Like a rooftop garden in an overcrowded financial district, Toronto's Leslie Street Spit is an unexpected urban oasis whose narrow escape from development has brought marshes, lagoons and forests to the centre of Canada's largest city.
Jutting into Lake Ontario just minutes from the worst of Toronto traffic, the more formally named Tommy Thompson Park was created over 60 years ago by the dumping of dredged sand, concrete chunks and earth fill, expanding what was once just a thin strip of land in the city's busy harbour.
Before & After
. Toronto, Canada. NASA/Mark Blinch
. Toronto, Canada. NASA/Mark Blinch
Before: Leslie Street Spit in 1972. After: The same area is seen in 2015.
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The dumping continues to this day. While development plans have threatened the spit from its early days, the passion of the cyclists, birders, hikers and naturalists who flock to the artificial peninsula every weekend has preserved the unlikely park and left nature to prevail.
For some, the spit offers the best views out to the Great Lake and towards the city's soaring skyline. For others, the auto-free roads offer safe, serene cycling, running and roller-blading in a city whose streets are often clogged with cars.
Video
Karen McDonald, project manager with the conservation authority, talks about the landfill site’s development.
The spit of land has a diverse ecosystem, with a rugged eastern shoreline giving way to wildflower meadows in the middle sections and marshy lagoons on the western shore, beneath the city skyline.
The gradual transformation from a lifeless pile of rubble to an urban wilderness means the Leslie Spit is never finished, an ever-changing and unmanicured parcel of water and land.