If you walk, bicycle or drive along Millwood Road along the edge of the Don Valley, a fringe of greenery hides the moonscape below. There are huge clearcuts where heavy machinery has logged over sections of Crothers Woods, a mecca for mountain bikers, walkers and birders. You can easily miss the extensive clearcuts below that make the Don Valley look like logged over sections of British Columbia.
So far Metrolinx says it has cut down 2,712 trees, including old-growth oak and maple, in three sections of the Don Valley: Crothers Woods; Walmsley Brook (on the northern edge of Thorncliffe Park); and Ernest Thompson Seton Park on the West Branch of the Don River south of the Ontario Science Centre. Of those, they say 685 trees were invasive or diseased. That means a loss of 2,102 healthy native trees. Metrolinx does not say how many of those were mature trees, or what species. They’ve promised to plant an average of three native seedlings for every tree cut, depending on its size. But how many of those seedlings will survive? And it will take 50 years for the planted saplings that do survive to develop into mature trees.
“We plan to plant more than 22,000 trees and 27,000 shrubs to compensate for the vegetation removed for Ontario Line construction in the Don Valley,” says Metrolinx. (Despite repeated requests, I could not get Metrolinx to reconcile their numbers. I was forced to conclude they must be using some form of New Math, because if they replace 3,000 trees that were clearcut with three times the number of saplings, that amounts to only 9,000 new trees planted.)
During construction there is a risk of extensive erosion and debris washing into the Don River, according to Metrolinx’s environmental impact assessment. Every Fall salmon swim furiously up the Don River to spawn. Erosion will affect the salmon spawning for years.
As photographer Steven Evans and I walked along the trail below the bare hillside at Crothers Woods, a red-tailed hawk circled overhead with a branch in its beak, looking for a nesting site. I hoped it would choose a tree that wasn’t going to be chain-sawed. We saw no evidence of any silt fencing or matting to prevent soil erosion. It was the same when we hiked along the West Branch of the Don River near the Ontario Science Centre. The clearcutting was right down to the riverbank. A buffer zone of shrubs and trees should have been left to stabilize the shoreline and prevent eroded soil from silting up the river. There was no silt-fencing or matting to prevent erosion there either.
In response to my concerns, Metrolinx provided this statement, “For construction in the Don Valley, silt socks (long tubes) were identified as the most appropriate erosion and sediment control measures. These measures were installed prior to construction and will continue to remain in place until the site has been stabilized post-construction. Regular inspections are completed by a certified inspector to ensure installed erosion measures are effective and identify any repairs required. Contractors are required to submit management plans in advance of construction which outline potential mitigation measures, including exclusion measures to avoid wildlife within the construction site, daily inspection requirements and procedures should wildlife be encountered (utilizing wildlife specialists to safely handle and care for animals). Metrolinx and its contractors will continue to implement environmental mitigations for all future contracts in the Don Valley to protect the natural environment.”
Lawrence Warriner, president of Don’t Mess with the Don, a non-profit group whose mission is to protect and restore Toronto’s ravines, often runs along the trail beside the West Branch of the Don. “Before the clearcutting, I was running through there at night, and saw a mink and a coyote. I’ve seen beaver there multiple times. Their habitat is fragile because of all the invasive species in the valley. I’m not concerned about the deer because they have the ability to move and there’s a lot of them, but a lot of the animals are not able to move so easily. Like the mink. It was right in the middle of that clearcut in Ernest Thompson Seton Park. It was in a log looking out at me. Now its home is gone. The double impact is, not only have they severed wildlife corridors, they’ve killed thousands of animals because they can’t get out of the way of the construction.”
At an Ontario Line community consultation, we were told Metrolinx will be fencing off sections of trails in the Don Valley for three to five years. I proposed creating wildlife corridors to allow coyotes, fox and deer to continue to move up and down the Don Valley, if only at night. I mentioned the tunnels under highways in Banff National Park. The Metrolinx staff were sceptical.
The destruction isn’t only of ravine lands: Metrolinx says it has to demolish a mosque and the only halal butcher store in Thorncliffe Park to make way for its maintenance and train yards for the Ontario Line. When Doug Ford unilaterally announced the route of the Ontario Line in 2019, he said it was going to connect two iconic attractions: the Ontario Science Centre in the north with Ontario Place in the south on Lake Ontario. Now Ford has announced plans to demolish the Ontario Science Centre, so there is no longer any rationale for calling the new subway “The Ontario Line.” When Ford announced the launch of the Ontario Line, the cost was touted to be $10.9 billion. Now the estimated cost has ballooned to $19 billion.
Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee said the mosque has found a larger lot and is now able to expand, while the halal butcher has relocated to a larger store. While many Thorncliffe residents look forward to a faster commute downtown on the Ontario Line, there is a lot of concern about noise from the 175,000 sq.-metre train maintenance and storage yards to be located along the northern edge of the community. And residents are concerned about the loss of jobs and educational opportunities for students if the Ontario Science Centre is closed. They are also worried that proposed dense housing around the Thorncliffe Park Ontario Line Station will dramatically change the community of 30,000, known as “Arrival City” for its large population of newcomers.
Everything about the Ontario Line project is complicated. Philip Wu, an engineer with the Metrolinx project delivery team, explained that just in the Crothers Woods section, a hydro transmission line has to be relocated and the bridge carrying the twin rail lines has to cross the Don Valley Parkway and GO Train tracks. But GO service can’t be disrupted, so bridge construction near the rail line and parkway will have to be done overnight and on weekends.
Eventually when the Ontario Line is operational in 2031 (or who knows when, given Metrolinx’s track record with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT), Metrolinx says the 15.6-km subway will take 28,000 cars off Toronto’s roads, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 14,000 tonnes per year.
In the meantime, Don’t Mess with the Don says Metrolinx is doing very little so far to mitigate the impact of subway construction on the ecosystem and abundant wildlife in the Don Valley. Volunteers have found that the heavy machinery is spreading invasive species, such as Japanese knotweed, into areas in the valley that had previously been clear of invasives.
The desolate clearcuts in the Don Valley are stark harbingers of what Ontario Place will look like if the Ford government proceeds with its plans to clearcut all 850 mature trees on the West Island of Ontario Place to build a proposed mega-spa.
All photographs by Steven Evans unless otherwise noted.
Ian Darragh is a former editor-in-chief of Canadian Geographic magazine. Photographer Steven Evans’ latest book is As It Is: A Precarious Moment in the Life of Ontario Place.
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