The Kay Gardner Beltline Trail opened in 1989 and was eventually renamed for Forest Hill resident Kay Gardner in 2000.Dav LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
“Deep in the ravines, beside storm sewers and up hardscrabble dirt tracks, in the shadows of towers and bridges and over rotten logs, I’ve seen the intimate architecture of the city,” Andrea Curtis wrote in The Globe and Mail in 2021 during the pandemic. Comparing the landscape to the cadavers on display at Body Worlds, she called Toronto’s ravines “gruesome but also fascinating and weirdly beautiful.”
I likely fall into the gruesome camp, which is why I don’t hike Toronto’s ravines very often; I’d much rather be in an artificial canyon created by skyscrapers than below street-level with gnarly old trees reaching for the heavens and their roots threatening to trip me underfoot. Don’t get me wrong, I respect nature, I just need to know I’m only a few minutes away from a well-crafted espresso.
Which is why I’m angry with myself for not walking the Kay Gardner Beltline Trail more often, especially when I worked at Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue West from 1999 to 2014. Yes, I know the portion from Mount Pleasant Cemetery to Lascelles Boulevard, but I must confess I’d never walked it to the Allen Expressway, or that it had a sibling on the other side.
So, on a very mild day in late winter, I did. Well, most of it.
But first, a little history, and all from a fantastic, 135-page report prepared for the City of Toronto by Cycle Toronto in 2013. The Toronto Belt Line, a short-lived commuter rail service conceived in 1889 and in operation for just two years from 1892 to 1894, was meant to “connect Toronto’s downtown with the upscale railroad suburbs the company was planning” to build, but a “collapse in land prices” scuppered the project. While some tracks were pulled up, the midtown Toronto portion, beginning in 1910, was used by the Grand Trunk Railway for freight until 1970. Interestingly, when trains went through the Village of Forest Hill, there was a bylaw that prevented the conductor from blowing the whistle.
When the city began negotiating with CN to acquire the land and convert it to a linear park in 1970, Forest Hill residents went into overdrive. Fearing burglaries, vandalism, copulation, bicyclists and, ridiculously, “motorcycle gang members, peeping Toms and gay cruisers” (then again, this was 1970), almost every resident signed a petition to have the land “absorbed” into their backyards.
The battle raged into the 1980s, but with pressure and canvassing by Forest Hill resident Kay Gardner, who would run for municipal office in 1978 and finally win in 1985, and other key players, the Beltline opened in 1989 and would be renamed for Ms. Gardner in 2000.
I park my car at the top of Lascelles Boulevard beside the apartment buildings I call “the Five Sisters” (Brentwood Towers by architect Harry B. Kohl, 1958-61) and find the city-branded bollards easily. The first thing I notice is that the tall, elegant light standards that appear to the east don’t continue west of Lascelles. I’ll discover that there is virtually no lighting all the way to Allen. This, said the report’s authors a dozen years ago, “inspires trepidation. Thickly forested, the trail becomes shrouded in shadows well before dusk. At night, the trail is pitch black, with virtually no users.” Luckily, it’s 2:38 p.m., so I begin walking.
It’s true: despite being a few minutes away from Oriole Parkway and the 1956 Peter Dickinson-designed building at No. 240, I am surrounded by trees, romping squirrels and birdsong. Continuing on, it becomes an amazing simulation of a country allée, stretching into the distance, just as I begin jonesing for my afternoon espresso. It’s also interesting, as I get deeper into Forest Hill, to see the backs of the mansions, and the little gangplanks many homeowners have built to gain access to the trail.
Just before Eglinton Avenue West, however, changes in urban planning become evident as, to my right, 321 Chaplin Cres. – which opened as “the Belfontaine” in 1963 – and, to my left, the Mr. Lube oil and tire shop come into view. From Eglinton to Bathurst Street, apartment towers surround the Beltline, and lone joggers and dog-walkers change to families.
One observation after passing Larry Grossman Forest Hill Memorial Arena and the North Preparatory Junior Public School (Page & Steele, 1936): here, as the trail comes very close to the Chaplin Crescent sidewalk, it narrows considerably and looks more like a “desire line” (an unplanned trail created by shortcutting humans) than something official. Here, I think, is an opportunity for branding, for funnelling folks at the bus shelter to skip the bus and walk instead. How about some lighting, logos (a giant colourful belt?) or a gate?
As the Beltline straightens and points due west after Bathurst Street, it’s all houses again. Crossing Old Park Road, it’s nice to see North Prep’s cousin, West Preparatory Junior Public (also Page & Steele, 1941). But there isn’t much trail left: about 400 metres later, I hit a wall, literally, as the checkerboard-patterned soundproofing separating houses from the Allen Expressway abruptly ends my trek. At least someone has scrawled “tout est possible” on the wall to give me encouragement. I check my watch, 3:32 p.m., and my phone, more than 7,000 steps.
I take city streets back since my plantar fasciitis is begging not renavigate some of the ice sheets I encountered on portions of the trail (I’m sure they’re gone by now) and get back to my car at 4:30 p.m. I decide, however, to walk the little eastern portion of the Beltline since it’s so much fun to look down onto the TTC tracks and Yonge Street, and then poke a little into the cemetery portion. However, that long-overdue espresso is calling.
Happy spring, dear readers! I’ll walk the shorter York Beltline in late summer or early fall.