Words and photos by Tom Connell
Introduction
Toronto’s Don River has gotten better and better since its funeral in 1969. That was the year when environmental activists found a creative way to highlight the dire neglect and abuse that had been inflicted on the river over the prior 150 years of urban and industrial development surrounding the Don. The funeral stunt seemed to have worked, because for the last fifty years, the health of the Don River has been trending steadily in a positive direction. Over that time, the people of Toronto and its civic leaders have taken major steps that recognize the importance of the Don River for all the inestimable benefits arising from thriving urban ecosystems and accessible green space.
The year 2025 saw the achievement of one of the most significant positive changes in the recent life of the Don River. Last year, the mouth of the Don River was set free from a concrete channel that had constricted it since the early 1900s. The Don was given a completely new meandering and naturalized path for the final 1.5 kilometers leading to its outlet in Toronto’s inner harbour. Biidaasige Park is a new urban park of about 20 hectares (or 50 acres) running along both sides of the new channel; the park name means Sunlight Shining Towards Us in Anishinaabemowin. The new park was developed as part of the Don Mouth Naturalization Project. This was the culmination of years of planning and discussion that had been given its impetus by the visionary work of the Task Force to Bring Back the Don, a citizen advisory group commissioned by Toronto’s City Council in 1989.
For the last few years, no renderings of the planned river channel were complete without a colourful collection of canoes and other self-propelled craft gliding through the dappled sunshine of those digital visions. The plans even include a feature called Canoe Cove. With the new river channel coming to life, paddlers should accept the invitation to get to know this addition to Toronto’s offering of urban paddling destinations. This article provides some background on the Don River project; for those interested in an even more immersive experience, the river beckons.
A Brief Don River History
Prior to the founding of Toronto in the 1790s, the Don River was unrecognizable compared to the river of today. For generations, the river and valley had been used for transportation as well as for hunting and fishing by indigenous populations. The Don watershed was successively populated by the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas of the Credit River. An indigenous name of the Don River was Wonscotonach, possibly referring to fishing by fire light. The river took a meandering route from its headwaters in the Oak Ridges moraine down to its estuary at Ashbridge’s Bay. Originally, the mouth had been an expansive marsh land that, along with absorbent terrain and wetlands along the meandering river upstream, was capable of withstanding elevated seasonal water flows. The current name of the Don River was given in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, after the Don River in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. The East and West Don Rivers are the two principal tributaries, joining to form the “Lower” Don River about 5 km from the waterfront (or 8 km following the river itself).
The Don River shouldered a substantial burden from Toronto’s urbanization and industrialization through the mid-1900s. This included the location of industry up and down the river, initially powered by stream flow. The river was also a convenient disposal sink for industrial effluents and untreated sanitary sewage. Deforestation of the valley continued steadily. The natural river valley has been irreparably reshaped by a wide range of industrial uses since the late 1800s:
- The Don Valley has accommodated scores of mills, factories, and industrial facilities over the decades, including grist and lumber mills, paper plants, meat processing, and the like.
- The Don Valley Brickworks started operation in 1889.
- The Lower Don was turned into a straight channel for its final 2km to encourage commercial developments and shipping, completed in 1891.
- Railway lines were installed running up each side of the newly channelized river starting in the 1890s; one of these lines is still used for commuter rail.
- The Don Valley Parkway was completed in 1961 and runs along the east side of the river for much of its length.
More recently, industry has steadily moved out of the Lower Don valley. The last paper mill closed in 1989; now one of the earliest sites, Todmorden Mills, is a heritage site, theatre, gallery, and wildflower preserve. The Don Valley Brickworks ended its brick production in the 1980s, and now the site encompasses a wetland conservation area and a complex of buildings that are focused on the protection of urban nature and the promotion of green design. Parts of the Don Valley previously used for waste dumping and to collect snow and salt cleared from streets are now areas of active ecological restoration. Unfortunately, the Don Valley is still sometimes viewed as the path of least resistance for infrastructure siting; Metrolinx was planning to site a commuter rail diesel service yard in an environmentally significant area as recently as 2023, until dissuaded by public opposition.
The Don River Project
The need to reconfigure the Don River mouth was recognized by the Task Force to Bring Back the Don in its 1991 report, Bringing Back the Don. A primary issue needing to be addressed was the ongoing buildup of sediments in the lower Don, now exacerbated by the growing need for resilience against extreme weather events. The Task Force also recognized the need to restore the connection between the river and the lake, along with aquatic and terrestrial habitats that contribute to water quality and handling variable flow levels. The Task Force’s proposed creation of a river delta and wetlands area was the antecedent of today’s Don Mouth, with highly vegetated shorelines, berms to contain the river in flood, and supplementary channels to deal with high-water conditions.
Making progress in addressing the problems of the Lower Don has been greatly complicated by the many interests that come into play in the port lands area, including highway, rail and utility infrastructure, a range of industrial and commercial activities, land ownership complexities, and geophysical systems, along with jurisdictional responsibilities distributed among different levels of government. The not-for-profit agency Waterfront Toronto was created jointly by the three levels of government in 2001 to bring about the needed changes. Twenty-five years later, they have become a reality.
An early version of the current configuration was set out in detail in the Lower Don Lands Framework Plan, issued in 2010. This proposed framework set out an integrated approach to several interconnected objectives, including flood control, ecological restoration, urban renewal, sustainability, and reintegrating the Lower Don Lands with adjacent areas of the City.
The central feature of the current layout of the Lower Don Lands is the new naturalized Don River channel. For over a century, the Don River took a highly unnatural 90-degree right turn just after it passed under Lakeshore Boulevard and then ran down the Keating Channel for one kilometer to the Inner Harbour. The new configuration continues south from the Lakeshore Boulevard viaduct into a winding channel that gradually veers west and flows into the Inner Harbour. There is now an island between the old and new channels, and it has been named Ookwemin Minising, which is Anishinaabemowin for place of the black cherry trees. This is fitting because black cherry trees can be seen along the Keating Channel (and Cherry Street is a main north-south road across the Lower Don Lands). Biidaasige Park occupies a total of 20 hectares (50 acres) along both banks of the new section of the Don River. The park name translates as sunlight shining towards us.
The areas of Biidaasige Park to the east of Cherry Street were opened in 2025. Western sections of the park are expected to open between 2026 and 2028.
One of the most conspicuous features of Biidaasige Park is the expanse of wetland vegetation on both sides of the river. The vegetated shoreline provides resilience against fluctuating water levels. Even within the year after the park’s opening, the vibrancy and diversity of the riverbanks are an amazing contrast to the brownfield industrial site from five years ago. According to Waterfront Toronto, the park is a home for over 5,000 trees, 77,000 shrubs, and two-million herbaceous plants. The area even includes dead tree trunks to provide habitats for birds and other creatures. The selection of plants for the park includes many varieties with particular significance in local indigenous traditions, such as black cherry, tobacco, sagebrush, and sumac. The new plant communities have also been enriched by deeply buried seeds discovered during the excavation of the rivers, dating back to the 1800s and earlier. Researchers were able to germinate seeds of bullrushes and other marsh plants, which were then replanted at the site.
The Don Mouth renaturalization isn’t the only project that will have a major impact on the Don River water quality and ecosystem. The city is in the process of completing a major upgrade to Toronto’s sewerage system that is designed to ensure that overflows from combined sewerage (storm water and sanitary sewage) is kept out of the Don River and other waterways. The lower Don will benefit from a new 10.5 km tunnel (the Coxwell Bypass Tunnel) that will carry combined sewage overflows to the Ashbridge’s Bay treatment plant and will include a number of overflow storage shafts at different locations. The storage shafts are around 20 m wide and 50 m deep. Although this infrastructure is underground and therefore largely invisible, it is an important complement to the transformation of the lower Don and will contribute to the health of the Don River ecological corridor, and to recreational enjoyment of the Don River and inner harbour areas.
Paddling the Don River
The transformation of the Don River will create welcome opportunities for urban paddlers. However, it remains a work-in-progress, and there is still much to be done to realize the potential for this area to get people into canoes and out on the Don.
There are a few put-in options for paddlers interested in exploring the Biidaasige area. Currently the easiest way to get a boat into the water is to park in the lot at Commissioners and Munition Streets. From here, a portage crosses the street at the lights and proceeds to paddling launch areas within about 200 m. This can be a crowded area and is most easily done outside of peak traffic and park-use hours. There may at least be one more put-in area once additional west sections of the park are open later in 2026. This may be in the vicinity of the Canoe Cove area. Currently the area lacks a facility for storage of boats and equipment for public use; hopefully this is added to the park configuration in the near future. It would have the potential to boost public access to recreational paddling, which should be recognized as an essential requirement for Biidaasige.
Due to continuing construction activities, the Keating Channel and upriver sections of the Don are not currently accessible to paddlers. For now, it is not possible to circumnavigate Ookwemin Minising island, nor to explore upriver sections of the Don. Eventually, the Keating Channel Precinct will host a mix of residential, retail, office uses, and parkland that will be a natural venue for paddling surrounded by an increasingly vibrant quayside community.
To the south, Cherry Beach provides a convenient launch area with ample parking that can be used as a starting point for exploring Tommy Thompson Park (the Leslie Street Spit), as well as the Toronto Island archipelago. From Cherry Beach it is about a 2 km paddle through the inner harbour to the mouth of the Don. The inner harbour can have irregular waves and boat traffic, so paddlers should exercise appropriate caution. Similarly, to get from Cherry Beach across to the island requires crossing the 200 m Eastern Gap, which can have a fair amount of boat traffic on weekends. Like the Biidaasige river channel, the lagoons of Toronto Island provide sheltered conditions well suited to appreciation of the flora and fauna at the water’s edge.
There is an enjoyable 8 km trip downriver from the forks of the Don where the East and West Don branches meet if water conditions cooperate (but currently obstructed by heavy construction in the area around the Keating Channel). Just upstream from the forks are two weirs that must be portaged; otherwise, whitewater on the Don is mostly class 1 with a couple of more challenging sections. For many years, TRCA organized a fundraising event (Paddle-the-Don) for paddlers, aided by a release of water from an upstream dam. This annual event was discontinued in 2020 due to COVID-19. TRCA has said that it “continues to monitor conditions and assess potential future opportunities in collaboration with partners”. Over the years, plans have been put forward to partially renaturalize the artificially straightened Don narrows above Queen Street, including ways to improve the river’s flow in this section. This would open the possibility for easier travel by canoes and kayaks between the Brick Works area and Biidaasige. Some improved water approaches close to the Brick Works would be a real game-changer for recreational enjoyment of the river between Pottery Road and Biidaasige.
A paddle down the Don provides a wonderful perspective on urban nature, and at some places along the way you can forget you are in a major urban center.
An extraordinary event in September 2025 highlighted the strong connection between canoeing and the Don River. This took place shortly after the opening of Biidaasige Park, with the presentation of The Lake Story, a magnificent procession of canoes staged across the new Don River channel and the inner harbour. This event was created by artist Melissa McGill, who has produced other site-specific productions in places like Venice and Rhode Island, with a goal of connecting them with water storytelling. The Toronto production involved a fleet of around 120 canoes proceeding along the Don River, circling the inner harbour, and then back up to the starting point at the east end of Biidaasige Park. At the same time, a large crowd of spectators lined the shoreline and bridges. Every canoe carried a 5 m fabric banner, dyed with one of many colours derived from natural materials from the region. Each canoe had three people, one of whom had the important job of keeping the banner aloft, holding onto the bamboo flagpole. The Lake Story was an unforgettable spectacle, and a worthy initiation of Biidaasige as a home for paddlers.
- Overall investment: $1.4b
- Sewer project: $3b
Sources & References
- Reclaiming the Don (Jennifer Bonnell)
- Bringing Back the Don (Task Force)
- Tales of the Don, Remembering the Don (Charles Sauriol)
- Lower Don Lands Framework Plan, May 2010, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., Waterfront Toronto