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An accidental wilderness

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Photo By TRCA
From landfill to natural haven
  • Created from material excavated to build Toronto’s new office towers and rubble from street repairs in the 50s, the Leslie Street Spit was supposed to serve as the outer harbour for a growing city. The expected increase in shipping from the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 never happened, and the 5-kilometre peninsula at the foot of Leslie that eventually became known as Tommy Thompson Park has since blossomed – after a pitched battle against the city led by friends of the Spit – into a 250-hectare urban wilderness for birdwatchers and naturalists, with 200,000 yearly visitors. It also inspired the name of local musical act the Leslie Spit Treeo.
  • Photo By Jim Richards
    Birds of many feathers
  • Meadows, forests, wetlands and mud flats make the site particularly attractive to migrating shorebirds, songbirds and raptors. More than 300 species of birds have been recorded at the Spit, which is home to an astonishing 32 per cent of the breeding population of black-crowned night herons (pictured) in all of Canada, and has been designated an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. Its colonies of ring-billed gulls, double-crested cormorants, common terns, Caspian terns and herring gulls are among the largest in the world. Sightings of both great grey and boreal owls, pushed south because of scarcer food supplies up north, are increasing.
  • Photo By Jim Richards
    Butterfly effect
  • The Spit is a natural migration corridor and resting place for monarch butterflies on their yearly migration to winter feeding grounds in Mexico. Plentiful milkweed, thistle and other weeds provide good food sources. Although documentation of butterflies only began in earnest in the early 90s, more than 40 species have been identified so far, including less common varieties like the silver-spotted skipper, hairstreak and copper.
  • Photo By Jim Richards
    Strange range
  • Despite its close proximity to the city, the Spit is home to a wide range of mammals, including rabbits (eastern cottontail), groundhogs, beavers (which love the bark of the cottonwood trees so prevalent here), mink, muskrats and even foxes and coyotes (pictured) – oh yes, and raccoons. They’ve all found their way to the Spit by following the naturalized corridors of the Don Valley and crossing the inhospitable brownfields that make up the port lands.
  • Photo By TRCA
    Guarded peninsula
  • Over the decades, failed Olympic bids and plans to allow development on the Spit have threatened to mess with the accidental wilderness. It’s no different today: landfilling continues, and proposals for a Parks Canada discovery centre, a tree farm in the base lands and a not-yet-dead proposal for a wind farm are still very much in the picture.
  • Photo By Jim Richards
    Reptiles abound
  • Habitat creation projects and the abundance of winter hibernating areas have helped boost once-declining reptile and amphibian populations. Eastern garter and northern brown snakes, snapping turtles (pictured) and American toads are among the more common species found. But the rare all-black eastern garter snake usually found along the north shore of Lake Erie has found homes in the tangle of black asphalt and broken-up roadways that make up “clean landfill” on the Spit.
  • Woodland wonderland
  • Close to 400 plant species, many nationally and provincially rare, are found here, all of them spontaneous growth. Seeds of more common species of trees and plants arrived with the landfill that created the park or were carried by birds or wind from the nearby Toronto Islands. Eastern cottonwood and willow trees dominate the sandy areas along with poplar, aspen and dogwood. Low-lying areas are populated mostly by sedges and rushes (also the best sites for orchids like the bog twayblade). The beaches provide habitat for “pioneer” plants such as silverweed. Wetlands have added to the Spit’s diversity but also encourage the growth of noxious weeds like purple loosestrife.
  • Winter boon
  • Weather can be cold and unpredictable on the Spit, which gets more fog and about 30 per cent less snow than the city in winter. But Lake Ontario moderates temperatures, creating areas of green when the rest of the city is brown. Lower-lying areas are microclimates where plants like winter mushrooms and berries can grow right through the coldest months of the year.
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