Saturday, February 25, 2017

Devil’s Creek plunges 12 metres over the side of the Grand River cliffs and joins the river on its way toward Lake Erie. There are stories of smoke that used to be seen coming from a cave on the cliffs just north of the creek.  Parents told their children that a devil lived in the cave to keep them from exploring the dangerous cliffs.  In no time the little creek near Cambridge had taken on the name Devil’s Creek (Google Maps link).

Devil’s Creek Trail runs for 1.6 kilometres along the lower section of the creek.  Devil’s Creek is only 2.8 kilometres long and starts near Devil’s Creek Pond.  It is fed by springs making it a rare example of a cold water aquatic environment in an urban setting.  There is parking in a small park along Blair Road for those who want only a short walk to the falls. Devil’s Creek Drive has street parking and allows for a visit to Grandview Pond and a longer walk to the falls.  Grandview Pond is spring fed but also accepts a large amount of runoff and storm water.  It fills up quickly but drains into Devil’s Creek to keep it running all year long.  Unlike a deeper lake, sunlight reaches the bottom of the pond.  The vegetation that this supports gives shelter to small mouth bass, painted turtles and leopard frogs.

In 1998 The Devil’s Creek Trail was completed north of the CPR tracks.  The trail follows the CPR tracks through extensive wetlands.

Work was completed on the next section of the trail during the winter of 2001/2002. Winter was chosen so the impact on the local environment would be lessened.  A boardwalk was constructed to carry the trail above the creek as it passes under the railway tracks.  The concrete bridge over Devil’s Creek replaces an earlier wooden trestle, of which the pilings can still be seen between the boardwalk and the concrete as you pass by.

Both sides of the trail are marked as environmentally sensitive and hikers are asked to remain on the main trail.  Thirty rare plant species and the Jefferson Salamander are being protected in these woods.  Eastern Skunk Cabbage grows in wetlands and the woods along the trail support a large colony of plants.  Skunk Cabbage is one of only a few plants known for its thermogenesis properties.  It can produce temperatures from 15 to 35 degrees celsius above the surrounding air.  It literally melts its way through the frozen ground and often blooms through the snow.  The leaves do not surface until later in the spring.

In the 1970’s the surrounding area was developed for a subdivision and the section of Devil’s Creek between the CPR tracks and Bismark Street was straightened and widened. This channel ran through a park where manicured lawns extended to the water’s edge. The creek was shallow and without shade, it was too warm to support fish.  By the 1990’s it was deemed that this section was a high priority for naturalization.  Devil’s Creek once again was given a curved path with several deeper pools to provide colder places to shelter brook trout.  Riffles were added to make the water gurgle over small rocks and pick up oxygen from the air in doing so.  A streamside pool was also added as a breeding place for frogs and newts.

Riparian zones are patches of plant growth along the edges of a flow of water.  They provide shade and habitat for land and aquatic creatures alike.  The root systems help provide erosion control by stabilizing the stream banks.  Native trees and shrubs were planted through this reach, including Purple Flowering Raspberry, Staghorn Sumac and White Pine.

Devil’s Creek begins its decent toward the Grand River just before the bridge on George Street.  The creek flows over this small ledge of dolostone and then is forced into a short concrete channel as it flows under the bridge.  The 12 metre falls is immediately on the other side of the bridge.  This little waterfall was once the site of a footbridge that has since been washed away.  The trail on the right leads to an abandoned set of wooden stairs leading to a fence and a former access to the subdivision beyond.

Devil’s Creek, and the Devil’s Creek Trail both pass under George Street before coming to their respective ends just beyond.  Devil’s Creek ends in a 12-metre cascade down to The Grand River below.  Devil’s Creek Trail ends at The Grand Trunk Trail which connects to several other trails in the neighbourhood.

Devil’s Creek has cut a narrow channel through the limestone cliffs over the years.  From the crest of the waterfall, you can see down to the Grand River below.  The cedar trees pictured below are clinging to the side of the cliff above the falls.

The limestone bluffs along the edge of the Grand River were formed 350 to 500 million years ago when this area was under the warm tropical Michigan Sea.  They run along the west side of the river while the east side has the Galt Country Club which is at river level.

The Devil’s Creek waterfall empties almost directly into the river after spilling over the cliffs.  The white water curling away from the edge marks the confluence which is otherwise lost when the river is flooding and dirty.

As you drive along Blair Road, returning to the 401, there is an unusual stone barn known as the Slit Barn.  It was built by William Young sometime around 1840.  This three bay barn was built in the traditional Scottish style but from the rear also incorporates elements of the Mennonite bank barns favoured by the German settlers in the area.  The three rows of slits were designed to provide ventilation so that the grain would not rot in storage.  The slits are three times as wide on the inside of the barn as they are on the outer wall.  This increases the amount of light in the barn while keeping the rain to a minimum.  The only other example of a stone barn with ventilation slits that we have featured so far was found at The Hermitage.

Other stories in The-Devil-Made-Me-Do-It series: Devil’s Punchbowl,  Devil’s Pulpit, Devil’s Well

Our all-time top posts are featured in this special review.

Google Maps Link: Devil’s Falls

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Sunday, February 19, 2017

Toronto was experiencing a building boom in the 1880’s and land speculation was rampant.  A plan was put forward to develop a commuter railway to service new communities that would be opened for development.  By 1892 the rail line was up and running with 44 stops and one grand showpiece station.  However, a recession slowed the growth of the city at that time and the riders never arrived.  After only 28 months the passenger service was suspended and the line was used mainly to service industrial establishments for the next century.  The original line has since been cut into three sections, severed by Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Allen Road.  The archive picture below shows one of the period flyers advertising the railway.  The picture includes a sketch of the train crossing the bridge on Yonge Street.  This bridge is one of two originals remaining on the line and is featured as our cover photo.

Previously we explored both the northern section and the southern one.  Links to both of these are provided at the end of this story.  Much of the history of the railway is contained in the two previous stories and therefore I won’t cover it again here.  I parked on Newgate Road near Elm Ridge Drive to investigate the middle section with the plan to hike the 4 kilometres from Allen Road to Mount Pleasant Road.  This section of trail passes through Forest Hill which it was designed to serve in the days before personal automobiles. The trail was hard packed with ice and snow and the sunshine and mild temperatures were starting to melt everything.  Footing was slippery today but most of the year there is a hard packed gravel surface.  Although I saw plenty of evidence that the trail is used by dog walkers I didn’t see any other pedestrians until I reached Eglinton Avenue after which it was quite busy.

Along the trail are several places where someone has been leaving seed for the birds and squirrels.  As a result, the squirrels have no fear of people and sit up to see what treats you may have.  In the wild a grey squirrel has a very short lifespan living for only 11 or 12 months.  In captivity, they have been noted as living up to 20 years.

This is one of my favourite trails in the heat of the summer.  There are many places where the trees stretch over the trail from both sides making the trail well shaded.  It also has a grade of less than 4 percent which is typical for railways. Therefore there are no hills to climb in the heat of the day.  This is a multi-use trail and a speed limit of 15 kilometres per hour has been set so that cyclist won’t impact the enjoyment of dog walkers and people out for a casual stroll.

The trail is well used by people walking their dogs but, unfortunately, there are many who do not clean up after their pets.  Both sides of this trail are covered with dog faeces to the point where you can hardly step between the piles in some places.  In colder climates, it can take up to a year for dog faeces to decompose, longer if the animal is eating primarily meat.  From an environmental standpoint, it is better to buy “flushable” poop bags rather than nonbiodegradable ones that sit in a landfill for years.  Either way, please remember this stuff doesn’t melt along with the snow.

The Eglinton Avenue bridge over the Beltline railway has been replaced with a modern concrete structure when the road was widened.  This was the site of the Eglinton stop on the railway and the artwork on the underside of the bridge portrays some early railway scenes.

Some of the stops on this early commuter service can still be clearly seen along the trail. There are places where there is an open space on either side of the tracks where a walkway or set of stairs provide access to the adjacent community.  Many of the stops on the railway were simply whistle stops and the train only stopped if passengers wanted to get on or off. The first one of these south of Eglinton is the site of today’s Robert Bateman Park. A renowned Canadian Artist, Robert Bateman spent his childhood exploring the beltline before it was reclaimed as parkland.  The picture below shows one of these former stops on the railway.

Kay Gardner was a city councillor who in 1990 lobbied the city to buy the abandoned beltline lands for use as a linear park.  In May of 2000, the park was renamed Kay Garner Beltline Park in her honour.  The railway has been stripped of most of the clues to its former use.  A typical railway right of way is 100 feet wide.  This strip of land can be seen running between the two fences that border the trail.  In some places the rail bed can be seen as a raised berm and in others a cut embankment reveals the rail bed.  The picture below displays both.

Since opening the trail the city has been busy restoring the strip of land.  Newly planted trees line the rail berm near Avenue Road.  Each new tree has a green treegator bag around the base.  These bags serve as water reservoirs for the transplanted trees.  They help reduce the shock to the tree and each bag holds 15 gallons of water.  They need to be filled about once per week.

The trail crosses over the Davisville Subway Yards before it reaches Yonge Street.  When the TTC opened its first subway line in 1954 it ran between Union Station and Eglinton. The Davisville yards were the main carhouse and maintenance shops for the subway cars.  The first two subway cars were delivered to the Hillcrest Complex but after that, new cars were delivered to the Davisville yards via the Beltline Railway.  A temporary interchange was built on the north side of the Yonge Street beltline bridge.  These yards were used to store all TTC subway trains between 1954 and 1966 when the larger Wilson Yards were opened.

The rail bridge on Yonge Street is one of two original structures remaining on the line.  The other one is located over Dufferin Street.  From 1970 until the 1990’s this bridge was closed to pedestrian traffic.

The trail continues east from here across the top of Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  Turning south the trail reaches Moore Street which was the site of the elegant Moore Park station.

Other Sections of the Belt Line:  Moore Park in the south and York Belt Line Trail in the north.

Google Maps Link: Kay Gardner Beltline Trail

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Sunday, February 12, 2017

Winter scenes have been largely missing this year and so with light fluffy snow falling and 15 centimetres of fresh snow on the ground, it seemed like a good time to go for a walk in Sherwood Park.  There were children playing on the swings and teeter-totter in spite of the weather.  Isn’t Canada wonderful?  The fish in the children’s splash pad might not agree with those snow drifts piled up on their fins.

Sherwood Park was previously covered in the post on Burke Brook so I won’t repeat that story here.  I’ll just provide a link at the end of this pictorial where you can get the history of this location.  For now, grab a seat in the park and have a look around.

One of the features of Sherwood Park are the extensive stairs provide access from the ravine floor to the forests above.

Burke Brook is beautiful as it babbles through the ravine.

To facilitate crossing the steep ravine at Burke Brook the pioneers built Bayview Avenue along the side of the ravine so that it could reach the bottom with a slope other than 75 degrees straight down.  The former road allowance is currently used as the trail from Bayview into Sherwood Park.

Bayview Avenue crossed Burke Brook near the water level on a wooden bridge prior to the installation of this culvert.  When Sunnybrook Hospital was built during the Second World War, Bayview Avenue was straightened and a large berm built over a much larger culvert. The berm reduces the ravine to a small dip in the road.  The original Bayview Avenue can be seen as it approaches this old bridge.

There’s something very calming about a gentle snowfall in a forest when the trees have a fresh coating of undisturbed snow.

Link to Burke Brook

A summary of the top 15 all-time posts can be found in this special feature.

Google Maps Link.  Sherwood Park

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Sunday, January 29, 2017

The Leaside Spur ran from just north of Eglinton to just south of York Mills for a distance of about 3 kilometres.    It once connected the Canadian Pacific (CP) Belleville Subdivision in the south with the Canadian National (CN) Bala Division in the north.  There are a few street parking spots on Overland Drive off of Leslie Street.

Until the 1950’s the line ran through an area that consisted of about twenty farms contained between the East and West Don Rivers.  All that changed rapidly between 1952 and 1965 when it was developed as an 835-hectare residential community.  It was the first planned community in Ontario.  Residential, commercial, industrial and retail areas were all planned out as well as schools and parks.  Watercourses were left in their natural condition rather than putting them in concrete channels as was done with Taylor-Massey Creek to the east of there.  From where I was parked the trail runs to a dead end to the south and I decided to go that way first.  There is a brief section where the trail passes through a residential community before entering an industrial area.

From the old aerial photographs, it appears that there were at least 5 sidings that serviced factories in this section.  The cover photo shows the one remaining section with rails on it. This short siding allowed for two cars to be placed at the rear docks of a building which is currently used by Canadian Tire.  The industrial section is split by a ravine carrying a tributary of Wilket Creek.  The rail line passed over the ravine on a trestle which has since been filled in and the creek fed into a new culvert.  There is a deep plunge pool on the downside of the culvert suggesting that there is a significant flow of water through here at times.

Although I spend many hours outside in prime geocaching locations I have never actually met anyone who is actively looking for a cache.  I tend to stumble across geocaches every few months and this one had tumbled out of it’s hiding spot.  There is a pencil but no log book so I just closed it up and put it back where I thought it had come from.

When this area was farmer’s fields the ravine was cleared of trees.  Following the industrial development of the local area, the ravine was left to grow over with new trees.  It is an unusually secluded spot in the city where there were plenty of small animal tracks to which I added the only fresh human ones.

Some of the former sidings have been removed while others have been buried under fresh fill.  The last siding on the west side prior to the connection to the CPR tracks is one of the ones that was buried.  The ends of the two rails protrude from the bank of earth that was intended to hide them forever.

There are still pieces of switching equipment at the end of the trail where it connects to the CPR tracks.  The switching equipment was installed in 1963 and manufactured by the General Railway Signal Company in Rochester, New York. The connection to the CPR was most likely cut at this time.

The siding connects to the CPR Bellville subdivision just north of Eglinton Avenue.  The CN Tower and  Aura at College Park can be seen in the distance.

Backtracking, you will arrive at Lawrence Avenue where there is a Tim’s, how convenient! The former level crossing at Lawrence Avenue has now been turned into a bicycle and pedestrian crossing with signals.  North of Lawrence the trail passes through residential areas where many residents have made their own access to the trail.

Don Mills was shaped by the railways which surrounded it.  There is currently no heritage designation on any of the railway properties in the area.  The rail bridge over Bond Street was built in 1912 and was in danger of being torn down during the construction of the trail. The north abutment was to be removed to allow the roadway into the park to be straightened and a blind curve to be removed.  The trail would have made a slight deviation to cross Bond Street on a new pedestrian bridge.  The abutment would have been replaced with signage describing the missing heritage bridge.  For now, it looks like the bridge has been saved but it needs the heritage designation to help ensure it’s long-term future.

Bond Park, with five ball diamonds and six tennis courts, can be seen from the trail. It is set in a 6.8-hectare triangular piece of land, or gore, between the Leaside Spur and the CN Bala Division and north of Bond Street.  The northern tip of the park is defined by the meeting of the spur line with the main line.  The fence on this end has been recently repaired to keep people from trespassing but the old right of way can be seen as it connects to the CN line.

The trail has now been completed from this point to York Mills Road and there are plans to connect it to the East Don Trail in the future.

Our fifteen most popular stories have been collected here for easy reference.

Google Maps Link: Leaside Spur Trail

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