Fall looks as if it’s here to stay as temperatures are set to lower sharply next week. The first dip below zero of the season is forecast for October 30 which is slightly earlier than Toronto’s average of November 1-10.
Here are some recent images of the park as it eases into the approaching winter.
A large Norway Maple by the parking lot is coming closer to the end of its life. The tree provides much needed shade but its days appear to be numbered as more rotten branches are found. It is the last of several large maples that once lined (and shaded) the parking lot.
The Raymore Park dog off-leash area (DOLA) was opened with some fanfare by Premier Doug Ford’s nephew six years ago. Its design followed standard Toronto Parks and Forestry protocols, namely removal of vegetation and topsoil then replacement with pea-gravel and fenced with rustic poles and rails backed up by a wire containment fence. The aim was to provide an off-leash area where dogs could exercise and socialize safely. The idea, sold at a community presentation was that the DOLA would be used mainly by local residents and that any extra traffic would be minimal.
The DOLA was built with several design flaws.
1. The small dog enclosure is only accessible by passing through the large dog enclosure.
2. The pea gravel surface irritates dog paws making exercise out of the question for most.
3. No shade for dogs and owners. A few trees have been planted but these will take many years to mature.
4. The space is totally alienated from nature and looks more like a cattle feedlot.
A few observations:
Overall Grade: D-
Public Consultation:
A Toronto-wide consultation process was begun in June 2019 to gather feedback on how to improve DOLA design with stakeholder meetings and public surveys. The effort seems to have ground to a halt during Covid as there are no updates beyond this one in 2020.
My two cents: The DOLA should never have been built as there was no demand for it – especially for one so flawed. Far better, cheaper and less disruptive, to have allowed the huge open space between the two unused baseball diamonds to be planted with native trees and create a woodland / wildlife corridor that would join with the one south of the weir.
Extra Credit: Read Maria Kwok’s thorough review of Raymore Park’s DOLA here.
From City of Toronto and Humber River Citizens Alliance:
Commemorate the lives lost to Hurricane Hazel and enhance the natural habitat. This event will feature a short talk by historian Madeleine McDowell and a ceremonial tree planting with Vivian Recollet, an Anishinaabe Grandmother Waterkeeper. Meet south of Raymore Bridge, on the east side of the Humber River Recreational Trail (by the old bridge abutment).
When: June 10, 2023
Event Time(s): 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Where: Raymore Park
93 Raymore Drive, Etobicoke, ON M9P 2S4, Canada
Cost: Free
Individuals and small groups do not need to register and are welcome to attend. Registration for groups of five or more people has reached maximum capacity and is now closed. Email us to add your group to the waitlist.
Website: www.toronto.ca
Email: greentoronto@toronto.ca
When it was announced that Metrolinx intended to clear-cut hundreds of trees along a 1.5 km stretch of Eglinton Avenue a coalition of several groups (including Mount Dennis Community Association) sprang into action. One of the groups, an indigenous-led coalition erected a tipi in Pearen Park and has occupied the site since January.
Today, close to 100 people listened intently as Indigenous leaders spoke about the need to protect the trees that Metrolinx wants to chop down. The provincial transit authority wants to build an elevated section of the Eglinton Crosstown Extension. The extension will link the long delayed main line to Pearson Airport and is planned to cross the Humber above ground before going underground at Scarlett road. The coalition insists that the line must be built underground in order to preserve precious parkland.
German rock group Milky Chance were there in support along with the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. They participated with dozens of others to place tobacco at the foot of each tree and mark them with ribbons. Refreshments were generously provided by Super Coffee who have a coffee shop at Weston and Eglinton.
There is no reason for Metrolinx to build an elevated line across the Humber that will lead to the destruction of hundreds of trees. Great cities bury their rail lines and preserve nature at all costs.
Is Toronto a great city or will it fall prey to small thinking and destroy irreplaceable wildlife, trees and parkland?
Incidentally, missing in action were Councillor Frances Nunziata and local MPP Mike Ford. Incidentally Ford (who is the premier’s nephew) campaigned for his seat claiming that he would better represent the coalition from inside government. Since he was elected, he seems to have forgotten his promise.
Read more from the coalition here.
Read a January article by the CBC here.
The Mount Dennis Community Association is holding a Jane’s Walk on Sunday, May 7 entitled, ‘Tipis, Cricket and LRT’s at Fergy’s park’.
Time:12:00 noon – 1:30 pm
Fergy Brown Park, named after a former York mayor, was agricultural until 1965. It has a rich Indigenous history as the Carrying Place Trail, almost hosted the Richview expressway, and now is being threatened by the Crosstown extension which is going to destroy a large amount of the natural section of the park. Local Indigenous people feel their rights to be consulted about a major heritage site are being ignored.
Starting at Weston and Eglinton, we’ll visit Pearen Park, the site of the proposed elevated LRT portal, see what the natural environment looks like. Some rather unkind comments were made about invasive species. While it would be great if Parks had planted the most desirable species, the site is still home to wood ducks, deer, coyote, and amphibians, all seeming to prefer a naturalized area to mowed grass. Fergy Brown park hosts cricket most summer weekends, frisbee golf many evenings, and the Extension will cause major disruptions for a decade. And all we ask is that Metrolinx value the contributions of the community and negotiate the best solution. If you followed the news this week, you know that Metrolinx isn’t demonstrating competence. From the MDCA Newsletter April 28, 2023
Read more about the Metrolinx plans for clearcutting through several parks here.
More Toronto Jane’s Walks here.
Most Toronto parks on a weekend are filled with people enjoying themselves. To paraphrase an old saying, Parks are the lungs of the city and a natural setting with trees and grass provides cleaner and fresher air along with a chance to relax.
There are parks that are ideal for picnics while others provide tranquility and a natural setting. Some Toronto parks have bathrooms and built in barbecue stands while others, like Raymore Park are more natural.
Raymore Park is quite large and there are areas where you can throw a ball, walk the dog, have a picnic or just sit on one of the many benches and contemplate. Watching the water going over the weir is mesmerizing and the negative ions created by falling water are said to be therapeutic. If you like shade, there are lots of trees – just be careful not to feed the summer mosquitoes! There’s even a rudimentary baseball diamond tucked away north of the dog off-leash area. We don’t have flower beds or seasonal plantings but we have a large variety of flora and fauna.
In nearby Lions Park, people like to set up in groups and barbecue on warm weekends. They bring chairs and tables, awnings and coolers and relax by the river. Walking or cycling past these groups is a treat for the nose and if your hunger is stimulated, there’s an increasing number of fast (and slow) food locations a five-minute walk away on Weston Road.
Who are the people using parks? Every age group, athletic level and ethnicity are represented in Toronto’s green spaces and ravines; people looking for exercise, a meal or a relaxing stroll. There are no barriers or fees, everyone is welcome and people become more relaxed when they arrive. If you want to strike up a conversation, talk to a dog owner about their dog – or better yet, borrow a dog and walk it in the park (on leash of course). Dogs are instant ice-breakers. There are many volunteer organizations that help clean our parks after a long winter (locally it’s Humber River Pals) and get rid of accumulated litter while others look for invasive plants and remove them. Garlic mustard is a frequent target for those wanting some springtime greens and provide breathing room for native plants.
It is possible to cycle from Raymore Park down to Lake Ontario with very few diversions onto side streets. The trail loosely follows the Humber to it’s mouth on the lake. Cycling through several parks on the way down to the lake reveals the variety of beautiful parks along the Humber.
So what’s stopping you? Get out and enjoy.
Trees are great at cleaning the air and capturing carbon. They also moderate the extremes of weather and keep wind speeds down year-round. They also smooth out temperatures, keeping them lower in summer and higher in winter. Recognizing this, Prime Minister Trudeau promised that Canada would plant 2 billion trees by 2030. This was during the 2019 election campaign and we all know the value of campaign promises.
The idea for a mass tree planting may have come from New Zealand and Australia which had announced similar ambitious goals in 2018 and 2019. The U.S. is also promising to plant 4.1 billion trees in the same timeline as Canada. All told, Canada has around 318 billion trees so adding two billion to the total won’t be a big increase. In fact it won’t even replace the trees that will be cut down by then. Even so, two billion has a nice ring to it.
Presumably the Liberals thought they would be safely out of office by 2030 and wouldn’t have to worry about actually achieving the target. According to lots of news outlets, the number of trees planted thus far is pretty dismal. The government says it planted about 29 million trees in 2021. At that rate the two billionth tree will be planted around the year 2092. The job of planting and monitoring the trees has been entrusted to Natural Resources Canada but tellingly, the 2BT initiative isn’t high enough of a priority to make the front page of their website.
Obviously vast tracts of land will need to be planted in order to achieve the two billion target. Even so, Raymore Park stands ready to play its part – there’s lots of room at the park entrance and around the dog off-leash area (both of which could do with some shade in summer).
Whatever we do, let’s make sure we protect any new trees from our local beavers!
UPDATE, June 14, 2023:
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the federal government was never in a position to plant billions of trees as it’s the provinces that do most of the tree planting in Canada. On June 13, 2023, Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco testified at the Commons natural resources committee that, “We found that given the number of trees planted so far, this program is unlikely to succeed unless significant changes are made.”
Auditor Kimberly Leach said that provinces would have to do most of the planting and that Cabinet had not signed up all provinces to do so.
According to Blacklock’s, “The program originally budgeted at $3.16 billion over ten years is now expected to cost $5.94 billion, by Budget Office estimate.”
Just south of the leash-free zone in Raymore Park there’s a narrow rectangular strip of woodland that stretches below the houses along Westbank Crescent.
The strip extends down to Eglinton but the area in question ends at the Humber Creek and is about 200m long.
Inside this small flood-plain wood lie the trunks of many trees that have fallen – seemingly pushed over and uprooted by a strange and powerful force.
The downed trees are mainly at the base of the hill that rises up to Westbank Crescent and Scarlett Road (on the right in these images). This hill is thought to have been part of the shore of Lake Iroquois, which existed about 13,000 years ago.
This tree graphically illustrates the violence of what is going on.
It looks as if the downward slope of the hill is helping to focus intense, violent downbursts and uprooting trees during summer thunderstorms when such wind gusts are common.
Why is the last tree bent over the opposite way to the others? I have no idea other than it might be some sort of rolling vortex that caught the top of the tree during a storm. It must have been a powerful gust.
Given the sheer quantity of downed trunks it might be wise to steer clear of this area when a summer storm is forecast.
Temperatures hit the mid-teens today and with yesterday’s rain adding to melting snow coming from further north, the Humber river is running high. A good benchmark is the old footbridge abutment and today it was almost underwater. Adding to the drama, logs and dead trees were cascading down the river – probably after being blown over during this winter’s storms, having waited for a good flood to float them and flush them down to Lake Ontario.
The Condo building called ‘The Humber’ is almost ready for occupancy and residents facing the river will soon have a ringside seat for the ever-changing river landscape as it makes a 90° turn in front of the building.
A few hundred metres downriver at the weir, some large trees were stuck as they lumbered over the edge. The roar of the river by the weir is quite something. People were standing mesmerized, soaking up the vibrations.
Water levels should go down tomorrow during a one-day temperature dip but inevitably, spring is pushing its way north.
No doubt we’ll be complaining about the heat soon.
Friends of Raymore Park 