Category: Exercise

Forward to Stroll

A new, cool style of engaging and enjoying metropolitan realities has recently emerged in Toronto among certain young writers, artists, architects, and persons without portfolio. These people can be recognized by their careful gaze at things most others ignore: places off the tourist map of Toronto’s notable sights, the clutter of sidewalk signage and graffiti, the grain inscribed on the urban surface by the drift of populations and the cuts of fashion.

Their typical tactic is the stroll. The typical product of strolling is knowledge that cannot be acquired merely by studying maps, guidebooks, and statistics. Rather, it is a matter of the body, knowing the city by pacing off its streets and neighbourhoods, recovering the deep, enduring traces of our inhabitation by encountering directly the fabric of buildings and the legends we have built here during the last two centuries. Some of these strollers, including Shawn Micallef, have joined forces to make Spacing magazine. But Shawn has done more than that. He has recorded his strolls in EYE WEEKLY, and these meditations, in turn, have provided the raw material for the present book. The result you have in your hands is a new introduction to Toronto as it reveals itself to the patient walker, and an invitation to walk abroad on our own errands of discovery, uncovering the memories, codes, and messages hidden in the text that is our city.

Forward from first edition, Toronto, 2010

John Bentley Mays, 1941–2016

Micallef, Shawn. Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. Updated Edition. Coach House Press, 2024. p. 7

First time at Biidaasige Park

Photo by Jess

I had a great Saturday. It was cool enough not to be oppressive, and I was able to ride down the Don past the Brickworks to the new Biidaasige (bee-daw-sih-geh) Park. The park is very impressive. They have turned the engineered, industrial, concrete landscape around the mouth of the Don River into a real human space again, and an alluring one. There is a large outdoor adventure playground with ziplines, charmingly rendered animal play sculptures, and two-story high treehouses shaped like a raccoon and an owl, the latter of which has a tiny amphitheater in front. Within a large landscape of springy concrete, kids can use human-powered pumps to move water into a simulated watershed with controllable floodgates and sand areas to play in. There are curving paths along the new rivercourse, which is lined thickly with native plants. There are also boat launches and fishing spots.

The park grand opening was happening just a short ride from the Neon Riders BBQ, so I was able to see some friends there and bring one back for another ride through Biidaasige Park. After that, another friend from the Riders had a charmingly creative and playful music gig in Bickford Park, which was further enriched for me by a pair of very friendly dogs who were part of the small audience.

A river mouth should be a geographical anchor and natural point of interest. As someone who has walked extensively all over Toronto, the way the Don came to an end failed to satisfy those expectations. With Corktown Common, Biidaasige Park, and the other park areas still in progress, the city is doing a great job at making the river mouth part of the human landscape again. I have thought for years that Toronto’s greatest planning blunder was cutting off the city from the lake with the Gardiner Expressway. Personally, I would be fine with getting rid of the whole thing through the mechanism of less driving downtown, but while we are waiting it’s great that at least the river is being reclaimed.

The ziplines all had long lines of small children on Saturday, so I will need to return when things are less crowded. I expect Biidaasige Park to become a popular break spot for Neon Rides.

P.S. At an arts and crafts station, I was taught to make ‘seed bombs’ out of dirt, pottery clay, and heirloom open-pollinated seeds of Common Evening Primrose (Oenothera lamarckiana) from the Ecoseedbank in Montreal. The flowers are native to the region and good for pollinators, and the initiative reminds me of charming videos of dogs who help re-seed the forest after fires in Chile.

Island ride

I had never taken a bicycle to the Toronto Island before, so yesterday I went with my friend Lance to ride the different tracks:

He also very kindly made us bannock, coffee, and bacon on his portable twig stove, and even brought along hammocks and lent me one after:

Soon, some friends are planning to ride up the Humber from Old Mill station toward the West Humber trail and Claireville conservation area.

Three heat wave densification rides

Here’s a bit of a neat animation which I put together showing three heat wave after-work rides this week.

The green, blue, and red tracks show my Dutch bike rides on Monday, Tuesday, and today.

The white tracks show every other Dutch (3,437km), Bike Share Toronto mechanical (2,522km), and loaner bike tracks (85km):

The streets I sought out are little visited because they tend to be inconvenient and not to serve as an effective way to get between places beyond. That does make them blessed with light traffic, and the large properties have some of Toronto’s most ancient and impressive urban trees.

It’s remarkable that even someone trying to explore can ride past the same streets over and over, within the densest part of their ride network.

This also marks over 6,040 km of mechanical bike exercise rides in Toronto.

Linking routes in western Toronto

Yesterday’s route in green

After work yesterday, I took advantage of the Bloor bike lanes prior to their removal and connected some disconnected tracks in the west of the city. I rode all the way to where the bike lanes end at Kipling, then took Dundas West northeast to where it splits: with St. Clair Avenue north of the rail lines and Dundas south. I took St. Clair to Prospect Cemetery, and then the familiar route north up the cemetery and then east along the York Beltline and Kay Gardiner Beltline trails.

Bad weather projected for Thursday has the Neon Ride delayed until Friday, and I am also talking with friends about a daylong ride north up the Humber ravine to the arboretum.