New river valley connects to Lake Ontario in massive Port Lands project

“When you look at the Don, you see it in that poor Keating Channel and you think, ‘I want to set you free!’ And here is (its valley): free, going to the inner harbour,” said local Coun. Paula Fletcher (Ward 14, Toronto-Danforth), referencing the first of three key connections of water to reclaim the Don River.

It will also provide “a more productive and complete habitat” to draw in new wildlife once lost to the industrial landscape of the area, said Don Forbes, project director overseeing soil remediation and earthworks for the Port Lands’ flood protection project. In fact, beavers are already returning.

A water ceremony on Monday near the yellow Cherry Street bridge right next to the water marked the milestone, hosted by Elder Val King with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. She was accompanied by politicians and project directors with the tri-government organization Waterfront Toronto, which is overseeing the project and a design team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

“Today is just one of the most exciting days,” said Fletcher, “because we haven’t been allowed to come down here, actually, to see the river this close up.”

The removal of the west plug is part of a $1.4-billion infrastructure project to flood-proof the area, which includes the re-naturalization of the Don River’s mouth and is one of the largest in North America. It has been nearly a decade in the making and dreamt about for far longer.

The area had long sat derelict because of its polluted, industrial history. Turning it into green space with functional wetlands that absorb excess floodwater, as well as carbon, has also opened up the flood plain for development. 

Forbes noted there’s a lot of work being done to ensure the water getting into the river valley remains clean, including improvements to the stormwater network and new infrastructure to the nearby sewer system to prevent contaminants such as oil, grit and other stormwater pollutants from the street getting into the river valley.

However, the Don River is not connected to the lake along its new route just yet. Workers are still weeks away from completely removing another plug, in the north part of the Port Lands, which separates the Don River from its new river valley. The south plug, separating the valley and the Don Greenway from the Shipping Channel will also be removed.

The cost of removing the west and north plugs, Forbes estimates, is within the range of $5 million to $6 million.

Removing the north plug will officially reroute the Don River through its new valley and into the harbour. The Don River used to flow into one of the largest marshes on Lake Ontario at Ashbridges Bay. In the late 1800s, the Don was separated from the marshlands, which were filled in the 1910s to create a port industrial district. That forced the river into a right angle that currently meets the Keating Channel.

After all these years and all this work, Forbes said, one of the most rewarding elements was seeing what this reclamation means through other people’s eyes, especially the citizen advocacy task force Bring Back the Don who was present at Monday’s ceremony, which was created in 1989 and some members remained on the front lines of reclaiming the Don ever since.

“We’re all up here, supposedly really important people. But really, truly, I’m looking at all of you,” Fletcher said to some members of the task force at the celebration including John Wilson, Mark Wilson and Rollo Myers. “You are the important people that have brought this to this stage today.”

Waterfront Toronto plans to open the whole river, once it’s free-flowing, to paddlers in the summer of 2025.

With files from Ben Cohen.