West of Bathurst, St. Clair’s retail strip comes alive, at first without a discernable character — a typical Toronto jumble — to eventually become Corso Italia. The nieghbourhood to the north of this stretch has been called ‘the Woods,’ as its streets include Humewood, Pinewood, Wychwood, and Kenwood. Laura Reinsborough, founder of the urban fruit-gleaning organization Not Far From the Tree (NFFTT) and a former resident of this neighbourhood, saw these woods through her ‘fruit goggles’ — her group harvests thousands of pounds of fruit from private urban properties each season. Reinsborough got into the fruit-picking business by accident when she volunteered at the nearby Wychwood Barns farmers’ market and was asked to pick apples from the heritage orchard at nearby Spadina House, near Casa Loma. Back at the market, they were sold with a sign that read ‘This was biked here from 1.3 kilometres away — trying to put to shame the 100-kilometre diet.’
NFFTT’s fruit-picking activities have spread to other neighbourhoods — Reinsborough estimated that there are 1.5 million pounds of ‘edibles’ growing around Toronto that could be harvested. She had a theory that there is such good fruit growing around St. Clair because it’s up on the escarpment, just like the Niagara peninsula and its vinyards.
Micallef, Shawn. Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. Updated Edition. Coach House Press, 2024. p. 182