The Meadoway, Toronto.Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
Lisa Turnbull and I have been in the ravine below Scarborough’s Botany Hill Park for less than two minutes when a trio of white-tailed deer scamper across a clearing to our right. They’re so close, I see that one of them is just out of fawnhood.
“We always see deer down in here,” Ms. Turnbull says with a big smile. “I feel like it’s such a peaceful area, it almost feels like you’re just transported out of the city. Yet, there you’ve got the hospital and you’ve got Ellesmere [Road].”
We are picking our way along a relatively new, winding path that will connect us to The Meadoway, an ambitious–and already successful–transformation of mowed-lawn, practically lifeless hydroelectric corridor (well, save for the electricity!) into a fairyland trail of blooms, buzzing bees, butterflies, benches, bridges, and walking/cycling trails that stretch from the Don to the Rouge rivers.
It began in 2012, an egg really, near Thomson Memorial Park (Brimley Road and Lawrence Avenue East) as a pilot project called the “Scarborough Centre Butterfly Trail.” But, thanks to a “generous pledge of funding” by the Weston Family Foundation, it was able to grow into a well-fed caterpillar that was rechristened “The Meadoway” in 2018, which is also when Ms. Turnbull, associate director, restoration and infrastructure at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) and her team got involved. Seven years later, this chrysalis is almost a full adult, with only a few connections left to complete.
“We are still working away at some of those trail gaps,” says Ms. Turnbull. “We’re not to the point now where we’re fully connected, but the good thing is we have capital funding committed for 95 per cent of those gaps, and so whether it’s design [or] we have construction [beginning], I can show you on a map.”
The map is impressive. Sixteen kilometres and split into seven sections: the “Bermondsey-Western Gateway” at the Don River, now at 10 hectares of “established meadow” and a completed trail by 2026; the completed “Massey Wilds” with 20 hectares of meadow, which stretches from Pharmacy Avenue to Kennedy Road; “Lawrence Avenue Community Hub” sports 11 ha of “newly established” meadow and carries walkers to Thomson Memorial; the original bit, still known as “Scarborough Centre Butterfly Trail,” now has 25 ha of established meadow and reaches Scarborough Golf Club Road; Section 5, where we are, is called “The Ravines” and boasts 16 ha of new meadow and a competed trail; “Eastern Entrance” from Neilson Road to Conlins Road still needs work; and the final bit, “The Rouge Gateway,” has 9 ha of established meadow and a completed trail.
After examining a little rest area with a newly planted red maple, we cross the Corten steel bridge over Highland Creek and pause on an elevated platform over a wetland – made of galvanized metal so it won’t flake and leach into the soil – before walking a curved trail that deposits us into the hydro corridor north of Ellesmere Road.
While things are not in full bloom on this final day of April, it’s still a sight: dense, tall-but-not-too-tall plants fill the spaces around and underneath the hydro towers, there is a mown edge, and then, on the periphery, the walking/cycling trail. Even today, at only 8 C, there are joggers and dog-walkers.
But how does the TRCA select the plants?
“There’s two parts to the species selection,” answers Ms. Turnbull, pointing to milkweed, aster, bergamot and various grasses. “One is we have a restoration team that has expertise in what are the right meadow plants, but the other is that we have an approved plant list from Hydro One … and it all has to do with their height … this is an active corridor [and] they need to maintain their infrastructure.”
“The thing about meadow habitat is they can drive over it, it will bounce back,” she continues. “And this was something that they became more comfortable with, in realizing that we’ve got no woody stems here; one of the things that we do, which is very helpful to Hydro One, is [we are] constantly checking the corridor to make sure there are no obstructions.”
All of this activity assures homeowners as well, since many Scarborough backyards touch the corridor: “We really try to work collaboratively with them,” says Ms. Turnbull. “If they bring up a concern with us about seeing garbage or different things, we have a good line of communication. … They may have concerns about the [plant] matter coming up too close to their property, so where we can we’ve increased the buffer.”
And speaking of buffers, there’s no need to bust out the lead apron or make a tinfoil hat before visiting, or keeping little Timmy’s school group from participating in one of the TRCA’s popular wildflower planting programs. Not only has the TRCA worked with Hydro One on safe distances from the towering poles, the City of Toronto also ensured that electromagnetic readings were taken along the Meadoway’s proposed routes before they were paved.
“It’s not typically a problem in this corridor,” Ms. Turnbull reassures. “This is not one of Hydro One’s higher voltage corridors; actually, if you go to Durham Region a little further to the east, their corridor is a higher voltage and it may be a consideration for trail design when they start looking at it there.”
And they are looking. Durham’s website has a “Durham Region Meadoway Visioning Study” that proposes shaking hands with Scarborough’s and then stretching “more than 30 kilometres” to Oshawa. And, because the Meadoway is part of the High Line Network – a group of infrastructure reuse projects similar to New York’s famous High Line – there has been international interest, tour group visits and a hunger for more information, which prompted the TRCA to put together a 60-page “Blueprint for Naturalizing Infrastructure Corridors.”
Despite the attention and success, however, the TRCA continues to seek “sustained revenue for the long-term maintenance and management” of the Meadoway. “In fact, this is a meeting I have this afternoon,” Ms. Turnbull finishes. “We’re working on a corporate sponsorship program.”