katyn massacre in Poland. That's another rough story as you can probably guess, from the name of it, but yeah, it's not too far if that's your thing.

That story was a little bit heavy. The next few stops will bring us back into the light bright sunny days of Sunnyside. So keep walking west on the boardwalk until you get to the Sunnyside pavilion.

As we head to the pavilion let's talk about the amusement park. So from what I can tell, and I did have a hard time kind of mapping out exactly where the core of the amusement park was, but I think the grass and boardwalk area that we've been walking on since the Palais Royale was where the amusement park originally stood. It pushed further north of course, where are the now widened Lakeshore is naturally, as well as the Gardiner. Just on the other side of the Lakeshore is Sunnyside bike park which is a BMX park.

So back to when it opened. The city approved a $19 million plan to open an amusement park here in 1912. In today's dollars, that's almost half a billion dollars. A lot of money, though I'm not sure if that total includes the other developments like the bathing pavilion, for example. But regardless, that's still a lot of money. It officially opened on June 28, 1922, and the amusement park featured tons and tons of concession stands and restaurants. It was known for all the snacks you could get. It had an outdoor theater called the bandstand and, you know, of course lots of rides including a popular large roller coaster called the Sunnyside Flyer. The flyer opened in 1923 and was advertised as having the "dippiest dips on the continent". That's my impression of a like 1920s 1930s old old timey entertainer man. Hope that came across. 10 years later in 1933, It was redesigned to be even taller and faster so it was still going strong, it was still a fan fave.

In 1956 everything was demolished here like I mentioned, but one of the rides is still kicking: a merry go round called the Derby Racer which is now in Disneyland in California. The fact that part of the grounds now has a BMX Park is kind of appropriate because the amusement park was known to host stunt events like flagpole sittings and boat burnings, and you know, fireworks displays- pretty standard nowadays. On a more reserved note, they also hosted beauty pageants here and on Easter it was tradition to have a parade on the boardwalk.

Other random things that are now on the land that was once the amusement park near the Casimir Gzowski playground closer to the Lakeshore is an old oil gas station. It's not in use and is fenced off, but it does catch your eye. It looks like a little mini castle. It's got a white body and a red roof. I always thought it was a closed down concession stand or like an old timey fast food restaurant but no it was a gas station. Anyways, let's keep walking. I'll see you in 30 seconds.

You will surely have noticed the super long public pool on the north side of the boardwalk. It was originally built in 1922 along with the neighbouring bathing pavilion, which we'll talk about in a minute. In the late 70s, they renovated the pool and lengthened it to a Olympic standard size and they also named it after Gus Ryder at this time. Gus Ryder was Marilyn Bell's swimming coach. The pool officially reopened to the public in 1980. And it's also heated, apparently.

Okay, so if you pass the pool then you should be at the Pavilion by now so let's stop and take a look. If you had been walking on the boardwalk like I told you to just just getting you can walk wherever you want. But if you did walk on the boardwalk you'll see a big stretch of beach to the south and the back of the pavilion building on the north side of the boardwalk. Yeah, if you're not familiar with the pavilion if you've never gone swimming at the pool, the front of the pavilion building is actually on the other side of the boardwalk. The beach itself is a public beach created by the city using sand from the harbour and Humber Bay, just like the rest of Sunnyside area. It used to have a huge dock out in the water for people to jump off of. I read a fun story about how during a heatwave in 1936 people slept on the grass by the lake. It was so hot that a bunch of men removed the tops from their bathing suits because I guess men at the time wore two-pieces, and they got arrested. They were charged for indecent exposure but were acquitted and from then on it was legal for men to go topless on Toronto beaches. Women couldn't go topless in Ontario until 1996, by the way, 60 years later.

Let's talk about the pavilion building for a minute. What you can mostly see from this perspective is a patio cafe, which is actually not a new development. The original pavilion was designed to have a cafe and it served food and refreshments just like it does now. At the far right of the building right before the pool, you can see a boat rental place where you can get canoes and I think kayaks. Another thing I'll note is just in general, the grass and trees around the building and all along Sunnyside, really, were planted on that landfill in the 20s. But you wouldn't really know it now most of them look pretty mature. Nowadays, it feels like this old building and the pool just happen to be near each other, or at least it did for me. But the building is the entrance and connection to the pool. It is the bathing pavilion after all. It's quite beautiful when you really look at it. Got multiple like white/off-white arched doorways all around it. When you walk around to the west side of it, you can see a little entrance to a courtyard that has an old fountain in it and a bunch of beautiful flowers everywhere. You can also see some pretty white steps that go up to the top of the structure, I'm guessing left over from when the pavilion had a rooftop garden. And if you walk around to the very front of the building closer to the Lakeshore, there's a really elaborate Art Deco entrance. Again, a nice big arched doorway and above the doorway itself, right in the middle of the arch, there's this beautiful art deco style painting that's blue and gold, it shows a bunch of fish, and it says right in the middle "1922" which is when the pavilion was built. Just east of that grand looking entrance, is a much more nondescript door and that takes you into the modern pool facility. So that beautiful entrance is no longer in use. And currently it's just a regular old door that you walk through to get to the pool. When the pavilion was built. The pool facility had 7700 lockers, one for every person the pool could accommodate. And the rooftop garden that I mentioned could fit 400 people. It was a fairly affordable spot in spite of all these classy features, so it was known as the Poor Man's Riviera.

Keep walking west on the boardwalk until you see a playground on the way you might notice another monument on the north side of the boardwalk, feel free to explore it or keep walking but either way I'm going to tell you a little bit about it in 30 seconds.

As I mentioned there's this interesting looking monument on this western part of the beach. It looks like someone made two or three like cement letter As, like the type of letter A that is flat on the top, but it doesn't have the little connecting line in the middle and then they arrange these cement letter A's into walls of a very oddly shaped room. There's a big metal spike poking out of the very top and on the ground, there are cement and metal walkways that lead you to the middle of the room through the triangular doorways of the A's. At the very center, there is a podium with a bust of Casimir Gzowski. This park, and most of the stretch of grass from here to the Humber River, roughly, is named after him, after Casimir Gzowski. Casimir Gzowski was from a well-off Polish military family. He himself became a military engineer and a Polish nationalist and fought for Polish independence from Russia in the 1830s. From what I read, he eventually got exiled and sent to America where he learned English and taught music, fencing, French and German classes. He became a lawyer but did end up finding work as an engineer in the States. And in the 1840s he was sent to Canada to scope out a project on the Welland Canal, which is a ship canal that connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. He met a British governor there who happened to have worked with his dad at one point back in Europe. The Governor was so impressed with Gzwoski's story and his skills that he made an effort to keep Gzwoski working here in Canada, and it worked. He ended up staying in the Toronto area working on a number of projects, most notably the St. Lawrence River and Atlantic railway, which connected the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic port in Portland, Maine. So to recap, that was a lot of details, but in less than 20 years or so he went from being an exiled political rebel to being a sought after railway engineer rubbing elbows with the highest ranks of society. He apparently was a close friend of John A Macdonald, and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1879, no doubt because of his contributions to colonialism. I mean, the railway was one of you know, the biggest facilitators of that and clearly he was, you know, enthusiastically part of that mission, considering his friends and the projects he worked on. His career is definitely impressive, but you know, think about it, he wouldn't have had these opportunities if he didn't come from an influential and well off family who were able to afford the best education available and who had connections with the right people, even in the midst of political tension in your country. He was a refugee, yes. But unlike many refugees, he came to North America with a huge leg up and he used it. Now he has a monument and tons of info available about his story online, almost 200 years later. I barely skimmed the surface with the info that I shared earlier. I can't help but be a little bit bitter about this and just about the fact that this kind of trajectory is still a thing for so many rich people, especially rich white guys. For me, that's what this ends up being about. No offense to Gzwoksi- I mean, some offense, he was BFFs with John A McDonald.

As you get closer to the Humber River, there's an expanse of grass north of the trail that leads you to an off leash dog park, which is also named after Gzwoski. Right next to it is the Art Deco style QEW -like, Queen Elizabeth Way-monument, which was sculpted by Frances Loring, who I spoke about in the Mount Pleasant/Moore Park area episode.  Her working partner and rumoured romantic partner, Florence Wyle, modeled elements of the monument as well. So if you're a fan of their work, go check it out.

Alright, if you have it in you, our last stop is technically in Etobicoke. But don't worry, it's not as far as you think. Keep walking west until you get to the white pedestrian bridge that crosses the Humber River. You can keep walking across it to the Palace Pier Park just south on the other side of the bridge or you can just like stand on the bridge. If you really can't bear to cross the river either way I'll see you in 30 seconds.

Whether or not you chose to cross the bridge, you will likely notice a south-facing piece of land jutting out into the lake. I did mention it before so I hope you noticed it. This was once the location of the Palace Pier, a building intended to either rival the entertainment at Sunnyside, or just take advantage of the patrons of Sunnyside. Probably a little bit of both. The building extended from that little jutted part into the lake, over to where there are now two condo buildings and these buildings are called the Palace Pier Condos. Construction of the Palace Pier started in the 20s but halted during the Depression. And it never truly recovered, at least not enough for them to carry out all of their initial plans. It was meant to be a really huge building, but it ended up being a fraction of its intended size. It was still pretty big, in the 40s they were able to successfully make use of it and they opened the Strathcona Roller Rink, which sounds like an amazing time in my opinion, but I guess it didn't to the general public. It didn't last very long. It became another dance hall, first called The Queensway Ballroom and then the Palace Pier dance hall. Under that name, it was famous for a while and brought huge crowds of people who came to dance to big bands like Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Harry James, Stan Kenton and Lionel Hampton. In the 50s, they upgraded the hall, giving it three tiers of balconies inside all surrounding the dance floor so that you could look down and see all the action below. Unfortunately, it wasn't too long before the scene started to die down. They eventually brought some country acts in to try and keep up with the music of the times. They also rented out the space during the week to things like political rallies and proms. But sadly in 1963, a fire destroyed the hall and they decided not to bother rebuilding it.

Right, let's turn our attention back to this beautiful bridge. It's called the Humber Bay Arch Bridge, or sometimes the Humber River Arch Bridge, or sometimes the Humber River Pedestrian Bridge. It's solely for those on foot or bikes and connects to the Martin Goodman Trail and it was designed in 1994. It apparently has won tons of awards since then. And when you look out to the lakeside, you are likely to see people and kayaks and sea doos and canoes from certain angles. You can see the Toronto skyline in the distance. This location is historically significant. It is the start of the Toronto Carrying Place Trail, a portage route that the Wendat, the Anishinabe and the Haudenosaunee would use to cross between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe as well as the Georgian Bay. When you're canoeing, as I recently learned this summer, portage means to carry your canoe from one body of water to another. And "portage" in French literally means to wear or to carry so you can see where the term Carrying Place comes from. This trail also became a key route for settlers and eventually informed the path of some of the streets that we still use to this day in Toronto. Details have been incorporated into the design of the bridge to honour the Indigenous history of this location. Some examples are a Thunderbird pattern in the arch along the top of the bridge and turtles, canoes, snakes and salmon under the bridge. The Humber River itself is so steeped in history that it is the only river in the GTA that is designated as a Canadian Heritage river. Only 40 rivers in Canada have this title and to give you some context there are more than 8500 named rivers in Canada.

Alright, let's end it there. Sorry to abandon you at the edge of the city but I hope you enjoyed the tour.

I'm working on some fall episodes as well as rejigging the schedule a little bit so keep an eye out on social for some more updates coming soon. I know I've said that in the past and made no updates but I really needed this time. If you don't follow me I'm on Facebook at Walking in Place Podcast, Twitter @placewalking and Instagram @walkinginplace pod. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next time.

Walking in place is written, recorded and edited by me Ashley McDonough. Thank you Lukus Benoit for the theme music and Yasmine Najib for the beautiful artwork.