Tag Archives: Weston Golf and Country Club

(Another) Mid Humber Gap Trail Update

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Readers may remember that the Humber cycle and pedestrian trail has a gap around the junction of Weston Road and St Phillips. The trail ends because the Humber’s banks are occupied by private property – mainly the Weston Golf and Country Club.

The gap in the trail forces able-bodied cyclists to lug their bikes up a huge flight of stairs and deters a huge number of others who are daunted by the danger of Weston Road and the physical exertion required to push a bike up several stories.

Cyclists climbing the stairs towards a dangerous trek along Weston Road.
It’s the end of the trail for this family.
The dangerous stretch of Weston Road that links two sections of the trail. Note the optimistic ‘sharrows’ indicating that vehicles share the road with cyclists.

After more than two decades of study and consultation, a solution was found out of several options that would allow the trail to continue its way alongside the Humber without encountering stairs or traffic. The solution involved a couple of bridges and some fencing where the golf club borders the river. After the final hurdle of an environmental assessment by the city and TRCA, the project was given the green light. Ominously, somewhere in the documents was the fact that the Weston Golf and Country Club was concerned about the safety of pedestrians and cyclists during flood events. Some of the great unwashed might find themselves in the Humber after a rainstorm. Think of the liability.

The WGCC is a popular club with a waiting list to get in. They have a decades-old arrangement with the city to defer a (confidential) percentage of their property taxes as long as they operate as a golf course. The club has powerful members who may or may not have the ear of Premier Ford who lives nearby.

The entrance to Weston Golf and Country Club on St Phillips

Enter a pantomime villain in the shape of David Piccini, Ontario’s 34 year-old Environment Minister. Piccini has likely been told to kill the project and may well have done so. Piccini insists that the environmental assessment done by the city and TRCA is somehow inadequate. He has demanded a do-over, effectively stalling the project. In response, the city has commenced a Notice of Application for a Judicial Review in Divisional Court and is challenging the Province’s order for further study on the Mid Humber Gap Trail.

The hearing is scheduled for November 15, 2023.

Is it really the end of the trail?

I guess we’ll find out about the power of a publicly subsidized golf course and how easily due process in a democracy can be perverted – or we might be pleasantly surprised at the judiciary acting in the public interest.

Toronto’s new mayor may have something to say about this.

Humber Gap project gets deep-sixed by Ford government.

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The Humber Gap is the name of the missing segment of the Humber Trail between Mallaby Park and Cardell Avenue. Apart from the infamous gap, the Trail connects Brampton to Lake Ontario. At the moment, cyclists wishing to proceed north must climb a hefty set of stairs then risk life and limb on busy Weston Road which is optimistically painted with sharrows. These indicate that cyclists are to share the road with other vehicles without barriers or protection.

The perilous stretch of Weston Road with an actual sharrow in September 2020.

The Trail can be re-joined after deking into Cardell Avenue opposite the Loblaws Supercentre.

With much public encouragement, Toronto city planners have tried to solve the problem for years. Read this excellent blog post and the follow-up about the difficult choices that planners had to make. A ton of money went into designing alternative the routes, a Municipal Class Environmental Assessment and public consultations.

After receiving much input, a decision was made to create a path that stayed at river level, crossing the Humber twice as it navigated the patchwork of public and private properties along the way.

From: toronto.ca (click to enlarge)

One of the private properties affected is the Weston Golf and Country Club which had raised some concerns about safety of cyclists and pedestrians travelling along the edge of their property. WGCC were also concerned that flood events may wash away the new trail. The city assured them that fencing would be secure and that the trail would be built high enough to be safe from flooding. No doubt they weren’t keen on losing a strip of land as well as the issues that members of the public might bring to the course.

Luckily WGCC has friends in high places and out of the blue (literally) came word that:

“On January 18, 2023, the Minister of Environment Conservation, and Parks (David Piccini) (the “Minister”) issued an order requiring that the City and TRCA carry out an individual environmental assessment of the Project (the “Order”). The Order states that allowing the Project to proceed on the basis of the MCEA (Municipal Class Environmental Assessment) would not be consistent with the purposes of the Act.“

Conveniently, the reasons behind adding this additional environmental assessment are confidential but uncharitable speculators might assume that the WGCC membership doesn’t want the project to happen and they have pulled some strings. Not coincidentally, Premier Doug Ford lives about a kilometre away from the golf club.

That’s the thing with hiding behind confidentiality, people get to speculate. If I was a betting man I would speculate that the project is dead.