September 29, 2025
River Story
On the Queen Street bridge over the Don River in Toronto, there is inscribed the words, “this river I step in is not the river I stand in,” a phrase for which I had no frame of reference until yesterday when I dared to dip my feet in that river for the very first time. It was a moving experience, not least because of new reverence that’s resulted from the time I’ve spent this year reading river books (Theory of Water, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein; I think the book In Crisis, on Crisis, by James Cairns is also a river book; I still want to read Robert MacFarlane’s Is a River Alive?). But also because this river has been a vein through the body of my entire life, but I’ve never been able to get close to it. Growing up hearing stories about “The dirty Don,” catching glimpses from the subway as we cross the Danforth Viaduct, various journeys into the ravine with my kids to attempt to find it, but we never managed, and the nearest I could get was a view from the Riverdale Foot Bridge, which still wasn’t close enough.
But yesterday at Biidaasige Park, which opened in July, I finally got to meet the river properly, and to celebrate its return to wildness after more than a century of being hemmed in by concrete where it meets Lake Ontario, more than 20 years of planning resulting finally paying off. Pollinators were buzzing with bees and butterflies, and the trails were lined with people who were there, like we were, for the final of four processions of “A Lake Story” that took place over the weekend, an art event by Melissa McGill, commissioned and presented by The Bentway, and performed in collaboration with Jason Logan of the Toronto Ink Company. There couldn’t have been a more gorgeous day for such a spectacle, the sky a vivid blue that reflected in the water as hundreds of volunteers paddled canoes through the park and out into Lake Ontario, each vessel equipped with a flag dyed with different natural inks from Toronto’s waterfront, an array of beautiful hues that echoed and complemented the landscape.
It was a spectacular event, such a beautiful afternoon, made extra magic by the Blue Jays winning the American League East title at the Sky Dome while all this was going on. And I just felt so lucky to be a character in the story of this place, which “A Lake Story” had us thinking about so deeply. At a moment when declarations of “the world’s burning” are so ubiquitous that I don’t even hear them anymore, it seemed incredible to be paying attention to a different kind of narrative, to be here as a witness as the Don River is returned to life and to wildness. To remember what humanity is capable of when people work together and listen to wisdom of the natural world.
