Mini-Mootha Marching Marathon - Don Valley Edition

This past Sunday was the nicest day we've experienced since I arrived on January 16. It was a true spring day: birds sang, the sun shone, and Torontonians put down their pistols for a day. It was like a climactic truce with the bitch we call winter.

Ahhh....it's good to be alive!

Wendy and I agreed that a walk somewhere was in order, so we departed from our Vervacious condo and headed east along Wellesley Street until we butted heads with Parliament Street (Cabbagetown). North on Parliament Street took us up to Bloor Street, where we cranked a right and headed east again.

We discovered the Rosedale School For The Arts which was teetering on the edge of the Don Valley. We then walked across a long bridge which traverses the Don Valley. Underneath the upper deck of the bridge we could feel/hear the rumblings of the Bloor Line subway. At ground level below us, the Don River made its way south to Lake Ontario, bikers enjoyed a paved path and cars whisked along the north-south corridor of the Don Valley Parkway.

As we reached the other side of the valley, Bloor Street became the Danforth, part of which is home to Toronto's noted Greek community. We, however, took an immediate right after crossing the valley and we headed south along Broadview Avenue. This long street became the eastern flank of the Don Valley from the Danforth down to the lake. With the Don Valley in the fore to mid-ground, this area offered sweeping panoramas of the Toronto skyline to the west.

We noticed a sign which offer us a map to the Don Valley as well as some historical background. It made for interesting reading, but what stuck in my mind was that bears (bears!) once roamed the valley. Cougars too!

Hopefully you can read the text if you enlarge the image to your left. If not, then you only need to know that bears are no longer a threat in this neighbourhood.

Though there was no mention of it on the sign, in all likelihood some wee mannie arrived in Toronto a few hundred years ago and said 'auch aye, it's a bonnie great glen', then welled up, played the bag pipes, shot a pheasant, grumbled about this and that, then started hatching plans to make money...or find someone with some! Oh, he may also have named the river after the River Don which runs through Aberdeenshire. It makes sense.

There are efforts underway to return the Don River Valley to something more historically accurate. I applaud these efforts, though having a six lane freeway running through the glen more or less precludes anything truly pastoral. It would be nice to see ducks swimming in the Don River, and not sneakers, beer cans and plastic bags.

Wendy and I carried on down Broadview, past a satellite Chinatown at Gerrard Street, to our favourite coffee shop which was tucked away on a side street in the neighbourhood of Broadview and Queen Street East. We enjoyed libations and sweeties. I was hoping for a buttery-rowie but had to settle for a coconut macaroon. I washed it down with a cappuccino. It's hard to find good Scottish food in this town. Wendy had tea and a muffin, though she briefly considered a scone (Scottish!).

We then headed west across the Don Valley on Queen Street, back to Parliament Street where we turned right and went north. We meandered our way through a slightly Muslim block, then back to Cabbagetown. One final push west got us to our neighbourhood, known as St.James Town. In total, 7.2 km. Strictly speaking, we're not in St.James Town, we're just a little too west (and gay) to be considered part of it.  We're part of 'The Village' which is fitting since I'm a Village Idiot. St.Jamestown, just to the east of our condo, is an interesting place. It's either an urban planners dream, or nightmare. Not sure. Here's just a tidbit of info:

St. James Town is the largest high-rise community in Canada. It has been identified as one of 13 economically deprived neighborhoods within the city. It consists of 19 high-rise buildings (14 to 32 stories). These massive residential towers were built in the 1960s. Officially, approximately 17,000 people live in the neighbourhood's 19 apartment towers and 4 low rise buildings; but the number is thought by residents to be 25,000, making it Canada's most densely populated community, and one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods anywhere in North America.

St. James Town was originally designed to house young "swinging single" middle class residents, but the apartments lacked appeal; many prospective tenants instead moved to suburban houses in the developing areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York. The area quickly became much poorer. Four buildings were later built by the province to provide public housing. Today, the towers are mostly home to newly arrived immigrant families.

In 2006 a census of the neighbourhood show that, after English, the most common languages spoken were:

1. Tagalog - 8.1%
2. Tamil - 5.5%
3. Unspecified Chinese - 2.5%
4. Mandarin - 2.5%
5. Korean - 1.9%
6. Spanish - 1.8%
7. Russian - 1.8%
8. Serbian - 1.4%
9. Bengali - 1.4%
10. Urdu - 1.4%

What? 1.4% Urdu but no Doric?!? Immigration certainly is different than it was two hundred years ago, isn't it? It makes for interesting neighbourhoods and great cultural experiences. The selection of food experiences, even within our short walk, was wonderful unless you had a hankering for a buttery rowie, in which case you're royally fuskered.