From Brown to Green? The Planning and Implementation of the Don Valley Brick Works’ Restoration
By Anna Côté
July 26th, 2013
A Major Paper submitted to the Faculty of Environmental Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Student Signature:______Supervisor Signature: ______
Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 4 FOREWORD...... 5 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 8 CHAPTER 2: THE CASE FOR BROWNFIELD-TO-GREENSPACE PROJECTS ...... 11 CHAPTER 3: SITE SELECTION, METHODOLOGY, & CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION ...... 19 3.1 CHOICE OF SITE ...... 19 3.2 METHODOLOGY ...... 20 3.2.1 Literature review...... 20 3.2.2 Policy and Planning Document Review...... 20 3.2.3 Site Visits ...... 21 3.2.4 On-Site Interviews ...... 21 3.3 EVALUATION ...... 23 3.3.1 Political Ecology...... 23 3.3.2. Higgs’ Ecological Restoration ...... 28 CHAPTER 4: SITE HISTORY AND CURRENT SITE DESCRIPTION...... 30 4.1 LOCATION AND PRE-QUARRY ERA ...... 30 4.2 BRICK-MAKING YEARS ...... 32 4.3 CURRENT SITE DESCRIPTION & OWNERSHIP...... 33 CHAPTER 5: QUARRY RESTORATION TIMELINE ...... 37 5.1 FAILED ATTEMPT AT PURCHASE OF LAND...... 38 5.2 EXPROPRIATION & BEYOND ...... 39 5.3 NOT A TRADITIONAL BROWNFIELD? ...... 41 5.4 RESTORATION WORK...... 44 CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS & ANALYSIS 1 – POLITICAL FORCES...... 49 6.1 IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT ...... 49 6.1.1 Bring Back the Don Movement...... 50 6.1.2 Friends of the Valley...... 51 6.1.3 But Where Are the Others?...... 55 6.2 MONEY MATTERS ...... 58 6.2.1 Expropriation Costs ...... 58 6.2.2 Working Budget for Restoration & Maintenance...... 59 6.3 AMALGAMATION ...... 61 CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS & ANALYSIS 2 – ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION ...... 63 7.1 GENERAL CONTEXT: PREVAILING MINDSETS INFLUENCING THE RESTORATION...... 63 7.2 SPECIFIC APPROACHES USED IN THE RESTORATION ...... 64 7.2.1 Ecological Succession...... 64 7.2.2 Native Species...... 66 7.2.3 Combination of Habitats ...... 68 7.2.4 Focus on Water Systems ...... 69 7.3 ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION ANALYSIS ...... 72 7.3.1 Ecological Integrity ...... 72 7.3.2 Historical Fidelity ...... 74 7.3.3 Focal Practice...... 76
2 7.3.4 Wild Design ...... 78 7.3.5 Overall Evaluation of Ecological Restoration ...... 80 CHAPTER 8: FINDINGS & ANALYSIS 3 – HUMAN-NATURE INTERACTION...... 82 8.1 GUIDING VISIONS BEHIND HUMAN-NATURE INTERACTION ...... 82 8.1.1 Built to Demonstrate...... 83 8.1.2 “Managed Forever”...... 84 8.2 TYPES OF INTENDED INTERACTION ON SITE ...... 87 8.3 TYPES OF ACTUAL INTERACTION ON SITE ...... 88 8.3.1 Negative Effects...... 89 8.3.2 Positive Effects ...... 92 8.4 DESTROYING THAT WHICH WE SEEK ...... 93 CHAPTER 9: TRANSFERABLE LESSONS...... 96 9.1 POLITICAL FACTORS & ACTORS ...... 96 9.2 ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS...... 99 9.3 HUMAN-NATURE BALANCE ...... 100 CHAPTER 10: CONCLUSION...... 103 REFERENCES...... 106 APPENDIX A – LIST OF INTERVIEW SUBJECTS ...... 110
3 Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thank you to my friends, family, and peers in supporting me through the realization of this paper and my MES degree. A special thank you to Dr. Jennifer
Foster, my academic supervisor, who shared a passion for this site and this topic. She motivated me to ask questions I had not considered, to incorporate critical concepts I had not previously explored, and helped me connect with people central to my research. I am also very grateful to the eight interviewees who participated in my research. Their obvious enthusiasm and care for the site was infectious and their knowledge and expertise on the Brick Work’s restoration was indispensable to my work. The dedication that people expressed to the site is a testament to the magic that natural environment spaces hold, and a hopeful indication of their ongoing importance and prevalence in our urban landscapes.
4 Foreword
My relationship with the Don Valley Brick Works located in Toronto, Canada began several years before this research took place. The site first came to my attention in
2008, when Evergreen – the national charity responsible for the redevelopment of the
Brick Works Industrial Pad – began animating the site and planning for its re-use. By this time, the Quarry Park was already restored and open to the public, and the unique quality of the landscape and the programming on site attracted my attention. I volunteered at events, attended the Saturday morning famers’ markets, and would often bike down the ravine to this off-the-beaten-path location. Yet still I knew relatively little of the site’s history or battles – both political and ecological – that were fought in order to create the place it is today.
My engagement with those issues deepened in the summer of 2012 when I began an internship on site with Evergreen as part of the fulfillment of the Planning Program in my Master in Environmental Studies (MES). Though my internship focused largely on the Industrial Pad – my tasks being the rearticulation of their Heritage Interpretation Plan and the implementation of urban agriculture projects – my understanding and appreciation of the property as a whole deepened and I spent many hours out in the
Quarry Park. Insight that I gained on the history of the site’s Industrial Pad was directly connected to the history of the quarry.
It was therefore a natural fit to make the Don Valley Brick Works quarry restoration the focus of my final research project for my MES. This paper contributes to fulfilling the requirements of my MES and the learning objectives outlined in my Plan of
Study. My Area of Concentration is defined as the study of environmental planning in its
5 application to the creation and management of areas of environmental significance used by humans to interact with nature. By studying the process of converting a brownfield to a greenspace of urban natural recreation, this research has directly contributed to my understanding of a particular instance of environmental planning. This further advances the fulfillment of my learning objectives: 1.1 and 1.2, gaining familiarity with environmental planning theory (specifically, restoration theory) and its application in an area of environmental significance; 2.1 and 2.2, developing knowledge of the practices of sustainable creation and management of areas of environmental significance and how to plan for their use for recreational purposes; and finally 3.1 and 3.2, learning how to integrate a political ecological perspective to environmental planning and applying this framework to a specific case. I have further gained a greater understanding of the difficulties in managing – yet also the importance of – human-nature interaction.
One of the more difficult questions posed to interviewees in undertaking this research was whether or not they considered the restored site a success. I purposely let them define “success”, and while the definitions were varied, the resounding answer was yes. In this paper, I attempt to draw out what led to and constitutes this success.
Nevertheless, some lessons to be taken from the site’s restoration also stem from shortcomings – that were in some cases all but inevitable – as well as a call to greater consideration of some approaches used in planning such sites.
The Don Valley Brick Works quarry restoration has been a leader in natural environment park planning and management in the region, and has a complex history involving an impressive number of people. It has lessons to offer future projects of a similar type – of which I hope there will be many. These findings will be elucidated in the following pages.
6 Abstract
This paper examines the restoration of the Don Valley Brick Works quarry. An argument is made that with city planning increasingly emphasizing densification, there will be an amplified need to create greenspace in already-developed areas. Brownfields present one of the only opportunities to do so. The Don Valley Brick Works was therefore selected to be studied as a well-known example of a brownfield-to-greenspace conversion in the city of Toronto. After providing background on the site and the restoration initiatives, this paper examines three key areas in the restoration. The first is a political ecology analysis of the forces and actors that shaped the project from its conception to current operation. Secondly, the approaches employed in the ecological restoration itself are outlined and the outcome is evaluated using Eric Higgs’ four criteria of good ecological restoration. Finally, the human-nature interaction on site is examined by elucidating the approaches used in planning for human use of the site and describing the anticipated as well as actual interactions taking place. This research finds that the political forces that shaped the restoration led to both positive and negative impacts which have clearly marked the type of ecology found on site. Further, as a result of the prioritization of certain modes of human-nature interaction, the site’s ecological health is weak in certain areas, leading to questions of problem closure which aim to challenge the status quo in the future planning and management of the Brick Works. The goal of examining these issues is to provide lessons which can be applied to future brownfield- to-greenspace conversions, and these are subsequently outlined. The paper concludes by suggesting areas for further research.
7 Chapter 1: Introduction
Figure 1: View of the Brick Works site from the North Slope. Source: Evergreen Brick Works Master Plan, 2006.
The Don Valley Brick Works site is a landmark in the City of Toronto. The discovery of clay on the property in the late 1800s dictated the site’s transformation into one of Canada’s largest brick-making facilities, operating for a century. When the clay and shale dried up and the brick-making activity ceased, questions began to arise as to what could, should, and would become of such an industrial site.
This paper examines the process of planning and implementing the transformation of the Don Valley Brick Works from an abandoned industrial lot to an urban greenspace used for natural area recreation. The site is divided into two key areas: the Quarry Park, including the quarry slopes, situated at the north end of the site; and the Industrial Pad, where the repurposed brick-making facilities and buildings now stand as an environmental community centre to the south. While it is impossible to speak of one without addressing the other, this research is largely focused on the creation of the
Quarry Park, and this focus is maintained throughout the resulting paper.
The principal research questions in this work are “How was the conversion of the
Don Valley Brick Works quarry site to a recreational greenspace achieved?” followed by
8 “Is this site an example of successful restoration?”. The intent is to answer these questions with a view to gaining practical lessons which can be applied to facilitate further successful urban brownfield-to-greenspace projects, both in Toronto and further afield, for reasons outlined in Chapter 2. In order to accomplish this goal, the research focuses on three main areas of inquiry: (1) The first is a political ecological analysis of the site’s transformation, in order to elucidate the political forces, groups and events that impacted the outcome of the site. (2) Secondly, an analysis of the ecological restoration itself is undertaken in order to elucidate the ecological themes, as well as to evaluate the site’s ecological integrity, historical environmental influences, community engagement, and attention to local urban ecology. (3) Thirdly, human-nature interaction on site is studied in order to understand how it was planned for, its impacts, and its ongoing management. In order to analyze the process and success of the site’s conversion, a political ecological analysis is employed and Eric Higgs’ four-pronged concept of good ecological restoration is applied. The goal is to provide an analysis which can serve to inform others interested in brownfield-to-greenspace conversion about this project’s execution so that they may derive inspiration, learn from its mistakes, and gain knowledge to guide future work.
This paper builds on the research and scholarship of Jennifer Foster, the supervisor of this work as well as a professor at York University’s Faculty of
Environmental Studies. Professor Foster has published several papers which examine the restoration of the Brick Works site or discuss issues related to it, the most relevant of which is her 2005 paper entitled Restoration of the Don Valley Brick Works: Whose restoration? Whose space? This paper highlights the influence of an elite community over the transformation of the site from industrial complex to urban greenspace, while
9 considering various ways the restoration project succeeded and fell short. In the paper that follows, findings from the current research will be presented in connection with some of Professor Foster’s work, and in some cases will provide an update on issues which have seen an evolution since Foster’s research was conducted.
Finally, it is important to note that in the literature covering brownfields and ecological restoration, multiple terms are used to describe subtly different concepts (for example, remediation, restoration, reclamation, and revitalization). Different authors and practitioners have made cases for using one term over the other in different instances (see
Kirkwood, 2001; Higgs, 2003; Donati, Rossi, & Brebia, 2004; Berger, 2008; Tongway &
Ludwig, 2011). In my research, I will employ only the terms restoration – specifically referring to ecological restoration as outlined by Higgs (2003) – and conversion to describe the more general shifting of land from one state to another. Redevelopment is a term which will also be used in order to discuss the larger approach to brownfield re-use, and under which the other two concepts fall.
10 Chapter 2: The Case for Brownfield-to-Greenspace Projects1
The Don Valley Brick Works site stands out as a brownfield restoration for its conversion from an abandoned industrial site to an urban greenspace used for natural recreation. While it is not uncommon for industrial sites to be ecologically restored to greenspace, or for urban brownfields to be redeveloped, it is less common for the two to be found together. In what follows, the case is made for a greater emphasis to be placed – in Toronto, in Canada, and in other cities and countries around the world – on this opportunity for brownfield conversion.
In the 1990s, the term “brownfield” was coined, its use rising rapidly in the new millennium (Hollander, Kirkwood & Gold, 2010). The most basic definition of brownfields describes them as “abandoned or under-used properties where past actions have caused real or suspected environmental contamination” (National Round Table
1998, 4). However, described as being located predominantly in urban areas, they are thought to stand out as a specific class of contaminated site in that they offer an “active potential for redevelopment” (NRT, 2003, p. ix) and often “provide economically viable business opportunities” (NRT, 1998, p. 4). In Canada alone, there are estimated to be anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 of these sites, including ones as large as decommissioned refineries and former railway yards to smaller-scale sites such as abandoned gas stations and drycleaners (NRT, 2003, p. ix; MAH, 2008).
What becomes of brownfield sites is of increasing importance. In the wake of urban de-industrialization, urbanization continues to advance, city sprawl is increasingly capped with greenbelts, and a new philosophy of mixed-use densification is beginning to
1 Some of the information contained in this section was presented in the author’s MES Research Proposal, submitted November 13th 2012.
11 prevail. In North America, this philosophy emerged in the 1990s and is frequently termed
“Smart Growth” (Smart Growth Network, 2002). In 1994, the American Planning
Association began a project called “Growing Smart” and in 2002 published a document espousing Smart Growth principles entitled Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook:
Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change. This has provided a foundation for the movement on the North American continent (APA, 2002).
Christopher Hawkins offers his articulation of the Smart Growth approach in his
2011 paper, Smart Growth Policy Choice: A Resource Dependency and Local
Governance Explanation: “Smart growth initiatives in general aim to minimize the adverse impact of physical development on the natural environment by promoting denser development and targeting growth to areas already served by infrastructure” (p. 679). In large part a response to deterring sprawl, Smart Growth is therefore – among other goals
– championing a planning approach that increases density in urban cores.
As a result, brownfields are increasingly becoming a focus of urban planning. Due to rising urban populations and increased densification, urban real estate is at a premium in many North American cities, and brownfields offer the once-overlooked potential for
(re)development. As the Smart Growth Network (an organization that brings together professionals, environmental groups, developers, and governmental organizations to promote the Smart Growth approach) states, this movement is in part a response to communities “questioning the practice of abandoning brownfields in older communities while developing open space and prime agricultural land and thereby damaging our environment at the suburban fringe” (2002, p. 1). Corroborating this finding, a paper by
Ye, Mandpe, and Meyer in which they analyzed the Smart Growth statements from ten
American organizations finds that one element common to all articulations of the concept
12 is infill development. They explain: “Infill development involves using vacant and abandoned spaces, both for housing and new nonlocal businesses, in order to avoid urban area spatial expansion while promoting economic growth” (2005, p. 308). Hence, the implementation of Smart Growth policies and approaches frequently targets the re-use of brownfields, leading to questions about how such sites should be redeveloped.
While the concept of brownfield redevelopment is gaining prominence, the type of redevelopment envisioned and encouraged for these sites has typically been narrowly focused: they are specifically perceived as opportunities to promote economic development (De Sousa, 2002; 2006; also see quote above from Ye, Mandpe & Meyer,
2005). A review of recent books on the topic (Russ, 2000; Donati, Rossi & Brebbia,
2004; Hollander, Kirkwood & Gold, 2010; Sarni, 2010) and organizations involved in brownfield redevelopment (About Remediation, the Canadian Brownfields Network, and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy) affirms this bias.
Within these works and on organization websites, the grounds for encouraging brownfield redevelopment frequently cite commercial and business opportunities, while leisure, recreation and ecological restoration are options little discussed, if at all.
However, there are good reasons for encouraging redevelopment of the latter type.
Christopher De Sousa studies the impacts of brownfield-to-greenspace projects
(2002; 2006) and highlights a number of resulting benefits. Among the findings is that not only do brownfield-to-greenspace projects quickly gain regular use by neighbourhood residents, the residents also report several improvements in quality of life indicators (De
Sousa, 2006). De Sousa’s surveys find that 90% of respondents believe greenspace is a good use for a former brownfield site (when asked specifically about one in their neighbourhood), a finding echoed in an earlier survey by Greenberg and Lewis (2000)
13 which finds that 90% of survey respondents strongly prefer leisure and park areas for future brownfield use. Finally, De Sousa also points out that while brownfield-to- greenspace projects are not direct economic opportunities, they contribute to general neighbourhood revitalization and appeal, as well as resident well-being, thus providing indirect economic benefits (2006).
There are yet additional benefits of brownfield-to-greenspace projects beyond the immediate human-interest perspective. Developed formally in the 20th century, but increasingly accepted toward the turn of the 21st (Gaston, 2010), the field of urban ecology is founded on an awareness of the natural processes that take place in and help constitute cities. As Kevin J. Gaston states in the introduction to his book Urban Ecology:
Ecology has variously been described as the scientific study of the processes determining the abundance and distribution of organisms, of the interactions between organisms, of the interactions between organisms and the environment, and the flows of energy and materials through ecosystems. Urban ecology is quite simply therefore the study of these issues within urban systems. (Gaston, 2010, p. 1)
Urban ecology works on the premise that cities are urban ecosystems where these ecological issues exist and merit attention.
Multiple works in this field have specifically highlighted the importance of urban greenspace for the urban ecosystem as a whole (see Morrison, Scott & Tennant, 1994;
Ewan, Ewan & Burke, 2004; Garden, McAlpine & Possingham, 2010; Gaston, 2010).
Natural areas within the urban fabric act – among other roles – as corridors providing for species mobility, as stopovers for migratory species and platforms for the preservation of local wildlife. Greenspace is additionally important for providing important ecosystem functions such as water regulation (and subsequent preventions of floods) and soil erosion. Natural area patches within the urban fabric are therefore important features in
14 maintaining the health of the urban ecosystem. Converting urban brownfields to greenspaces is an opportunity to boost the number and/or size of these patches, a connection already presented by Gaston (2010). However, he notes that currently the trend is heading in the other direction, with greenspace in cities on the decline in part because of the loss of brownfields to development rather than their restoration to greenspace (Ibid.).
In turn, human quality of life is very much dependent on urban greenspace, from the ecosystem services provided by natural systems to the availability of natural landscapes and green areas for culture, mental well-being and recreation. An early advocate of this philosophy, Frederick Law Olmsted designed parks in the 1800s for the benefit of human users, believing that to be in a place surrounded by “natural scenery” promotes human health and welfare (Spirn, 1995, p. 92). More recently, Edward Wilson
(1984) has put forward the notion biophilia which claims that humans have an innate tendency to seek out interaction with other living beings, both plant and animal. A view brought forward in a paper by Alberti et al. (2003) further contends that humans are a part of nature rather than separate from it: we live not only in the urban and built environment, but as a part of the natural world and within an ecosystem.
A more recent articulation that draws on this theory comes from Richard Louv
(among others), who cites “nature-deficit disorder” – the lack of contact with the natural world – as a cause of human behavioral problems (2005; 2011). In turn, his theory maintains that increased contact with natural environments (and by extension, time away from purely built environments) can undo some of these negative effects and improve people’s health as well as mental and social capacities. Drawn from an analysis of the literature on this topic, the multiple mental and social benefits that humans derive from
15 greenspace are listed by Barton and Pretty (2010): improved human health and well- being; improved behaviour and cognitive functioning; facilitation of social networking; facilitation of green exercise activities; reduced levels of crime, aggression, and violence; aesthetic value; and provision of an outdoor classroom. Notably, Louv’s work contends that accessing these benefits from contact with natural environments does not require trips outside the city. Rather, it is about having access to nature in the city, and discovering and becoming “fully immersed” in one’s bioregion (Louv, 2011, p. 99). This has led him to advocate not only to conserve nature, but to “create nature, in the form of native habitat, wherever possible…in our cities and suburbs” (Ibid., p. 169, emphasis in original). One such opportunity is the ecological restoration of brownfields.
Besides being beneficial to the local ecosystem and the well-being of urban residents, urban greenspace additionally plays a critical role in larger environmental issues and conservation efforts at a variety of scales. This is due to the capacity for greenspace to provide urban residents with experience of and consideration for the natural world, which in turn inspires positive action for other environmental causes.
Dunn, Gavin, Sanchez, and Solomon (2006) describe this dynamic as the “pigeon paradox”: They maintain that the future of conservation activities (many in rural areas) will likely become more dependent on the capacity of people in cities to maintain a connection to nature. This is based on three assertions: the first is that conservation efforts are currently insufficient; the second, that people are more likely to want to support the conservation of nature when they have personal experiences of the natural world; and finally, as the human population becomes increasingly urbanized (and hence so do the people able to participate in or vote on conservation issues), a primary source of human-nature interaction comes from urban nature (Dunn, Gavin, Sanchez, & Solomon,
16 2006). This theory is supported by works which further uphold the notion that interaction with nature supports positive attitudes towards nature and encourages interest in broader conservation and environmental issues (see Pyle, 1978; Tanner, 1980; Hale, 1993;
Cronon, 1995; Miller, 2005; Fuller & Irvine, 2010). The theory culminates in the following cautionary conclusion from Dunn et al.: “If the fate of nature depends on our relationship to urban nature, all is not lost, but we do need to consider more carefully how we manage, conserve, and interact with urban nature” (2006, p. 1815).
Urban greenspace therefore makes important contributions to local ecosystem health, human well-being, and the likelihood and ability of urban residents to care for and take action in favour of larger environmental issues. This is important information in the question of what to make of urban brownfields. With increasing density and a mandate to develop remaining “open” space in urban centres, brownfields remain one of the few opportunities to augment a city’s green infrastructure in the face of what is predicted to be a growing urban population that is likely to want and need access to greenspace more than ever.
In Canada, the government recognized the opportunities for brownfield redevelopment in 2001, and mandated the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) to create a National Brownfield Redevelopment Strategy, which was subsequently published in 2003 (NRTEE, 2003). Not only is the strategy aimed at supporting the transformation of Canada’s brownfields into “vibrant centres of community life”, it also aims “for Canada to be established as a global leader in brownfield remediation” (NRTEE, 2003, p. vii). However, the focus of this document remains the direct economic benefits of brownfield redevelopment, with the type of re- use envisioned emphasizing housing and workspaces.
17 Specifically in Toronto and its surrounding communities, the Growth Plan for the
Greater Golden Horseshoe aims to create compact communities by directing growth to already built-up areas while capping expansion and sprawl within current city limits. As a result, the Growth Plan anticipates “increasing intensification of the existing built-up area, with a focus on urban growth centres, intensification corridors, major transit station areas, brownfield sites and greyfields” (OMI, 2006, p. 12, emphasis in original).
Therefore, while the redevelopment of brownfields is central to realizing this plan, their re-use has been primarily conceived as contributing to residential, commercial and population density. However, the pressure on existing urban greenspace resulting from this increased density must also be addressed, and one of the only opportunities for increasing greenspace lies in brownfield-to-greenspace projects. As De Sousa (2006) has pointed out, though brownfield redevelopment and the provision of greenspace in cities are two trends which have evolved separately, they are beginning to converge. This research is intended to support this convergence by offering information that can help realize successful brownfield-to-greenspace conversions in cities which will increasingly require such projects.
18 Chapter 3: Site Selection, Methodology, & Criteria for Evaluation2
3.1 Choice of Site
Rather than focus on brownfield-to-greenspace conversion as a general phenomenon, this research has narrowed-in on a specific case. This was due in part to time and resource constraints, but also because a more thorough investigation of a single example of the phenomenon is able to offer clear and concise lessons which can then be tested, adapted and applied elsewhere.
While other good examples of brownfield-to-greenspace projects exist within the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Don Valley Brick Works conversion was chosen in part for its reputation as a pioneer of its kind. As stated by several of the professionals who were interviewed for this research, the approaches employed in the conversion of this brownfield were frequently at the forefront of ecological restoration at the time. The site has not only gained popularity with greenspace-users around the city – particularly since
Evergreen created the environmental community centre – but it was also formally recognized in 2000 as a successful project in the form of the Bronze Plaque Award from the Aggregate Producers’ Association of Ontario for “outstanding work in the rehabilitation of a pit or quarry” (Canada NewsWire, 2000, p. 1). It has additionally inspired different approaches to creating and managing other greenspaces in the region.
2 Some of the information contained in this section was presented in the author’s MES Research Proposal, submitted November 13th 2012.
19 3.2 Methodology
3.2.1 Literature review
In order to provide a foundation to the research presented here, a literature review was undertaken on various academic papers and books that spanned three main topics.
These topics are political ecology, brownfield-to-greenspace conversions, and human- nature interaction. The literature includes works which provide both theoretical knowledge and practical information. The readings are grouped into the three topics and read as a whole. This literature review functions as the background upon which the rest of the research is subsequently based, and allows connections to be made between material in the readings and the Don Valley Brick Works site.
3.2.2 Policy and Planning Document Review
In addition to a literature review of academic works, this research incorporates a review of the policy and planning documents relevant to the Don Valley Brick Works conversion to a greenspace, including a historical document review of the site’s two proposed master plans (dated 1990 and 1995), documents produced by the Toronto and
Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) in relation to the site’s redevelopment, and publications revealing the approach in the area at the time to green infrastructure management (i.e. reports from Take Back the Don). Furthermore, in order to help with the ecological assessment of the site, a review of some of the ecological reports and plans commissioned by Evergreen or undertaken by the Toronto Parks Department within the last decade is also incorporated. Other related documents – including an opinion piece by a prominent member of the community group involved in the redevelopment and the current management plans for the site – provide additional context. These documents are
20 essential to the analysis of the evolution of the site in their illumination of communally and institutionally endorsed goals, priorities and visions.
3.2.3 Site Visits
Eight site visits were conducted from January to June 2013 in order to observe the site over changing seasons, document the site through photographs, and to gain a greater awareness of the details of its layout. The visits included walks through both the
Industrial Pad and along different trails in the Quarry Park, observation from panoramic vantage points, and notation of visitor behaviour. These visits allow for enhanced understanding of documents related to the site (for instance, master plans, and management plans) as well as greater ease connecting with interview subjects who often have an in-depth understanding of the site layout, vegetation, and landscape qualities.
Furthermore, the familiarity with the site gained through these visits provides a foundation to the analysis of the research findings.
3.2.4 On-Site Interviews
Eight subjects were interviewed during the months of February and March 2013.
Potential candidates were indentified based on their involvement in the site’s conversion or the current operation and maintenance of the site. Some were chosen prior to the beginning of the interviews, while others were the result of recommendations from interview subjects. Each interview candidate was contacted with a specific email template outlining the details of the research project and requesting an in-person interview. Eight potential candidates were identified in total, and all eight responded positively to the
21 request for an interview. Seven agreed to being identified and have signed a waiver to this effect (see Appendix A for a list of interview subjects).
Seven interviews were conducted in total (both TRCA members were interviewed together), five of which were conducted on site. Two interviews had to be conducted over the phone due to time and geographical constraints. All participants were interviewed in their professional capacities.
While the beginning of each interview was conducted seated indoors, the on-site interviews allowed for a portion to also be conducted outside while walking through the
Brick Works Park. This method of interview allowed for greater context and provided an additional basis of reference to the interview responses. This method further introduced perspectives on the site from a variety of people involved in different aspects of its restoration and management, enabling comparison of these perspectives for further site analysis.
The interviews were aimed at elucidating the course of political, social, and technical developments that led to the final greenspace, at gathering expert opinions on the site’s success in areas of ecological impact and human-nature interaction, as well as at identifying key lessons learned with a view to their application to other projects. The interviews were semi-structured, consisting of specific but open-ended questions that encouraged discussion beyond the pre-determined interview questions. This frequently led to additional information and perspectives offered than were explicitly sought.
However, such discussions were kept within the limits of the topic under consideration and the additional information was insightful. While a set of similar questions was developed for each interview subject, they were also adjusted according to each subject’s specific role and area of expertise. The four themes under which questions fell are
22 restoration process and political influences, ecological impact of the site, human-nature interaction, and lessons learned.
All interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then read and analyzed in order to observe patterns and divergent opinions, and to extract key information.
3.3 Evaluation
In order to analyze the information gathered from the above research methods, two primary evaluation approaches were used, based on political ecological analysis and
Eric Higgs’ criteria for good ecological restoration.
3.3.1 Political Ecology
To elucidate the political forces and ideals which shaped the restoration of the
Don Valley Brick Works quarry, a political ecological analysis was undertaken. In his book Political Ecology (2004), Paul Robbins offers a critical overview of the field, outlining its strengths, weaknesses, and how the practice must go forward. While similar practices have been going on for decades, political ecology took shape as a distinct field in the 1980s with the convergence of many disciplines such as political economy, hazards research, geography, ethnography, and cultural ecology. Robbins points out that political ecology is most prominently a reaction to apolitical ecology, in which environmental events and conditions are studied in an anti-contextual, superficial, and non-processual way – essentially, in isolation from their political and social networks. As Robbins notes:
“By introducing political ecology, a field that seeks to unravel the political forces at work in environmental access, management, and transformation, I hope to demonstrate the way
23 that politics are inevitably ecological and that ecology is inherently political” (2004, p. xvi-xvii). The intent of political ecology is to highlight the networks and processes – beyond simply the ecological – which contribute to the context and content of a specific environmental event. Importantly, the field, according to Robbins, is not simply a body of knowledge but “something people do” (2004, p. xviii, emphasis in original).
The current and future movements within the field are discussed in further detail in an article by John P. Clark in the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (2012). Rather than being a field with a single framework, Clark highlights the variety of stances taken within the political ecology approach, ranging from bioregionalism and conservative environmentalism, to the more radical ecosocialism and ecoanarchism. Without directly predicting continued increased attention on the political ecology approach (which has in recent years been the result of recognition that international environmental issues need to be addressed), Clark points to worsening global ecological conditions, the growth of economic globalization, and the evolving dialectic between institutionalized and critical stances on environmental politics as factors that will affect its course (2012). The political ecology approach stands to be an important factor in the future of environmental events and debates.
However, it is not necessarily straightforward to apply the political ecological approach to research on environmental cases in developed countries. As Robbins’ work – interspersed with many examples of political ecology in practice – shows, the field has a history of application oriented to analyzing, deconstructing and explaining ecological events in developing nations, with a specific focus on economic and colonial powers and critiques of the capitalist system (Robbins, 2004). Robbins himself states that “it is difficult to see how the lessons and theoretical insights of traditional political ecology can
24 be applied to processes away from third-world agrarian environments, even while we intuitively know that first-world cities and other spaces are enmeshed in the same processes” (2004, p. 208). Nevertheless, he maintains that a direct application of the same framework is actually possible and quite useful (Ibid., p. 210). Robbins comes to this conclusion by illustrating just how similar (though they may not appear to be) the political ecological networks of environmental events are in both developed and developing nations, if only we choose to see them under the same framework. It is based on this theory of the transferability of application that the political ecological analysis is undertaken for this paper.
There are further contentions with political ecology, however. In a paper by
Vayda and Walters candidly entitled Against Political Ecology (1999), the authors make the case that political ecology engenders question-begging research and offers
“programmatic statements” in return. In addition, they believe political ecology sometimes misses what is ecological:
Starting with a priori judgments, theories, or biases about the importance or even primacy of certain kinds of political factors in the explanation of environmental changes, self-styled political ecologists have focused their research on environmental or natural resource politics and have missed or scanted the complex and contingent interactions of factors whereby actual environmental changes often are produced. (1999, p. 167)
As an alternative, they propose “event ecology” which does not presuppose the importance of any particular political factors. Rather, it works “backward in time and outward in space”, taking political factors into account as they arise, in order to understand the causes and effects that led to certain environmental events (Ibid., p. 169).
Taken together, the works by Robbins and Vayda & Walters demonstrate the importance of balance when assessing the network of factors that led to a specific
25 ecological instance or process. Taken too far as a reaction against apolitical ecology, a political ecology approach risks over-extending in the other direction, leading to “politics without ecology” (Vayda & Walters, 1999). However, failing to look out for and pay attention to the political influences in many environmental situations produces only superficial and incomplete understandings of those cases, unable to contribute to preventing or mitigating them in the future (Robbins, 2004). Neither is desirable, and must be avoided by giving attention to a broader assessment of causes and contexts. This paper attempts to do so by providing a politically-oriented analysis of the influences and actors surrounding the restoration of the Don Valley Brick Works in Chapter 6, while subsequently engaging in a more eco-centric evaluation of the project using the criteria described in section 3.3.2.
More specific to the current analysis, however, is the political ecology related to access to and control over urban greenspace. In a 2007 paper on greenspaces in cities,
Stephanie Pincetl maintains that political ecology in a “first world urban context” requires that issues of space, place and territory be taken seriously, including investigations into the reshaping of landscapes, and specifically how and which land is allocated for parks (p. 87-88). These questions are important because not only do the analysis of such spaces reveal ideas of nature and culture, but, Pincetl maintains, they also reflect dominant ideologies between urban development and social order:
“Understanding these spaces of nature – their development, locations, patterns of use – involves uncovering the embedded histories of cities, and the subtle and insidious ways poverty and discrimination affect behaviour, or ideas of beauty, safety and appropriateness” (p. 89). Differential access to greenspaces due to the distribution of
26 parks and open space is one such manifestation of social order that is particularly relevant to the Don Valley Brick Works case.
A 2006 paper by Heynen, Perkins & Roy agrees that the environmental justice discourse has thus far not gone far enough in addressing unequal distribution of access to the benefits of environmental amenities. They argue that the work now is to make the links between capitalist processes and the injustices of uneven urban ecologies more explicit (p. 6). Their own paper demonstrates that because proximity to urban trees allows city residents to consume their benefits, a lack of access or proximity to such amenities ought to be perceived as an environmental injustice that requires rectification.
Specifically, they find that lower-income groups in urban areas have decreased access to the positive externalities of urban trees (and, relatedly, urban greenspace) and rely more heavily on investments in greenery on public space to compensate for the disparity. These findings provide a broader political and social justice context to the type of public investment seen in the Don Valley Brick Works site and the related impacts on different social groups in seemingly distant neighbourhoods.
Finally, an examination of the aestheticization of landscape preservation also sheds light on the politics of exclusion that may be in operation in a case such as the
Brick Works. As Duncan & Duncan (2001) illustrate, the seemingly innocent act of the aesthetic appreciation of landscapes and the desire to protect nature can be a subtle but highly effective mechanism of social exclusion and the reaffirmation of elite class identities (abstract, p. 387). Rather than being explicit and therefore open to contestation, class and power relations are reduced to choices of lifestyle and taste, leading to issues of social injustice around access to landscapes and places which reinforce the dominance of the more powerful classes (Duncan & Duncan, 2001). Often, the class bias of such
27 choices and tastes is concealed by their promotion as universal and therefore “coincident with the interests of all classes” (Ibid., p. 392). Considering these issues of political ecology, the analysis of the Brick Works will subsequently strive to bring to light issues of the allocation of greenspace, the related social injustices, and the potential for exclusion that is raised through the aestheticization of nature.
3.3.2. Higgs’ Ecological Restoration
What constitutes ecological restoration – let alone good ecological restoration – can be difficult to decipher. Eric Higgs illustrates the evolution of this issue in his book
Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration (2003), while also providing guidelines for evaluating specific cases of ecological restoration. He advances four major concepts to do so: ecological integrity, historical fidelity, focal practice, and wild design. Jennifer Foster (2005) employed these criteria in her analysis of early restoration work at the Brick Works, and in order to be able to better compare our analyses, particularly with respect to whether or not there has been any improvement in these areas, they are used again in the present paper.
Higgs contends that “ecological restoration is about repairing identifiable damage to ecosystems”, although he maintains that “repairing” and “damage” are problematic terms (2003, p. 76). This is why he additionally asserts that any complete definition of good ecological restoration must include a host of factors and that include social, cultural, aesthetic, economic, political, and moral values. Furthermore, Higgs believes that while we are most often concerned about evaluating the finished product of restoration, we must also evaluate the process. He adds that restoration is really about “assisted recovery” where the goal is to reestablish the natural processes that can lead the site in
28 question back to conditions that prevailed prior to disturbance. Finally, Higgs operates within a positive perspective on the relationship between people and ecosystems by supporting a view of ecological restoration that celebrates the involvement of humans in the process. Higgs maintains that “there is no single, correct approach to restoration, but many kinds of good restoration” (Ibid, p. 272-3, emphasis in original).
His four major concepts used to identify good ecological restoration derive from the philosophy elucidated above. The first, ecological integrity – though a somewhat abstract term that refuses a strict definition of ecological health – focuses on the quality of the ecosystem resulting from restoration and evokes the notion of wholeness, encompassing a range of indicators such as resiliency, elasticity, and stress response.
Second, historical fidelity considers the extent to which the restoration reflects the history of a place, without demanding exact reproduction of prior conditions but rather a loyalty to these conditions tempered with consideration of current judgments and goals. The third concept is focal practice, which speaks to bridging a divide between technological solutions and community engagement between people and ecosystems and pushes for the examination of the societal involvement and cultural engagement of a restoration project.
Finally, Higgs introduces wild design, where the design of a restoration is considered not simply for its enhancement of the human experience but also in its ability to meet the interests of the ecosystem in a way that explicitly indicates our intentions for the future and acknowledges human agency in restoration. Together, these concepts can be used to analyze individual restoration projects in order to help determine where they succeeded, how they fell short, and where opportunities lie for improvement. They are used in this capacity in the present research paper.
29 Chapter 4: Site History and Current Site Description3
4.1 Location and Pre-Quarry Era
Figure 2: Map of location of Don Valley Brick Works. Source: Foster, 2005, p. 332.
The Don Valley Brick Works site in Toronto, Canada is a historically, culturally, and naturally significant complex. The site is situated within the Don River Watershed, home to 1.2 million residents and consisting primarily of medium and high density land development (54.1% and 11.8%, respectively) (TRCA, 2009, s.6.2.7). Other land uses
3 Certain information in this section has previously been submitted in the following final course- paper: Côté, A., Furtado, C., Mannion, J., & Reeve, J. (2011). Environmental planning considerations in Evergreen’s revitalization of the Don Valley Brick Works. Submitted December 5th, 2011. For Professor Kelly Snow, Environmental Planning (ENVS 6131), York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies.
30 include industrial, commercial, and institutional (16.9%), and natural cover (9%) (Ibid.).
The watershed encompasses a large portion of the central city and the Brick Works site is found in its southern end, along the banks of the Don River just a few kilometers north of where it empties into Lake Ontario. Despite being surrounded by residential neighbourhoods to the north and west, and bordered to the south and east by the major thoroughfares of Bayview Avenue and the Don Valley Parkway, the site remained largely unknown to city residents until recent years.
The Don River runs 38 kilometres, originating in the Oak Ridges Moraine north of the city and running south through the core of one of Canada’s most urbanized regions
(City of Toronto, n.d.3). When European settlement began in the area approximately 200 years ago – predated by several hundred years by Aboriginal activity – this river-valley contained abundant vegetation and wildlife. While people frequently came to the Don
Valley for recreational pursuits, industry quickly sprang up in the lower part of the Don watershed, including mills, quarries and factories which provided lumber, paper, flour, beer, meat, and bricks to the rapidly developing city. Later, in the mid-1850s, heavier industries such as gas works established themselves in the area (Ibid.).
Pollution from these industries began to affect the health of the river and surrounding wildlife. Forest was cleared for farms, industries, and residences built along the banks of the Don, and the river was artificially straightened to facilitate development
(Toronto Public Library, 1998, p. 2). From an environmental integrity perspective,
Hurricane Hazel of 1954 was a great benefit to the Don Valley: due to the extensive flooding and resulting damage to property and life, the Ontario government restricted further development in floodplains (City of Toronto, n.d.3). As a result, the Don floodplain, in which the Brick Works site is located, was virtually abandoned by Toronto
31 residents for residential and recreational purposes (Evergreen, 2006, s. 2.1.2). These factors coincidentally served to preserve the remaining natural areas of the Don Valley
(City of Toronto, n.d.3).
4.2 Brick-Making Years
One of the industries established along the lower banks of the Don in the late
1800s was the Don Valley Brick Works, attracted to the site by the high-quality clay discovered in the area. The quarry and brick-making facility were established in 1889 by the Taylor Family, who also owned three mills along the Don and built their home along its east bank (Evergreen, 2006, s. 2.1). Soon after, the bricks produced from this site began winning awards for their quality and the company became known for its variety of colours and styles on offer. For 100 years, the business produced millions of bricks annually, rapidly becoming one of the most important brick manufacturers in the country until its closure in 1989 (Ibid., s. 2.2.1). The Brick Works secured its historical significance to the city after the Great Fire of 1904: its bricks were used to rebuild the city, including important landmarks such as Old City Hall, Casa Loma, The Royal
Ontario Museum and Osgoode Hall (Ibid., s.1.2).
Upon closure, the Brick Works had virtually exhausted the on-site clay quarry
(Ibid., s. 2.2.1), leaving behind an industrial scar in the Don Valley. While still in its final years of brick production, the site went up for sale, was bought by a developer, and was subsequently involved in a long legal battle which terminated in its expropriation. These events (described in further detail in the following chapter) and the restorations that followed led to the creation of the site as it is today.
32 4.3 Current Site Description & Ownership
The entire Brick Works site is 16.4 continuous hectares (40 acres), but is divided into two distinct areas: the Brick Works Park (composed of the Weston Family Quarry
Garden on the quarry floor, in addition to the bordering slopes), and the Industrial Pad where Evergreen has adapted the historic buildings into an environmental community centre (Evergreen, 2006, Summary). The focus of this research is on the 11.5-hectare park – the site of the restored quarry lands – located in the northern portion of the site.
The park is framed by ravine slopes to the north, east and west which rise between
25 and 35 metres, with residential properties to the north and west, a Beltline trail and
Moore Park Ravine to the west, and an old rail line to the east (Ibid., s. 2.2.2). Of international geological interest, the north and west slopes contain exposed fossils and evidence of past ice ages (Ibid.). In 1983, the Ministry of Natural Resources declared the
North Slope an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI), followed in 1986 by a governmental declaration of the North Slope as a Provincial Heritage Site – the first time such a designation was used in Ontario for something other than a built structure (Smyth,
2006, p. 3). A tributary of the Don River, Mud Creek flows through the western portion of the site, entering from Moore Park Ravine and flowing into the Don south of Bayview
Avenue (Hough Stansbury Woodland Limited, 1990, p. 20). The area is rich in habitat types, being heavily wooded in some areas, but also containing wetlands to the west and wildflower meadows to the north and east as part of the restored quarry; the Quarry Park is considered important for this diversity in flora and fauna (Evergreen, 2006, s. 2.2.2).
The site is further notable for its contribution of a key patch within the larger biological
33 corridor of the Don River, providing a migratory connection from Moore Park Ravine to the lower Don and Lake Ontario beyond.
1 natural filtration ponds 2 the north slope 3 historic buildings on the Industrial Pad 4 lookout 5 remaining industrial chimney 6 site entrance and parking 7 wildflower meadow 8 Carolinian woodland community 9 northwest slope and lowland woodlands 10 east slope 11 existing deciduous woodland slope
Figure 3: Aerial drawing of the Don Valley Brick Works site. Source: retrieved from http://www.lostrivers.ca/BrickWorksPark.htm
Curving throughout the site is a series of walking paths (shown above in red) paved in gravel. These were designed for visitor movement throughout the site, complemented by bridges that span the wetland areas. In addition to original lookouts, a new viewing platform has also recently been installed on the west side of the natural filtration ponds. Sight lines – thanks to the curtailing of succession in the meadow area –
34 are maintained throughout the majority of the site, with clear views from north to south and several vistas possible from various locations. This gives the site an overall sense of openness with few areas of intense cover where one might feel hidden. In addition to the formally-planned walking paths, the site is also scattered with user “desire lines” and impromptu lookout points which have evolved based on patterns of visitor traffic. Some of these are so ingrained that at times it can be difficult to distinguish them from the formal trail.
Ownership and management of the Brick Works site – and of land in the Don
Valley more generally – is complex, involving multiple actors. As the 1990 Master Plan for the site’s restoration notes, “The significance of the land ownership pattern lies in the fact that the vast majority of lands within the valley and ravine system is publicly owned, permitting public access to the Brickworks site, and allowing multi-jurisdictional involvement where capital works and programming cross property lines” (Hough, 1990, p. 8). At the Brick Works, the land is owned by the TRCA, which generally controls land up to the crest-of-slope. Beyond the TRCA boundaries, the Brick Works property abuts onto public city lands (primarily to the west), CP rail land (to the east) and residential properties (Trixy Pugh, Real Estate Services at TRCA, personal communication, January
2013).
35
Figure 4: Property boundaries (in yellow) of the Don Valley Brick Works. Source: courtesy of the TRCA, 2013.
36 Chapter 5: Quarry Restoration Timeline
Brick Works Quarry Timeline4
Brick-Making Begins: 1889 ↓ Torvalley Purchases Land: 1984 ↓ Friends of the Valley is Formed: 1984 ↓ Expropriation of the Site: 1987 ↓ Brick-Making Ends: 1989 ↓ First Master Plan is Released: 1990 ↓ Restoration Work Begins: 1992 ↓ Second Master Plan is Released: 1995 ↓ Park is Opened to the Public: 1997 ↓ Amalgamation: 1999 ↓ Evergreen Begins Work On Industrial Pad: 2006 ↓ Evergreen’s Industrial Pad Opens to the Public: 2010
Figure 5: Timeline of events connected to the Brick Works quarry restoration. Source: author.
4 Although several sources cite the dates indicated here, there are certain dates for which there is a discrepancy in what is reported. For example, some sources claim that brick-making ended in 1984 while others state that it continued until 1989. The year of the opening of the park to the public is also ambiguous – some sources, such as Evergreen at the Brick Works’ website, state that it was opened in 1996, while others, such as representatives from the TRCA, claim it was 1997. This ambiguity is not necessarily a fault in record keeping, but rather a testament to the inherent lack of exactitude of these events. Some form of brick-making activity continued past 1984 despite it being sold to a developer, and while the park did have an official opening ceremony in 1997, it may well have begun being used by visitors prior to this. The latter date in particular raises the question of what constitutes the opening of a park. When is a park “complete” in the sense of being ready for public use? The discrepancy demonstrates that the answers to these questions are not always clear.
37 5.1 Failed Attempt at Purchase of Land
When Hurricane Hazel hit Toronto in October 1954, it left in its wake extensive property damage and several deaths. As a result, the Metropolitan Toronto and Region
Conservation Authority, now the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), was formed to manage development in floodplains. This led to extensive new zoning regulations where new development was prohibited in floodplains, and existing businesses were grandfathered in order to permit the continuation of their operations
(Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013). The Don Valley Brick Works was one of those sites. The understanding – according to Jeffrey Smyth, local resident and long-time supporter of the Brick Works site restoration – was that upon cessation of business activity, the sites in the new restricted zoning areas would be sold to the TRCA for conservation purposes.
In 1984, the Don Valley Brick Works was owned by the Swiss-German company
Brampton Brick which realized that the site’s brick-making capacities were coming to an end. It offered the site to the TRCA for conservation purposes for $4 million. However, before the money from the government could be organized – the Province was to split the cost with Metro Toronto and the Province took too long to commit its funds – a development company, Torvalley, became involved (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013). Backed by a major chartered bank – the Bank of
Commerce, whose director was also head of Torvalley – the development company apparently offered only one thousand dollars over the asking price and struck a deal
(Ibid.). Allowing Brampton Brick to continue brick-making on site for several more years, Torvalley prepared its plans.
38 Torvalley’s vision was to build condos on the old quarry site and turn it into a relatively high-density residential community (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013), which would ostensibly offer “luxury housing” (Garth
Armour, personal communication, March 2013). Since the zoning would not permit this new development, the company began to work with the planning department in the
Borough of East York – a former municipality of Metropolitan Toronto pre- amalgamation – in order to change the zoning as well as the Metropolitan Toronto Plan
(Smyth, 2006, p. 2). The new designation it sought (“urban valley”) would, they hoped, permit the company to carry through with its plans, and it wanted to see the designation apply to all grandfathered valley sites (Ibid.). This was a strategic way to increase development opportunities throughout much of the city. With support from the mayor of
East York at the time, Dave Johnson, Torvalley began to present its development proposal to local residents (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013). It was here that its plans began to go awry.
5.2 Expropriation & Beyond
It was during these public meetings that citizens learned of the proposal to develop a high-density neighbourhood through the building of luxury condos and the rise of opposition to the plans was quick. In particular, residents of the two communities that surround the Brick Works – Rosedale and Moore Park – began to agitate against the proposal. Beginning as an offshoot of the Governor’s Bridge Ratepayers Association, a group called Friends of the Valley (FoV) was eventually formed as a distinct body to deal with the future of the Don Valley Brick Works site.
39 FoV began attending all of Torvalley’s presentations and meetings in order to make its own opposing presentations on the project. It also held an awareness-raising
“valley rally” at Edward’s Gardens which many people, including Torvalley representatives, attended. FoV additionally lobbied city officials to prevent the development from going forward. Due to FoV’s efforts and the mounting outrage the proposal was generating in the city, Metro Toronto and the Province set up a fund of $50 million in order to acquire the remaining ravine and valley lands that were still privately held. (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013)
Drawing from these funds, the land was eventually expropriated from Torvalley in 1987 by the TRCA through a lengthy court process for a grand total of $20 million
(TRCA representative, personal communication, March 2013). The drastic price increase was due to the fact Torvalley was able to demonstrate in court that their loss of the land now represented the loss of developable land rather than conservation land (Jeffrey
Smyth, personal communication, March 2013).
While the court battle was a precedent-setting success, the bulk of the TRCA’s work lay ahead: in the years that followed the acquisition, there was little consensus as to what to do with the land, as architects, environmentalists, and community residents had competing ideas of how the land ought to be used or preserved (Chapman, 2010, p. 3). In the meantime, and throughout much of the 1990s, the Brick Works site became a
“playground” for partiers, vandals, squatters, and photographers (Ibid.; Evergreen, n.d.).
The management of the site is also complex. While the TRCA has maintained ownership of the site, it is managed with the help of Toronto Parks, Forestry &
Recreation at the municipal level, and Ontario Heritage Trust at the provincial level
40 (George Leja, Real Estate Coordinator at TRCA, personal communication, January
2013). Much on-site maintenance and surveying is additionally carried out by volunteers.
Finally, beginning in 2002, the national charity Evergreen – who’s mission “is to bring communities and nature together for the benefit of both”– became involved in the site, eventually leasing the Industrial Pad portion from the City and TRCA at a $1 a year beginning in 2006. Its on-site environmental community centre was then opened to the public in 2010. Together, these different organizations helped realize the Brick Works restoration and continue to contribute to its ongoing management.
5.3 Not a Traditional Brownfield?
The Don Valley Brick Works site was chosen for this research project as a good example of a brownfield-to-greenspace conversion. However, there is a caveat to its status as a former brownfield. As seen in Chapter 2’s definition of a brownfield, “real or suspected environmental contamination” is central to a site falling under this categorization. Yet not everyone agrees that this is the case for the Brick Works quarry.
Despite being the location of a century of industrial operation, the brick-making process is seen as a relatively “clean” industry, specifically in the quarry section (David
Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013; TRCA representative, personal communication, March 2013). While it has been acknowledged that chemicals and toxins were present on the Industrial Pad – and measures taken to ensure they no longer pose a risk – the same scrutiny and actions were not undertaken for the quarry. David
Stonehouse, Evergreen at the Brick Works’ General Manager, claims that “overall the site wasn’t as contaminated relative to a lot of other sites” (personal communication,
41 February 2013). He goes on: “The contaminants are mostly metals or organics which come from petroleum-based products. A lot of that though would have been quite specific to the Industrial Pad” (Ibid.). A TRCA representative highly involved in the restoration of the site supports this perspective. While they state that the TRCA thinks of it as a brownfield, they also commented that “it was actually a clean fill at the back” and it “was not as bad as a lot of brownfields” (personal communication, March 2013). Though soil testing was undertaken in the quarry, it did not go beyond the routine requirements for brownfields prescribed by the Ministry of the Environment (MoE) (Hough, 1990, p. 19).
Therefore, while the site is still considered a brownfield, aspects of its restoration specifically related to contamination were not as scrutinized as on other brownfield sites.
However, it is worth noting that the perspective of the site as a relatively “clean” brownfield seems to be based on the assumption that the site was generally uncontaminated and potentially a lack of knowledge of what really might be present. For example, it is noted in the first master plan that the quality of the quarry fill was not made available to the consultants drafting the plan, therefore limiting how they might respond to any potential trace chemicals (Hough, 1990, p. 19). Many interview subjects were also asked about information on fill quality. The TRCA representative notes that the fill “was supposed to have been tested” but could not recall any specifics (personal communication, March 2013). Nick Saccone, also of the TRCA, further added that because the fill came from “a deep excavation in Toronto, it shouldn't have been an issue” (personal communication, March 2013). Again, while this supports the idea that harmful substances are unlikely to have been present, it is not conclusive.
42 Besides the fill, when asked if testing was done out in the quarry prior to restoration, Saccone states: “I don’t remember. I know we did, we definitely did a designated substances review of all the buildings, and I think we did, there was some limited testing out in the quarry” (personal communication, March 2013). Stonehouse maintains that “everything in the back should be fine” (personal communication,
February 2013). However, he adds, “But, you know, I’m not a scientist and probably there hasn't been a lot of testing in the back since the site was built out” (Ibid.). In reference to contaminants, he concludes, “you know I’m not sure how much of that you’d find in the back” (Ibid.). This lack of knowledge is concerning as Kim Statham, a Natural
Environment Specialist at the City of Toronto who helps manage the Quarry Park, reveals another potential source of contamination: the old rail line. Running along the eastern crest of the site – next to a commonly-used footpath and near the slope plantings – Kim states that it’s
really interesting up there because that’s where you would see a lot of residual chemical, is all the creosote and everything else associated with the old rail line. So this is tricky for us up here because we know that it generally is contaminated, we don’t know specifically where, nor do we have the money or resources to do soil testing … So that’s something to consider because even some of the backyards, as the property lines come close to the Beltline, they have really high levels of various chemicals. (personal communication, March 2013)
So while there is good reason to hope that the site as it stands today is relatively uncontaminated – given the type of industry, following of the MoE guidelines, and a fill from deep excavation – what these interviews and requests for soil testing information suggest is that there may not be enough information to conclude that contamination is not
43 an issue. This could have implications for both human visitors and the wildlife attracted to the restored site. Further research in this area would be beneficial.5
5.4 Restoration Work
Figure 6: Photograph of the Don Valley Brick Works quarry pre-restoration. Source: http://www.clra.ca/don%20valley%20brick%20works.html
Restoration of the quarry site began taking shape in 1989, once brick-making activity had ceased. The restoration work was directed by two master plans: the first in
1990 was authored in large part by the well-known landscape architect Michael Hough of
Hough Stansbury Woodland Limited, and was ultimately rejected by Metro Council due its prohibitive budget requirement of approximately $18.6 - $27.3 million (Hough, 1990, p. 2); the second in 1995 was a scaled-down version of this plan led by Oleson Worland
Architects and coming in at a more approachable $5.1 million (Oleson Worland
Architects, 1995, s 1.2). These set out many aspects of the site as it is seen today.
5 For a discussion on the ethical and wildlife-related concerns regarding contamination within an ecologically-restored site, Jennifer Foster’s 2007 paper, Toronto’s Leslie Street Spit: Aesthetics and the Ecology of Marginal Land, raises many considerations relevant to the Brick Works.
44 The first step of the restoration was the filling of the quarry, which had already been carried out by the developer. As Garth Armour, current site manager of the Quarry
Park, recalls: “when I first came to this site in 1989 it literally was filled up with debris that came mostly out of the bank of Nova Scotia and Brampton Brick had just like literally bulldozed in all of their brick seconds, so it was just full of brick” (personal communication, March 2013). Previously, the quarry would have been nearly 30 metres deeper than it is today (Oleson, 1995, s 1.1).
Three prominent areas of focus in the quarry restoration, evident through the two master plans, are vegetation, wildlife, and water. At the time of writing the first master plan, the western slope of the site was the most densely wooded with mature southern hardwood stands of oak, maple and beech. This type of wooded area is rare in an urban area (though it used to dominate the Toronto region) and Hough proposed this remnant patch as valuable to protect for the sake of natural heritage. Hough also notes the value of the natural regeneration that had taken place prior to active restoration and his intentions to base the plan for the restoration on this natural process (Hough, 1990). Therefore, while extensive restoration efforts were deemed necessary, the site had already begun a natural succession which served as a backbone to future restoration plans.
There are similar elements for the restored Quarry Park put forward in the two master plans. Both plans mandate the diversion and day-lighting of Mud Creek, a tributary to the Don River that flows from Moore Park Ravine on the western slope of the site, in order to improve water quality and create a series of wetland ponds. On the quarry floor, open meadow and wildflower gardens were planned. Where vegetation was lacking on the quarry slopes – particularly the eastern slope – hardwood and Carolinian species
45 revegetation was called for in order to help stabilize the slopes and guard against erosion
(Hough, 1990). Finally, a series of walking paths curving throughout the site, three lookout points, and interpretive signs were also planned for in the first phase.
The building of the park formally began around 1992, with the planting of the site taking place in 1996-1997 (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013).
Working during a time of recession and significant financial constraint (David
Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013; TRCA representative, personal communication, March 2013), the restoration process was kickstarted by a donation of approximately $1 million from the Weston family, a high-profile Toronto family with a charitable foundation. Among the donation was $850,000 specifically for the creation of the Weston Quarry Garden (essentially the ground floor of the quarry site). The plan for the Quarry Garden was in-line with the site’s master plans, calling for the creation of multiple wild-flower meadows, walking paths, and a wetland pond series created from the re-routing of Mud Creek. While Parks, Forestry & Recreation and the TRCA were overseeing these developments, the work itself was often contracted out. Along with an army of community volunteers, several horticultural and restoration organizations were involved in the site’s plantings, including the Task Force to Bring Back the Don, Otter
Valley Native Plants, Evergreen, the Garden Club of Toronto, and the Canadian
Wildflower Society (Lorraine Johnson, personal communication, February 2013; Oleson,
1995, s. 4.9). Before plantings could begin, a level of topsoil was added to provide some fertility for the new vegetation. However, as Lorraine Johnson – then-President of the
Canadian Wildflower Society – recalls: “it was crushing work, because the soil was so compacted, it was like concrete and to do any meaningful weed eradication there to help
46 the young native plant seedlings get established was just brutal” (personal communication, February 2013). The organizations responsible for establishing vegetation had a difficult time, especially with the addition of invasive species issues and trouble with watering and maintenance (Ibid.).
Due to this, restoration work often came up against difficulties. Some of the first plantings and attempts at establishing wildflower meadows were considered near-failures as large volumes of the plant material failed to thrive and were lost (Lorraine Johnson, personal communication, February 2013; Garth Armour, personal communication, March
2013). For example, an estimate of approximately 95% of pond-edge plantings died
(Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). Part of this was attributed to the stipulation that herbicides could not be used for ten years, a clause which the Weston
Family had made a condition of their donation (Ibid.). Another contributing factor was the lack of management presence on site to ensure plants were watered sufficiently during the first hot summer – anecdotally, it is said that the vegetation “just fizzled, they just burned” (Ibid.). After these early failures, the site’s planting and management strategy changed to embrace natural succession processes, leading to greater success in establishing thriving vegetation (Ibid.). The site today appears visually to be flourishing, with one interviewee describing it as “very healthy” (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013) and others detailing the extent of wildlife now attracted to the site, including bird life described as “incredible” (Kim Statham, personal communication, March 2013; quote from Garth Armour, personal communication, March
2013). Although the status of “exotic” or “invasive” species on the Brick Works site as negative has been challenged in a 2004 paper by Foster and Sandberg – where they
47 maintain that invasive species can actually be ecologically and socially beneficial and helpful in establishing and maintaining urban ecological habitat – this has been and still is the stance taken by the site’s management. However, even considering invasives as a problem, the site’s ecology is still described in positive terms by the interview subjects.
The park was opened to the public in October of 1997 and Toronto Parks,
Forestry and Recreation has been responsible for its ongoing management. The current approach is one of adaptive management, addressing “how best to adapt the process of planning to the need to learn – how to evaluate the consequences of actions that must change in response to constantly changing circumstances” (Panel on the Integrity of
Canada’s National Parks, as paraphrased in The Planning partnership, 2007, p. 39). This is accomplished by monitoring several different “units” on site to see how they are responding to changes. These units take into account both ecological factors (such as a new invasive species) and human-use impacts (based on changing use patterns) (David
Leinster, personal communication, March 2013). The latest challenge to face the site is the redevelopment of the Lower Don Lands for the Pan Am Games Village: bringing an influx of residents, businesses, and visitors to the area, the site’s management team is bracing for the increase in traffic this will bring to the site (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). Reflecting on the fact that Toronto Parks, Forestry and
Recreation “reacted after the fact to a certain degree” to the increase in visitors to the park as a result of Evergreen’s redevelopment of the Industrial Pad, Armour notes:
“we’re trying to get ahead of that wave…like far ahead of it” in terms of these latest developments. It will now be a matter of time to see whether their foresight will pay off.
48 Chapter 6: Findings & Analysis 1 – Political Forces
Apparent in the history of the Brick Works’ restoration, the restored site is not simply a product of decisions based on what would best contribute to ecological interests.
Rather, there are tensions between different groups’ desires for the site, influential financial constraints, and large governmental changes that have impacted the outcome.
The following political ecological analysis of the site – focusing on community involvement, financial matters, and the effects of amalgamation – attempts to demonstrate that the restoration outcome is inherently political. Though the analysis does not extrapolate to patterns and processes on a global scale, it nevertheless contributes an important element to understanding how the restoration was achieved and reveals political factors with which other brownfield sites may have to contend.
6.1 Importance of Community Involvement
From the beginning of the expropriation battle to the present day, community interest and involvement in the Don Valley Brick Works have shaped the site. The second master plan notes that: “A large number of people have played a role in securing the site for public use… This interest and commitment should be harnessed”, especially in the form of volunteers, in order to maintain this community connection (Oleson, 1995, s. 4.6.2). However, while two specific community groups were pivotal in securing the site from development and participating in the process of restoration, a broader community engagement is lacking, resulting in the perpetuation of existing class stratification.
49 6.1.1 Bring Back the Don Movement
Influenced by growing public interest, the Task Force to Bring Back the Don sprung from a citizen’s movement and was formally established by the City of Toronto in
1989 with the aim of restoring natural integrity to the Don River and its surroundings
(City of Toronto, n.d.1). The Task Force was formed at just the right time to be able to support the Brick Works restoration: due to the potential to improve the Don’s water quality and enhance the river corridor, the restoration of the site became a central project of the Task Force’s movement. As the 1995 master plan for the Brick Works notes: “The regeneration of the Brick Works will be the focal point of initiatives to restore the Don
Watershed” (Oleson, 1995, s. 1.0). Document reviews and interviews undertaken for the purposes of this paper indicate that the primary influence the Task Force exerted on this project was supportive.
David Stonehouse first became aware of the site in his role as coordinator of the
Task Force while working for the City. He recalls that the Brick Works was seen as the
“jewel in the crown” of the Lower Don (personal communication, February 2013).
Stonehouse himself represents the connection between the Task Force and the site with his eventual migration from his post with the City to on-site with Evergreen.
The Task Force was poised to participate in the site’s restoration from the beginning. It was involved in the initial plantings on site and could perceive the impact the restoration would have on a larger scale. Its position on the Don Watershed restoration and its established political ties were a positive factor in helping the project move forward. Its involvement in the site continued through 2001 when a management plan listed the Task Force as one of several volunteer groups interested in continuing to
50 work with the site (Hough Woodland Naylor Dance Leinster, 2001, p. 31). However, its overall influence was minimal and its participation in the higher-level planning and design of the site appears to have been lacking. Though it participated in the activities of restoration (such as plantings), it is seldom mentioned by any of the interview subjects beyond a passing reference. More importantly, though it is mentioned in multiple documents related to the planning and management of the site, it is notably absent from instances where another group is singled out for its contribution and influence in the site’s redevelopment. This other group is highlighted below.
6.1.2 Friends of the Valley
Predating the establishment of the Task Force by five years, FoV was formed in
1984 as on offshoot of the ratepayer’s association of a wealthy neighbourhood bordering the Brick Works site. This group has since been hugely influential in shaping the site up to the present day, and is mentioned extensively by interview subjects and planning documents related to the Brick Works.
The group was formed as a response to Torvalley’s proposed condo development, and they pushed hard for the site’s expropriation. As Garth Armour recounts:
Working on the Brick Works was truly, it was a very inspiring thing for me… to see this community mobilize around this site and this site to be acquired in the face of all odds. I mean there was a very expensive acquisition of the site by a multi-development company, was going to be luxury housing, and to see that group mobilize itself and successfully lobby the Province, and Metro, and the Conservation Authority to buy this land for the purpose of making it into a park was nothing short of a miracle in a way. And it was a really inspiring story for me to realize the importance of public input into process and that you really can bring about change by kind of getting mobilized and getting behind a worthwhile cause… it was a huge kind of coup that happened. (personal communication, March 2013)
51 David Leinster, who was also involved with the site restoration near its beginnings, further states that FoV “were the ones that got the political support to make this happen to begin with”, confirming the critical importance of the community’s role (personal communication, March 2013). David Stonehouse adds that they were “instrumental” in having the site expropriated (personal communication, February 2013). There is therefore consensus that FoV’s role was formidable and intrinsic to saving the site from development.
FoV’s involvement also persisted beyond the successful expropriation. FoV worked with the team from Parks, Forestry & Recreation to create the request for proposals for the site (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013), and Jeffrey
Smyth, vice president of FoV, acted for many years as Chair of the City of Toronto’s
Brick Works Public Advisory Committee (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication,
March 2013). FoV’s influence is noted in the first master plan, where it is not only listed in the acknowledgement section, but it explicitly states: “The evolution of a programme for the Brickworks site arises from two basic sets of factors: submissions made by the public to the Parks and Property Department over the last two years; a wish list of ideas prepared by the Friends of the Valley and other interest groups” (Hough, 1990, p. 29). In both the acknowledgement section and the previous passage, no other community groups are mentioned by name; FoV stands out. Its involvement with the site persists today, with a recent document recommending that the Brick Works Advisory Committee be redefined and include representation from FoV; the only other suggestion of citizen participation is described generally as “the surrounding community” (The Planning
Partnership, 2007, p. 77).
52 Considering the energy and persistence that FoV dedicates to the site, it seems reasonable to wonder about their motivations. Smyth provides some insight on FoV’s two driving concerns in the following passage from an interview:
…there were two sides to it: one was obviously the NIMBY thing, we didn't want it in our backyard because… we actually border that property in Governor’s Bridge, and so there was that aspect of it. But then the more we studied it… we realized that it was actually, there was a much bigger principle involved, and that was the whole principle of preserving land in the valley and that was what had been started after Hurricane Hazel and we realized that the Brick Works was only one of the properties that was affected by this and that it wasn’t just a local Governor’s Bridge issue. It was actually an important principle involved. And so that’s when Friends of the Valley was created. (personal communication, March 2013)
Therefore, while NIMBYism appears to be the initial motivator according to Smyth, he contends that it was ultimately concern over the preservation of valley land that drove
FoV. This is supported by the group’s lobbying of Metro Toronto and the Province to set up a fund of $50 million to acquire other valley lands (though $20 million of this was used for the Brick Works alone) (Smyth, 2006, p. 2). It would also explain why, after being approached by the developer pre-expropriation to strike a deal which would
“preserve [their] neighbourhood” yet allow development of other valley lands, FoV turned down the offer (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013). Rather,
Smyth says, they went “for the bigger issue of preserving all the land in the valleys”
(Ibid.), turning the expropriation into a “battle of principle” (Smyth, 2006, p. 2).
While Smyth contends that the main role of FoV was in expropriation, their continued involvement appears to be based on concern for the development of the site in a way that takes into account the environmental and historical themes perceived as important by FoV’s members (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March 2013). For example, Smyth admits that when Evergreen came in and suggested a “cultural centre”
53 for the Industrial Pad, FoV pushed for emphasis on an environmental organization (Ibid.).
Despite concern for some bigger principles, FoV’s involvement with the site is therefore also motivated by the local interests of the wealthy neighbourhood residents. Likely unwittingly, this concern for the preservation and promotion of certain environmental and historical factors as determined almost exclusively by an elite group is an instance of social exclusion based on a type of aestheticization of landscape preservation, as outlined in the paper by Duncan & Duncan (2001). Evident through the interview with Smyth as well as his personal opinion piece on the subject, the values championed by FoV for the
Brick Works site are seen to be good for all classes of Toronto residents, without ever questioning whether this is in fact the case. In reality, they serve foremost to perpetuate the lifestyle, tastes, and social order which benefit wealthy neighbourhood residents through the control of a public landscape by preserving property values and shaping a specific design and type of use of the restored site.
It is worth noting some of the mechanisms and powers FoV has at their disposal to wield such influence. As has been mentioned, the group draws on a community from the wealthy neighbourhoods surrounding the Brick Works, Rosedale and Moore Park.
Among them is Camilla Dalglish, a member of the Weston family and donor of the money for the Weston Family Garden (Jeffrey Smyth, personal communication, March
2013). Other than local residents, participants noted to be involved in FoV are specialists: members of local historical, geological, architectural, pottery, horticultural, and archaeological societies. During expropriation, they frequently called on their members – of which there were over 1,000 – for funds, as well as political connections (Ibid.). Smyth notes in particular – when asked about how to achieve projects like this in the future –
54 that it is important to have people “who are savvy and know their way around corridors of power” (Ibid.). One of their members was even able to donate space in the Globe and
Mail newspaper in order for FoV to advertise their “valley rally” which they held in
Edward’s Gardens (Ibid.). Both the newspaper (by the author’s own assessment, a modestly right-wing publication targeting upper-class readers) and the event space (a manicured botanical garden surrounded by other wealthy neighbourhoods) demonstrate
FoV’s operation within an elite sector of society. It is arguably the privilege of this well- connected position that allowed the group to accomplish so much.
6.1.3 But Where Are the Others?
Despite the benefits that the wealth and political influence available to FoV secured for the Brick Works, their role in the expropriation and restoration process is not without controversy. Due to their almost exclusive presence in the restoration process in terms of community representation, Jennifer Foster contends that “…the Don Valley
Brick Works presents an outstanding case study in exclusionary politics which may be traced through both the planning and design of the site” (2005, p. 333). She goes on to detail how public input was coordinated by FoV, noting that out of 27 individuals and interest groups listed in the Municipal Parks and Property records, 10 are representatives of the FoV board of directors and another seven are on the FoV Advisory Council (Ibid., p. 344). She further describes the group as one that depends on the fabric of industrial capitalism to support its access to wealth, and that the spatial arrangements they dictate on the site limits access for outsiders (Ibid., p. 334). Foster additionally maintains that
FoV’s involvement in the site was focused exclusively on blocking the Torvalley housing development (Ibid., p. 341).
55 While the present research findings prevent endorsement of this last statement, they agree with Foster that as a result of FoV’s powerful involvement with the site, what is found there today is largely a product of the aesthetic preferences and perceptions of ecology as expressed by a small group of privileged elites. In particular, evident on the site is “the expression of hegemonic patterns through ecological restoration and land conservation, where the particular interests of an elite sector of society are generalized and promoted as beneficial to society as a whole” (Foster, 2005, p. 333). One example is the Weston Family donation: by making a contribution large enough to ensure that the wildflower meadows and other aspects of the park were created in the first place, they further made a condition of the donation the prohibition of herbicide use for a ten-year period, ultimately impacting what vegetation was able to establish itself on site. This is likely connected to the perception of herbicides as negative for human health and therefore detrimental to recreation on site and in the surrounding neighbourhoods. As
Armour points out, “if we threw up the signs that are required [with herbicide use] we might get people just freaking out” (personal communication, March 2013). Herbicide is still not used to this day, even after the ten-year probation has long passed.
Where are the other community members in all of this? Why are no other segments of society as well represented? In this case, community engagement beyond
FoV (and to some extent, the Task Force) seems to have been prevented by passive exclusion due to the intense influence FoV had over the process. For example, by choosing to advertise in the Globe and Mail and holding the valley rally at Edwards
Garden, FoV would have attracted people of a similar background. This exclusion ultimately affects not only the process but the end result. Foster describes this dynamic:
56 … investment in places may empower people to shape said places and in so doing gain special, or exclusive, control over spatial arrangements whilst restricting both physical access and access to participatory processes to other groups. To the extent that investment in place may service the interests and preferences of particular groups, the political dimensions of access to space become prominent landscape features that define for whom and by whom design is enacted. (2005, p. 335)
Foster goes on to define this type of oppression as “cultural imperialism” (from
Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990), where dominant social perspectives become ‘naturalized’ and are depicted as the public’s best interest, rendering other perspectives invisible (2005, p. 335-336). Yet, on the other hand, the physical labour and maintenance on site is largely accomplished by unpaid volunteers and student groups from around the city (Ibid., p. 344). There is therefore involvement of individuals of lower economic backgrounds from different neighbourhoods in the lower-level, task- oriented elements of restoration, rendering it more problematic that they are not represented elsewhere in the process. These less-privileged groups are helping to build and maintain a space in which their perspective and enjoyment are not taken into account.
Hence, while the exclusion of other groups may not have been active, the site planning, design, and ongoing management has done a poor job of including representatives of different communities and backgrounds in the higher-level processes.
This ultimately leads to an exclusionary vision of ecological aesthetic and values represented on site, reinforcing elite control of their neighbourhood via the surrounding landscapes and supporting existing social hierarchies. While this aim may have been unconscious, to disregard the result would be apolitical ecology.
57 6.2 Money Matters
Financial factors – both constraints and access to funds – also had an impact on the way the site was developed and the ecology that exists there today. Principally, the two major areas where finances affected the site were the expropriation process and the working budget for the ecological restoration.
6.2.1 Expropriation Costs
Due to the Province’s initial delay in supplying its half of the original $4 million offer for the site, the site was lost to developers who began the process of rezoning the land. This attempted rezoning and preparation of the site for development raised the value of the land and when expropriation was pursued, the cost of procuring the land went up by a staggering five times the initial amount. While a fund of $50 million had been set up for the purpose of acquiring valley land for conservation, the Brick Works drained it of
40% of its funds. Although it is a sizeable piece of land, compared to the amount of other valley lands in the city the expense seems disproportionate.
The lack of funds to complete the first transaction resulted in a developer taking the first step in the restoration process: the in-filling of the quarry with aggregate materials. This now forms the foundation of the restored site. However, it is the use of funds to expropriate the land that more fundamentally impacts the region’s ecology. If
40% of the funds for procuring valley lands were spent in one single location, were other sites not able to be obtained? What land and which neighbourhoods might have been overlooked as a result? How might this have led to an unequal distribution of greenspace for residents of different socio-economic backgrounds? The expenditure of $20 million in
58 government funds for procuring a yet-to-be-restored greenspace within a wealthy and already fairly green neighbourhood (Rosedale and Moore Park are marked by expansive yards with lawns and large, old trees) may not have been the most beneficial to ensuring equal provision of greenspace throughout the city. In fact, according to Heynen, Perkins,
& Roy (2006), it likely contributed to an environmental injustice on a city-wide scale in exacerbating the disparity between residents’ access to the benefits of urban greenery, a political issue which merits active attempts at resolution. While these questions are raised by this transaction, there is insufficient room to explore these further in the present paper and they are therefore an avenue for future research.
6.2.2 Working Budget for Restoration & Maintenance
Beyond procurement of the site, finances also played a role in the restoration process. This is first made evident in the rejection of the initial master plan. The publication of the first master plan in 1990 coincided with a major recession and government down-sizing, the first down-sizing in the history of the Metro Toronto government (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013). Due to these financial pressures, Metro Council deemed the first master plan, at $18 - $28 million, too expensive (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). A second master plan was commissioned and released in 1995, requiring a more modest budget of only $5.1 million. This second plan is characterized by interview subjects as a “prioritized” or
“scaled-down” version of the first (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February
2013; David Leinster, personal communication, March 2013). An employee of the TRCA also recalls the City approached the TRCA asking, “What can you do for next to nothing?”, stating that working with limited funds became their theme (personal
59 communication, March 2013). Lack of government funds was therefore a restrictive factor in determining what could be realized for the site’s restoration; the decisions concerning how the restoration should be carried out and what it should include were not based exclusively on what was most beneficial for the ecological health of the site or its future uses. As noted in the interviews, the scaled-down second plan produced out of financial constraint is by and large what is seen today in the Quarry Park.
Access to funds from non-governmental sources also had an impact on the site’s restoration. As noted above, the donation from Camilla Dalglish to implement the
Weston Family Quarry Garden was considered “that first push to go forward with [the restoration]” (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). However, as also outlined previously with regards to the herbicide prohibition, it additionally came with restraints that impacted the ecological state of the site. Lorraine Johnson further muses that “…funding bodies at the time – such as the Weston Foundation – I think they were really interested in volunteer engagement and measurable goals and numbers… And maybe there might have been things the site desperately needed ecologically that weren’t served by that sort of funding” (personal communication, February 2013). Hence, even access to funds was not straightforwardly beneficial for the restoration.
Finally, problems in maintaining the site were frequently connected to a lack of funds by the interview subjects. In the first summer after the plantings on site, even though there was an irrigation system installed, there lacked the personnel in the form of
“operational backup” and the “eyes on the site” to ensure the system was activated when needed, leading to the loss of vegetation (Garth Armour, personal communication, March
2013). The two representatives from the TRCA talked extensively of the lack of funds
60 affecting implementation decisions and ongoing maintenance. One comments that, “ever since I’ve started with the Authority, it’s always been, you know – we used to have more money” and that, “we would have liked to have gone further but, really, super- constrained. Every dollar was counted” (personal communication, March 2013). Nick
Saccone even admits that he didn’t want to visit the site for a long time because its maintenance was so poor (Ibid.). The other TRCA member laments that “there was always a hope I guess that there’d be more maintenance here… it doesn’t get the sort of love and care that I think our designers and we originally thought it would have”, noting that as a result, they are now more conscious of trying to build parks which are less costly to maintain (Ibid.). Ecological restoration – on this site as well as others – is therefore enmeshed in the impacts of capitalist markets, including recessions and the accumulation of wealth; money is a direct factor in a public greenspace’s ecological attributes.
6.3 Amalgamation
In a wider context, there was one political factor which was also noted during the interviews to have impacted the success of the site shortly after the restoration was complete: the amalgamation of the City of Toronto. On January 1st, 1998 – just a couple of months after the Quarry Park was officially opened to the public – the new City of
Toronto was formed by amalgamating 7 municipalities (City of Toronto, n.d.2). The move was largely based on a cost-saving incentive (Ibid.). Reformulating the government and its activities took time and the process took its toll on the Quarry Park.
The impression of the impact expressed in the interviews is that the site fell off the radar during these years. Armour recounts the problems in keeping plant material
61 alive at the beginning as “the site kind of got lost for a few years”, adding that it “had sort of fallen through the cracks” (personal communication, March 2013). A representative of the TRCA states that when amalgamation happened, discussions often revolved around who had any money to contribute to the site, and they conclude that amalgamation “really dealt this place a blow in its early years…. And so it took a number of years for it to sort of be found I think almost in the city system” (personal communication, March 2013).
Even Smyth contends that the site “became an orphan” (personal communication, March
2013). A document on the management strategy for the site additionally notes that
“[s]ince the park was opened around the time of City amalgamation, the park has had a series of budgetary constraints making it difficult to finish the park to the standard of the revised vision” (The Planning Partnership, 2007, p. 26).
Like the power of community influence and financial matters discussed above, the political decision to amalgamate (a decision based on finances at a larger scale) contributed to the outcome of the ecological restoration. These three analyses demonstrate that political forces – in the form of social standing, access to and disbursement of funds, capitalist markets, economic downturns, and government reformulation – are factors in the type, location, and vitality of the natural environment that humans experience. This is explicitly the case for the Don Valley Brick Works site.
In elucidating its recent history in a purposefully political light, a more complete understanding of its ecology – including lessons on how to duplicate it success or avoid its shortfalls – can be gained. In the following chapter’s evaluation of the ecological restoration, it should be remembered that these political factors influence what is found.
62 Chapter 7: Findings & Analysis 2 – Ecological Restoration
While a political ecological analysis provides context for the Brick Works restoration, this chapter places greater emphasis on its content. After briefly examining some of the movements that shaped the restoration mindset at the time, four key approaches employed in the restoration – as uncovered through examination of the master plans and interviews – are presented. This is followed by an evaluation of the ecological restoration using Eric Higgs’ four criteria.
7.1 General Context: Prevailing Mindsets Influencing the Restoration
In several ways, the restoration of the Don Valley Brick Works occurred at an optimal time. As mentioned above, the Task Force to Bring Back the Don was recently formed and there was therefore in place a mobilized and coordinated group of people who supported efforts to improve the health of the Don watershed. The Brick Works restoration fit this mandate as it was perceived to enhance water quality in the Don River and improve the river corridor’s connectivity and overall ecological health.
In an interview with Stonehouse, he also suggests that the site “was the right site in the right location at the right time” for Michael Hough – principal author of the first master plan – to model his ideas on succession and the use of native species (personal communication, February 2013). However, this was in contrast to the mindset of the City of Toronto’s Parks and Forestry Department on restoration at the time. As Armour, having just become one of their employees in 1989, notes: “at that point time, it was approached more like planting a garden rather than planting a natural community of plants that would have an evolutionary process” (personal communication, March 2013).
63 He describes that interest in natural plant communities and succession was not yet embraced by Metro Parks, but rather if “you saw a plant, you thought it was pretty, that’s what you planted” (Ibid.). He adds, “we kind of shifted from that model into a model that kind of embraced more natural processes and more successional processes in terms of establishing plants” (Ibid.). The restoration of the Brick Works site therefore came at a time when the approach to succession and native versus exotic species use was changing gears, and the site further contributed to this transition.
Finally, the release of David Crombie’s Second Interim Report of the Royal
Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront in 1992 is an event which
Stonehouse terms a “seminal moment” for the restoration (personal communication,
February 2013). The report takes an explicit ecosystem approach to restoring cities, even quoting from Hough’s book City Form and Natural Process (1989) (Royal Commission,
1992, p. xix). While the Brick Works is not considered part of the waterfront, the report’s emphasis on restoring degraded landscapes, re-establishing ecological processes, and balancing human uses with ecological integrity was supportive of the vision for the Brick
Works restoration (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013).
Together, these three mindsets impacted the specific approaches employed on the site.
7.2 Specific Approaches Used in the Restoration
7.2.1 Ecological Succession
Drawing on a process that occurs spontaneously in natural systems, the Brick
Works restoration involved establishing and controlling ecological succession. In his chapter entitled “Ecological Succession and its Role in Landscape Reclamation” in the
64 book Designing the Reclaimed Landscape (2008), Schneider describes the process of succession:
In each case, rapid growers settle an area. They are followed by new species. The recent arrivals need the fast-spreading pioneers that precede them. As waves of new species immigrate, diversity predictably increases. The ecosystem enlarges, and the rate of growth slows… The ecosystem at maturity represents a system that has explored all possible “easy-money” dissipative routes and is now plodding along with the optimal amounts of energy captured in, and degraded by, its system. (p. 44)
Schneider adds that the goal for practitioners engaged in ecological restoration is to activate this successional process (p. 44). Employing the processes of succession is today considered central to ecological restoration. However, this was not the case at the time of the Brick Works restoration; rather, it was due to the involvement in the project of a few forward-thinking individuals such as Hough and Armour that these techniques were used.
The first master plan indicates the restoration’s intentions to be inspired by the succession already occurring on site:
…the slopes have revegetated naturally with native and naturalized meadow species, regenerating sumac, poplar, and aspen, and related pioneer woodland vegetation… Overall, the combination of mature forest, meadow, and regeneration creates a remarkably complex environment with great potential for interpreting different plant communities. (Hough, 1990, p. 19)
The second master plan echoes this, talking of “successional landscapes” which “will be left and allowed to evolve from existing conditions to early succession communities and ultimately climax communities” (Oleson, 1995, s. 2.1.3). This outcome is visible in areas of the site, where the original plantings no longer remain but have been replaced with vegetation further along the successional sequence.
On the other hand, a lack of successional planning in some areas led to failure.
Armour describes certain parts of the quarry that were planted without succession in
65 mind and which failed to thrive. He comments that “when the site was developed, the vision of restoration and the knowledge of restoration of these types of lands… was really quite naïve, for a lack of a better way to put it”, leading to such failures (personal communication, March 2013). However, in other areas succession is purposely prevented: Statham notes that certain techniques are used to keep the meadow in its present state, because “as we all know, natural succession would have it otherwise”
(personal communication, March 2013). In both instances of activating and controlling succession, the awareness and incorporation of successional processes marks the Brick
Works site as a leader in this approach in Toronto. Armour notes: “there’ve been a lot of things learned on this site that we’ve been able to kind of take and apply to other sites across the city” (personal communication, March 2013).
7.2.2 Native Species
The Brick Works site restoration is also marked by a commitment to native species. In contrast to native varieties, invasive species are those considered non- indigenous which have been introduced to the biotic community either unintentionally or intentionally (Foster & Sandberg, 2004, p. 178-9). While this has not always been the case, invasives are today perceived as ecologically detrimental and most often ecologists and restorationists spend significant time and energy preserving native species and ridding areas of non-indigenous varieties (Ibid.). However, Foster and Sandberg argue that the more intelligent long-term action may be to adopt measures to cohabitate with invasives as they are not necessarily incompatible with ecological sustainability (Ibid.).
66 The approach at the Brick Works, however, has evolved to become decidedly pro- native species. In the initial master plan, natives and introduced species are not strictly divided into good and bad. For example, restoration techniques employing both “native and introduced species” are mentioned (Hough, 1990, p. 31). The second master plan, however, clearly states that healing the landscape involves “the creation of habitat which supports a diversity of native plants and wildlife” (Oleson, 1995, s. 2.0, emphasis added) and continues to suggest throughout that the restoration ought to “showcase the beauty of native plant species” (Ibid., s. 2.4.1.b, emphasis added). There is no mention of introduced species playing a role in the restoration work.
This emphasis on natives is echoed in interviews. In response to the question of whether the site was designed with ecosystem needs in mind and in what ways,
Stonehouse responds: “pioneer and native species were used, that’s kind of the short answer” (personal communication, February 2013). A representative of the TRCA corroborates this view, stating that “in terms of some of the themes here: first off, it was going to be native species” (personal communication, March 2013). Additionally,
Armour mentions that a condition of the Weston donation was that “all the plantings had to be native plants”, later adding that one of the main ecological aspects which they hope to highlight for visitors to the site are the native species (personal communication, March
2013). Native species are therefore strongly favoured over non-indigenous varieties.
In contrast, introduced or invasive species are mentioned in the interviews only as a pervasive problem to be dealt with. Stonehouse specifically suggests that this research ought to include a discussion of the “problem” of invasives, such as dog-strangling vine, as it is considered a major issue on site (personal communication, February 2013), a
67 perspective which Johnson also voices (personal communication, February 2013).
Armour notes that they have “lots of problems managing invasives which tend to smother out the understory” (personal communication, March 2013). The TRCA representative characterizes invasives on site as “hugely problematic” and recalls participating in efforts to dig them out (personal communication, March 2013). Finally, when Statham discusses site management, it frequently relates to how to help native species out-compete the invasives (personal communication, March 2013). With studies indicating that 80% of species on site consist of invasives in certain areas (Dillon Consulting Ltd, 2008), this is no small feat. Therefore, while Hough’s master plan supported an ecology on the site that allows for the co-existence of both native and introduced species, the restoration and maintenance has since become exclusively focused on prioritizing natives.
7.2.3 Combination of Habitats6
At 11.5 hectares, the Quarry Park provides a fairly large area to work with in terms of a public park. The first master plan takes advantage of this by planning for three different habitat types (emphasizing those which were already beginning to take shape on their own, pre-restoration): wooded areas, wetlands, and open meadow. The second master plan preserves this arrangement. David Stonehouse describes the reasons for this combination: “it’s such a large site, such an interesting site that there was the opportunity to do more than one thing” (personal communication, February 2013). He further attests to the uniqueness of this combination: “it’s very common in Toronto to have ravine, so wooded areas, little forests, and it’s also not uncommon to have wetlands, but it’s
6 Parts of this section were extracted and modified from an essay submitted for ENVS 7599 Independent Directed Study: Landscape Ecology, submitted to Professor Laura Taylor in January 2013.
68 actually quite rare to have meadows and it’s quite rare to have the three habitat types on the same site in close proximity” (Ibid.). Statham echoes Stonehouse, stating that “in this area we have created wetland, meadow and forest… you wouldn’t on this scale necessarily find these three” (personal communication, March 2013).
The motivation for this, as Stonehouse further explains, is diversity: “You want to create a diverse set of landscapes that attract a diverse set of animal species” (personal communication, February 2013). Statham further states that this diversity of plants and habitats is intentionally being provided and maintained (personal communication, March
2013). This complexity of habitat is an important principle in landscape ecology. As noted in Dramstad, Olson, & Forman’s Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape
Architecture and Land-Use Planning (1996), the larger the natural landscape patch, the more likely it will contain a variety of habitats, which in turn supports a greater number of species (p. 21). The first master plan notes: “The presence of wildlife is dependent on diverse habitat and linear connections, both of which are characteristic of the site and its surroundings” (Hough, 1990, p. 19). The combination of the three distinct habitat types on the Brick Works site therefore appears to be a conscious attempt to promote biodiversity for ecological benefit.
7.2.4 Focus on Water Systems7
While the forested areas and open meadow form valuable parts of the habitat trifecta, there appears to have been an important emphasis placed on the water systems at the Brick Works. At the time of writing the first master plan, Mud Creek – the Don’s tributary that runs through the site – had been mostly enclosed in a storm sewer and
7 Ibid.
69 channeled to the Don via a culvert. Water quality was poor and made worse during storms, when erosion of the ravine banks occurred (Hough, 1990, p. 20). The master plan therefore recommends restoring ecological functions by daylighting the tributary and creating a stream system, sediment pond, and water gardens at the west side of the site.
This system not only serves to provide an aquatic habitat, but also helps improve the quality of the water that ultimately flows into the Don (Ibid., p. 76).
Having worked directly on the original master plan, Leinster affirms the significance of daylighting Mud Creek, describing it as “a really important and key move…one big systems move” (personal communication, March 2013). This systems way of approaching the water restoration on site, Leinster explains, came from acknowledgement at the time of the city’s rivers as part of larger urban planning issues, such as the quality of the water along the waterfront for recreation (for example, as articulated in the Crombie Report). This emphasis was then traced back to the role of the
Don River and the Brick Works site. Armour agrees the daylighting of Mud Creek, and the resulting emphasis on improving the quality of water before entering the Don was “a big driving force, thematically” (personal communication, March 2013). This is further echoed by Statham: when asked what ecological considerations in the original master plans still inspire the site today, she states, “the first thing I would think of, at the forefront, is storm-water and the way water moves through the site” (personal communication, March 2013).
In their book Restoring Disturbed Landscapes (2011), Tongway and Ludwig provide readers with the foundations of landscape functions, in order for practitioners to better go about restoring them. Very early on, they note: “Because water is essential to all
70 life, the main focus in our conceptual framework is on the role of water” (p. 8). They add that healthy landscapes are better able to absorb rainwater, whereas a disturbed landscape results in a large amount of runoff (Ibid.). The understanding of a site’s water processes and the amelioration of them can therefore play a large part in helping restore ecological functions and the integrity of a landscape. Whether consciously or not (it is difficult to tell as this concept is not alluded to directly either in interviews or documents), it appears that this was the approach used in the restoration of the Brick Works quarry.
Despite this focus, however, the functioning of the water processes has not reached the level that was aimed for. For example, Stonehouse points out that water flow is an issue as there is an obstruction that prevents the amount of water originally foreseen entering the wetland area to flow to this destination (personal communication, February
2013). Saconne adds that despite daylighting Mud Creek, the site was “never properly connected back”, citing the fact that fish will not travel up the river system to get to the ponds (personal communication, March 2013). Another TRCA member notes that while it was hoped that the water features on site could help with storm-water management, in order to really have an impact in the watershed, the entire site would have to have been a pond (Ibid.). Finally, it was noted that only partial success of the primary intended function of the water system has been achieved: improving water quality. While Statham has conducted only informal water testing under non-ideal conditions, no major differences in terms of water quality as water moves throughout the system were found
(personal communication, March 2013). Furthermore, while it was expected that successful removal of sediment from the water flowing through the system would by now require bio-dredging to keep the wetland system functioning, tests conducted in recent
71 years have found this to be unnecessary. This is an indication that the system may not be successfully removing sediment (Ibid.). Therefore, while much attention was given to an important ecological process, the full benefit of the intended results has yet to be realized.
7.3 Ecological Restoration Analysis
Four central themes in the ecological restoration of the Brick Works – as they appeared via the master plans and the interviews – are outlined above. Has their application resulted in “good” ecological restoration? As outlined in section 3.3.2 of this paper, Higgs’ criteria for good ecological restoration is used to analyze this Brick Works.
The findings of a similar analysis from Jennifer Foster’s 2005 research on the site will be simultaneously discussed in order to provide a comparison.
7.3.1 Ecological Integrity
The first of Higgs’ concepts is ecological integrity. The term defies a strict definition of ecological health, focusing instead on the quality of the ecosystem resulting from restoration. It evokes the notion of wholeness by encompassing a range of indicators such as resiliency, elasticity, and stress response (Higgs, 2003).
Foster’s work on the Brick Works restoration from 2005 contends that the ecological integrity of the Brick Works site is debatable, noting several positive as well as negative ecological aspects of the landscape. By contrast, in a 2007 study of the site, the “regeneration” of the natural environment is described as “remarkable and for the most part a highly successful transformation” (The Planning Partnership, p. 15). In particular, the wetlands are described as one of the site’s most successful features as well
72 as one of the most ecologically rich, noted for attracting a variety of aquatic and bird life.
A tree preservation report from 2008 additionally evaluated 369 trees for canopy vigour
(“an assessment of the health of the tree”) measured on a scale of good, fair, and poor; the majority were classed in the healthiest state (Wassenaer, p. 4). Finally, a more general
2008 natural heritage study and stewardship plan contends that “despite a long history of intense disturbance… this portion of the Don Valley retains quality indicators” (Dougan
& Associates, p. 12). It goes on to state that the restoration work on the site has added significant attributes and that “[t]hese conditions suggest that there is inherent resilience in the existing system, provided by a wide range of environments associated with topography and hydrology of the ecosystem” (Ibid.). These results would therefore seem to suggest that according to Higgs’ concept of ecological integrity, the Brick Works’ restored quarry is doing quite well.
However, the same 2007 study mentioned above also describes the failure of wildflower meadows to thrive due to the impact of invasives. It further notes the difficulty of establishing the Carolinian woodland, called for by the original master plan, due to both human and dog impacts, though it has begun improving. Finally, the biggest problem it mentions is the “major erosion” occurring along the banks of Mud Creek, causing a number of oaks to fall (The Planning Partnership, 2007). Additionally, several sources describe the wide-spread problems of trampled vegetation and erosion, again from human and dog use and the creation of informal trails (The Planning Partnership,
2007; Dillon Consulting Ltd., 2008; David Stonehouse, personal communication,
February 2013; Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). As also noted previously, the wetland system – while providing habitat for many species – has not been
73 as successful as anticipated in improving water quality and attracting spawning fish.
Finally, an overall assessment of the quality distribution of natural cover (based on habitat patch size, shape, and surrounding matrix) conducted by the TRCA in 2009 ranks the overall site as “poor” (TRCA, 2009, p. 8).
Therefore, while some studies find indicators of ecological health and potentially indicate improvement in the establishment of ecological processes and habitats since
Foster’s 2005 work, there remain critical issues which have been exacerbated with increased visitor traffic. Furthermore, there are no common criteria used by those evaluating the health of the site (whether their conclusions are positive or negative), making the assessments dependent on the chosen indicators and assessor’s perspective.
This research hence agrees with Foster’s earlier evaluation: the ecological integrity of this restored site is debatable.
7.3.2 Historical Fidelity
Higgs’ second concept for evaluating a restoration is termed historical fidelity.
Historical fidelity considers the extent to which the restoration reflects the history of a place, without demanding exact reproduction of pre-disturbance conditions. Instead,
Higgs believes that loyalty to these conditions ought to be tempered with consideration of current judgments and goals. Striving for historical fidelity should not outweigh other criteria such as ecological integrity (Higgs, 2003).
Foster’s analysis of this aspect of the Brick Works restoration is generally positive. She states that the site “presents a provocative, if simplified, expression of the site’s manifestation at a variety of historical junctures, and situates it within the Bring
Back the Don project as a public conservation achievement.” (2005, p. 343-4). In
74 reaching this conclusion, Foster largely examined how the history of the site was literally represented, such as the geological display of climate change on the quarry’s North Slope and the prevalence of interpretation features detailing the site’s industrial history. While
Foster’s work does not include an explicit discussion on the approach to restoring the site’s pre-disturbance ecological conditions, an analysis of just that appears to agree with
Foster’s original conclusion.
The first master plan for the site notes that “the historic, industrial, and cultural attributes of the site should be seen as a whole and provide the foundation for a rehabilitation process that encompasses the entire Valley” (Hough, 1990, p. 39).
However, these “historic attributes” appear to reference the industrial past rather than pre-industrial conditions, as the quarry area was planned to be “reminiscent of the spatial character of the original quarry” (Ibid., p. 70) rather than what came before. On the other hand, multiple people interviewed for this research who were involved in the restoration note the approximate date used for reference to historical pre-disturbance ecological conditions as the late 1700s, pre-European settlement (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013; Lorraine Johnson, personal communication, February
2013; David Leinster, personal communication, March 2013). Johnson describes this historical referencing as central to restoration practice at the time:
there was very much an emphasis and a focus on historical reference, and a kind of restoration that looked back towards and referred to prior conditions, and, prior plant species composition, prior habitat types… at the time, it was, I would say, leaning towards: what were the conditions on the site prior to European settlement and how can we… return the site to some semblance of those conditions? (personal communication, February 2013)
75 It should again be noted that this European settlement followed several hundred years of
Aboriginal presence. Stonehouse acknowledges this activity but alludes to the fact that it was not as easily used for historical reference purposes because it is “hard to track”
(personal communication, February 2013).
Higgs’ call to balance the targeting of historical conditions with present-day ecological requirements and goals is also found in the approach to the Brick Works restoration. Though Johnson’s quote above describes the emphasis on restoring historical conditions, she also notes that “there was certainly some recognition that that is not possible”, though the aim was thought to have value in and of itself (personal communication, February 2013). Stonehouse also explains that while the author of the first master plan, Michael Hough, was concerned with ecological form, ecological function always took precedence: “So Michael’s big thing was, you know, you kind of want to take it back to what it was but more importantly is take it to a state where nature takes over and it’s the right vegetation for the wildlife, for the birds, for the animals, and natural processes start to work again” (personal communication, February 2013).
Therefore, while achievement of historical conditions was used to inspire the restoration, it was also balanced with other considerations. The Brick Works restoration therefore adheres quite closely to the concept of historical fidelity as described by Higgs.
7.3.3 Focal Practice
The third concept of good ecological restoration advanced by Higgs is focal practice. Bridging a divide between technological solutions to restoration and community engagement between people and ecosystems, this concept pushes for the examination of the level of societal involvement and cultural engagement of a restoration project. As
76 Foster describes, “[f]ocal practice distinguishes restoration with a social mandate from restoration as a professional exercise” (2005, p. 344). In effect, Higgs contends that restoration should not simply be the application of perfected technique, but also about building communities connected to natural processes (Higgs, 2003).
As detailed in section 6.1, the restoration of the Brick Works was in several critical ways supported by community involvement. This would appear to signal good focal practice. However, as also discussed, this community engagement has been largely dominated by one particular group. It exercises a vast amount of control over what occurs on site, to the exclusion – intended or not – of other community voices. Therefore, while there is high-level planning conducted and influenced by one group (FoV), and plantings and maintenance performed by other groups (volunteers and student groups from different areas of the city), there remains a gap between achieving the mandate of one group and the involvement of a wider representation of the community. The volunteers engaged in manual labour on site are contributing to the realization of the vision articulated by the elites, rather than participating in creating that vision themselves.
Foster identifies these same issues and contends that it is difficult to conclude that the Brick Works demonstrates focal practice (Foster, 2005, p. 345). However, the current paper holds a slightly different conclusion: it cannot be denied that there is significant community engagement within this restoration project, and it is one that exerts a high level of cultural influence. At the same time, this type of engagement cannot be said to be wholly desirable as it represents only a narrow segment of the population while isolating others. Hence, this research concludes that the site does indeed demonstrate a type of focal practice, but it is a highly problematic one.
77 7.3.4 Wild Design
Higgs’s final concept for the evaluation of an ecological restoration is wild design. The idea is that the design of a restoration is considered not simply for its enhancement of the human experience but also in its ability to meet the interests of the ecosystem and other species. Higgs further believes that good design explicitly indicates our intentions for the future and acknowledges human agency in restoration, rather than trying to separate a restored ecosystem from human influence (Higgs, 2003).
Foster is critical of the Brick Works’ expression of wild design, stating that while some aspects of Higgs’ concept are exhibited, they are overwhelmed by anthropocentric considerations (Foster, 2005). The concepts of wild design uncovered in the present research that favour ecological interests are the encouragement of succession (where it is allowed to occur), the creation of habitat for wildlife, and the improvement of water quality. As discussed in section 7.2.1, succession was purposely planned for, beginning with the first master plan. However, it was also curtailed in certain areas in order to enhance specific human uses of the site. The successful creation of aquatic habitat from the wetlands is frequently noted for the site, and many interview subjects talk of the three major habitats’ ability to attract a range of wildlife. Finally, section 7.2.4 notes that the goal of improving the water quality of Mud Creek prior to joining the Don was emphasized, though it’s success is unclear. The site therefore exhibits some effort to meet the interests of the ecosystem and other species.
One of Foster’s criticisms against the site displaying wild design is that the plan for the site has not evolved since the early 1990s, and therefore does not take into account the evolving nature of ecosystem processes (Foster, 2005, p. 346). However, since
78 writing this in 2005, there has been a major assessment of the site and a new management plan called for which emphasizes adaptive management (The Planning Partnership,
2007). Nevertheless, this does not wholly address Foster’s criticism as the new management plan is primarily aimed at adapting for the sake of the quality of continued and increased human use, rather than targeting the ecological vitality of the site.
This focus on anthropocentric use of the site is pervasive. At the time of writing the first master plan, the site was designated by the Official Plan of East York as “Public
Open Space”, slated to “be preserved for the enjoyment of this and future generations”
(Hough, 1990, p. 8). The original master plan follows this designation, frequently describing restored spaces as intended for human education and recreational use. This emphasis has continued today with multiple interview subjects demonstrating a prioritization of human needs and desires over ecological ones. For example, Armour, when making the case for certain interventionists management strategies, states: “this would be one of those instances where we would place the value – the educational and human use value – high enough up that achieving or like interjecting certain management techniques is worthwhile enough for what it gives back to the public” (personal communication, March 2013). Stonehouse further adds that as opposed to a typical restoration where “you just plant the hell out of it”, this site is unique in that “the plant communities do work around the circulation routes that were established” (personal communication, February 2013). This focus on human use of the restored site is connected to the vision of the site as a demonstration space slated to be “managed forever” (David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013), an issue discussed in the following chapter.
79 It can therefore be concluded that while there are design and management intentions focused on increasing benefits to the ecosystem and species other than humans, these are stunted by the focus on human benefits derived from the site. In keeping with
Higgs’ concept of wild design, professionals involved with the site’s restoration and ongoing maintenance do not deny the relationship between humans and ecosystems in such a landscape; however, the focus on human use is pursued at the expense of a design which balances the interests of all site users (plants, animals, and humans alike). Hence, the wild design aspect of the Brick Works misses the mark.
7.3.5 Overall Evaluation of Ecological Restoration
Foster characterizes the ecologically restored Don Valley Brick Works as “an anthropocentric facility with disputable ecological benefits, a judicious sense of historical fidelity, weak focal practice and scarce wild design” (Foster, 2005, p. 342). The current research, being conducted eight years after Foster’s, draws on updated and at times different information, yet the findings are similar. While the ecological integrity of the site appears to be improving in certain ways, particularly as succession continues, it is also tempered by increased visitor impacts and since no cohesive analysis of its health indicators is available, only an unclear picture of its success is possible. On the other hand, though this paper examines different criteria in this category than Foster’s, it agrees that the historical fidelity of the site appears to meet Higgs’ conception of this goal. Less so in the next category, for although a type of focal practice is present in the restoration, it is unbalanced and exclusionary, falling far short of the ideal. Finally, while there is an underlying element of wild design on site, it is overrun with considerations of anthropocentric use. Therefore, while the Brick Works restoration has elements of good
80 ecological restoration as defined by Higgs, it is undermined by uncertainty or competing priorities which degrade its potential success. There is room for improvement.
81 Chapter 8: Findings & Analysis 3 – Human-Nature Interaction
From the beginning of the Don Valley Brick Works restoration, there has been an emphasis on the use of the site for purposes of human-nature interaction. For example, it is revealing that while the TRCA (which is largely focused on conservation of land) owns the site, it is managed by Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation (which is largely focused on providing natural amenities to city residents). Its zoning as Public Open Space, as discussed above, further emphasizes the site’s role as an area deliberately set aside for human enjoyment. Therefore, while some ecological restoration projects are intended to provide benefits primarily to ecosystem quality and wildlife (from which humans derive only indirect benefits), the Brick Works restoration clearly aimed from the beginning to provide for human-nature interaction.
Due to the time and scope constraints of this research, the human-use analysis focuses on the planning and management of visitor usage, rather than user accounts of their experience of the site. This is an avenue for potential future research. Nevertheless, a good understanding of some of the issues is possible.
8.1 Guiding Visions Behind Human-Nature Interaction
Through the research process, and particularly evident in the interviews, two interconnected approaches in the planning and management of human-nature interaction on the Brick Works site are found to dominate. The first is the emphasis on the site’s role as an area of demonstration for the general public, and the second is the almost unquestioned understanding that the site will have to be maintained and managed indefinitely.
82 8.1.1 Built to Demonstrate
Through the 1990 master plan and interviews with individuals involved with the site’s restoration and maintenance, it is clear that the principal goals of the restoration are to demonstrate to the public certain ecological processes, habitats, and take-home techniques. Under the natural/environmental themes section in the 1990 master plan, it states that “[t]hese include a variety of demonstration gardens ranging from the reintroduction of native forest species, natural regeneration, and restoration techniques
(bio-engineering) with native and introduced species, wildflower and horticultural gardens, a conservatory facility, wildlife habitat garden, recycling demonstrations, etc.”
(Hough, 1990, p. 31). When specifically discussing plans for the quarry bottom, the master plan further affirms that “[i]ts purpose is to interpret geology and natural history, and demonstrate stream and water quality enhancement, wildlife and landscape restoration opportunities that exist in the quarry…” (Ibid., p. 69). The word
“demonstration” is used extensively throughout the document, indicating demonstration for the educational benefit of human visitors.
This idea continues to operate through those involved in the site’s restoration and management today. When Armour was asked about the ecological considerations at the forefront of the restoration, his immediate response is that the site “was thought of as a demonstration area, you know where we could bring people in and just talk about restoration and what restoration could be”, adding that Toronto Parks, Forestry &
Recreation are currently developing an interpretation plan to further this aim (personal communication, March 2013). Later, when asked about what the site’s ecological impact has been, Armour again comes back to this idea when he states: “it really has ended up
83 being a demonstration for the public” (Ibid.). Even Johnson, who considers herself a representative of the ecological interests in the restoration, states: “I was really, really keen to have the Brick Works be a demonstration public site in the City of Toronto for native plant communities and ecological restoration… So not strictly ecological restoration but demonstration native plant gardens” (personal communication, February
2013). The larger goal, echoed by multiple interviewees, is to be able to show people what they could do in their yards or community spaces such as churches, community centres, and parks.
There is additionally an element of demonstration intended not simply for the general public, but for professionals working in restoration. Both Armour and Johnson use the word “laboratory” to describe the site, stating that it is a place where lessons about ecological restoration can be learned and applied to different sites (personal communications, February & March 2013). The goal of Brick Works Quarry Park is therefore not seen simply as the successful restoration from industrial landscape to thriving ecosystem, but rather as something further: an area for human use and benefit where the focus is on educational demonstration.
8.1.2 “Managed Forever”
Despite the emphasis Hough placed on allowing succession to establish healthy ecosystem processes, the restored site was never meant to evolve independently. Instead, an emphasis on the necessity of active management and maintenance is a direct product of the vision of the site as a demonstration for public use. Armour sums up this connection in his response as to whether a “better” ecological system might be achieved from a hands-off approach to site management:
84 No, I think it’s more demonstration. I think it’s maintaining habitat types that promote certain flora and fauna… I know what you’re asking me, sort of is it a glorified backyard in a way? Because if you’re going to manage it, it’s not really a natural system. And I think this would be one of those instances where we would place the value – the educational and human use value – high enough up that achieving or like interjecting certain management techniques is worthwhile enough for what it gives back to the public and ultimately what it gives us in terms of the understanding of the natural environment. (personal communication, March 2013)
The consensus among people involved in the site is that this type of management must continue indefinitely. Stonehouse puts it plainly in a quote mentioned earlier where he states that “one of the kinds of myths about landscapes like this is there’s… no maintenance or low maintenance and the reality is that a thing like this needs to be actively managed forever” (personal communication, February 2013). Leinster adds that while some controlled evolution of certain habitats is allowed, others are not. For example, under the anticipated management of the site, “the meadow would never become anything other than a meadow”, even though if left alone it would quite quickly become a thicket (David Leinster, personal communication, March 2013). The main reason given for preventing the meadow succession is to provide people with views from the Industrial Pad to the geologically-significant North Slope, as well as to provide safety in the form of openness and visibility on the trails. This management technique is again for human-use benefit and must be continually applied in order to achieve its aims.
This consensus on the necessity of management appears indicative of a larger planning discourse issue: problem closure. According to Tim Forsyth (2003), problem closure is “the pre-definition of the purpose of inquiry” (p. 79). As a way of implicitly framing environmental issues in order to perceive and evaluate them, problem closure eventually contributes to the formation of explicit positions on policy or action. The
85 implications of this practice are problematic, as it constricts people’s visions of what is relevant and possible, which in turn affects decisions about further inquiry, discussion, and potential actions (Jasanoff & Wynn, 1998, p. 5).
In the case of the Brick Works, the implicit assumption is that a certain kind of landscape and natural environment is required for people to learn about the natural world and enjoy natural areas. The explicit position then translates to “management is required forever”. However, this position is only true within the first assumption. Conversely, if one stops to consider that humans could potentially gain a greater understanding of the natural world from ecosystems free of active management, then the necessity of managing a site such as the Brick Works disappears. Given that the aim of the site is to educate the public about functional ecosystems and the natural world, it merits questioning why active and interventionist management is called upon to achieve this.
This pattern of concept closure permeates how site managers view the ecological quality of the site. When asked about the current ecological health of the restored quarry, in conjunction with the observation that others had mentioned it would require continual management, Armour responds, “absolutely, it will never be, it will never sustain itself”
(personal communication, March 2013). However, when pressed about what the inability to sustain itself would amount to, Armour simply recounts the successional process that would take place, altering the types of habitats found on site. Succession is a naturally- occurring process that is not generally thought to undermine ecological health, and is indeed frequently an indicator of it. In this instance, however, this is turned upside down, as the undermining of an environment deemed suitable for human education is conflated with something that is ecologically detrimental.
86 How such a perspective came to dominate with the individuals responsible for restoring and caring for the site is worth investigating. Becoming aware of problem closure is a first step in doing so. In turn, questioning this framing of the site may lead to an expanded view of how it can be managed (or not), and may help resolve issues of ecological success hampered by anthropocentric concerns. The attainment of both visitor education and ecological vitality may be less disparate than currently envisioned.
8.2 Types of Intended Interaction on Site
Based on the two guiding visions described above, certain types of human-nature interaction were planned for and anticipated on site. The original master plan describes one of the key principles in site design as the opportunity for “[p]assive learning activities in the quiet natural setting of the quarry that combine education and recreation” (Hough,
1990, p. 2). This is in contrast to some other Toronto parks, where amenities such as tennis courts, basketball courts, swimming pools, soccer fields, baseball picnic areas, playgrounds, and even animal farms are provided (City of Toronto, n.d.4). The type of use envisioned for the site has remained unchanged, as the most recent management plan also indicates that the primary use of the site to be passive (The Planning Partnership,
2007, p. 3). Natural environment interpretation, ecological demonstration, and informative displays are employed to provide for this type of use.
More specifically, activities seen as acceptable and encouraged on site are walking, wildlife viewing, dog walking, and nature appreciation (Hough, 2001; The
Planning Partnership, 2007, p. 3). Translated in terms of physical infrastructure, passive use has been provided for in the form of walkways and boardwalks, lookouts, and seating
87 options throughout the site (The Planning Partnership, 2007, p. 3). Some interpretive signage is also found along the paths – discussing such features as the significance of the
North Slope or the wetland ponds – and is in the process of being enhanced by the Parks,
Forestry & Recreation Department.
Human visitors to the site are expected to be paying attention to the natural world so as to gain experience and understanding of it. Stonehouse describes this type of experience in plain terms when he states: “So this is a park that you can’t do much in really. You can walk it, you can jog it, you can walk your dog, you can come here with your kids, you can do field study, but that’s about all you can do” (personal communication, February 2013). Leinster attends to some of the finer implications of this type of human-nature interaction as he explains that the intent of the plan was to “take people through these different ecological units and to control movement through them”, describing the use of the site as “experiential” (personal communication, March 2013).
Saccone and a second TRCA representative echo this perspective, describing that “you wanted people to walk but you wanted also people to understand what was here and the history behind the site” (personal communication, March 2013). Rather than simply using the greenspace for recreational activities that could occur on any greenspace, the Brick
Works was restored in a way that encourages human-nature interaction to be about connecting to and understanding the site, and the larger valley ecosystem beyond.
8.3 Types of Actual Interaction on Site
Despite the consensus of people restoring and maintaining the site in encouraging a certain type of use, other types of activity and human-nature interaction occur. While
88 passive use of the kind mentioned above is common, this section also illustrates the effects of interaction on site which go beyond the explicit intended use.
8.3.1 Negative Effects
Through reviews of site-studies and in discussion with interview subjects, several negative effects of human-nature interaction were consistently noted. Interestingly, the negative effects in all of these cases are directly borne by the natural environment, rather than by human users.
By far the most commonly-cited human-nature interaction issue mentioned, the site has a problem with off-leash dog walking. During almost every visit made to the site for the purposes of this research, several dogs were seen in the Quarry Park with no leash.
While dog-walking is permitted in every city park, “unless they’re in a designated dogs off-leash, dogs are supposed to be on a leash, in all cases, there’s no exceptions” (Garth
Armour, personal communication, March 2013). The reason it is an issue is that dogs roaming off-leash disturb sensitive vegetation – such as undergrowth and along the wetland borders – and kill breeding reptiles, amphibians, and birds (The Planning
Partnership, 2007; David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013; Nick
Saccone, personal communication, March 2013). It has been a contributing factor to the difficulty in improving the quality of the habitats on site. However, despite the creation of a designated off-leash zone at the entrance to the park, dog-walkers do not yet grasp the significance of the problem. The problem is in realizing that each individual dog-walker and dog may not cause extensive damage, but the impact is cumulative. Armour laments:
“they don’t realize that that would be fine if it was their one dog but unfortunately there’s
10,000 other dogs” (personal communication, March 2013).
89
Figure 7: Dog-walker with 8 large dogs off-leash at the Brick Works Park. Source: author.
A second observed effect of human-nature interaction on site is the introduction of non-native fauna. When people are no longer interested or able to care for their pets, some of them use the Quarry Park as a dumping ground for their release “into the wild”.
The two most commonly-noted species with which this is happening are koi and red-ear slider turtles. While the koi are blamed for some of the water-quality issues in the wetland ponds, the red-ear sliders compete for resources with some of the native species that are trying to be encouraged on site such as snapping turtles (Kim Statham, personal communication, March 2013). Stonehouse remarks, “this is all part of being in a city, right?” (personal communication, February 2013), resigning to the fact that the release of pets may be an inevitable human impact on the site.
Finally, a frequent complaint heard in interviews and found in a study on site impacts is the creation of desire lines by site users, both on foot and by bike. The 2007 impact study notes that the site is experiencing damage to the quarry slopes from
90 mountain bikers and informal access by visitors (The Planning Partnership, p. iii), while several interview subjects note that it is also an issue on the quarry floor. This unintended use of the site leads to erosion and damage to vegetation (Ibid, p. 3). This is a common phenomenon in any managed natural environment where fencing is not provided throughout (and even in cases where it is) (Kim Statham, personal communication,
March 2013). In the case of the Brick Works, several reasons for this phenomenon are given. One interviewee suggests that people may be lazy and seeking a shortcut (Nick
Saccone, personal communication, March 2013). Another states that people use it in an attempt to get to a specific place that was not provided for in the planning of the path system (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). Finally, another contends that people may think “it’s really cool to go to the unexplored parts of the park”, even though doing so eventually leads to there being no more unexplored parts of the park
(David Stonehouse, personal communication, February 2013).
In all three cases of negative effects from human-nature interaction, there are management techniques being implemented to reduce them. Signs are up which state that dogs must be kept on a leash and a dogs-off-leash zone was created in recent years; signs are posted which prohibit the dumping of pets; and finally, new ways of re-directing bike and pedestrian traffic are being examined, possibly in conjunction with added fencing.
However, the foundation to their resolution, as Armour notes, is ensuring that site visitors receive key educational messages about responsible use (personal communication, March
2013).
91 8.3.2 Positive Effects
Though the negative effects of human-nature interaction uncovered in this research are shouldered primarily by the natural environment, human users appear to be the recipients of the positive effects. While more extensive research on site-user experience is required and would likely provide a broader range of reported benefits8, the preliminary positive effects uncovered in this research can be summarized by Louv’s conception of the Nature Principle: “a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival” (Louv, 2011, p 3). Not only does the Brick
Works site appear to provide this reconnection, but it is able to do so without people having to leave the city.
The achievement of this effect is not evident as a goal for the site either in the master plans or in site studies. However, it was a reoccurring theme among interview subjects, who are themselves (for the most part) frequent users of the site. Illustrating the difference between the Brick Works Quarry Park as a natural environment park and other city greenspaces, Stonehouse inadvertently describes the Nature Principle concept:
“people have this innate attachment to nature, they need nature to feel complete and this is a place where people can – without having to leave the city, without leaving the city if they have no options to leave the city – can reconnect with nature” (personal communication, February 2013). This theme of nature in the city is reiterated by Johnson, as she argues that the site should not be viewed as a site from which to escape from the city, but rather a type of site we ought to value and incorporate into our conception of what a city is and what it could be (personal communication, February 2013).
8 While a 2007 study of the site describes the preliminary testing and creation of site-user surveys, and Leinster mentions the existence of site-user surveys, the results of these surveys were not available for this research.
92 There is one positive – unconfirmed, but hoped for – effect of the site that brings benefit indirectly back to the natural world. That benefit is environmental education and appreciation of nature. Leinster maintains that it was a guiding vision for Hough, author of the first master plan. He notes that the importance Hough placed on educating children in particular had to do with “that awareness early on in life that would compel them to act in a different way later on” with respect to the natural environment (personal communication, March 2013). This is directly connected to the concept of the “pigeon paradox” described in Chapter 2: the future of conservation activities will depend on the capacity of people in cities to maintain a connection to nature.
Though further research on human-nature interaction on site, particularly from the perspective of site users, is required to confirm these preliminary findings, what they illustrate is that the site is poised to serve the important role that greenspaces will increasingly be required to perform. Not only does it help connect people to nature for the sake of their own well-being, it in turn motivates people to act with greater care for the natural world on a larger scale.
8.4 Destroying That Which We Seek
There is a tension present in the use of the Brick Works Quarry Park. While the park is still viewed by some as under-used compared to other city parks (Kim Statham, personal communication, March 2013), there are already considerable negative effects resulting from human-use. At the same time, the park is sought out for the possibility of immersion in a natural environment. How can the benefits of the experience of a natural landscape be maintained on site, while also ensuring that the negative effects resulting
93 from people seeking out such an experience do not undermine the site to the extent that such an experience is no longer possible? As Statham articulates, “it’s really this concept that people are loving a park to death” (personal communication, March 2013).
How to balance this conflict is not a new question. Working in the late 1800s,
Frederick Law Olmsted was an early pioneer of landscape architecture, building
“wilderness” in the form of Central Park, Niagara Falls, and Yosemite, among others. In writing of his legacy, Spirn notes that Olmsted thought about and designed parks based on visitor experience, trying to provide them with the feeling of being alone in nature
(Spirn, 1995). In 1865, Olmsted posed a related question: “how to admit all the visitors who wish to come without their destroying the very thing they value?” (Ibid., p. 94).
Spirn extrapolates: “The moment people come to a place, even as reverent observers, they alter what they came to experience. Preventing the destructive effects of human visitation requires management of water and soil, plants and animals, and people…”
(Ibid.).
It is in seeking this balance that pro-active, adaptive management has become a greater emphasis for the Brick Works Quarry Park. In preparation for the re-use of the
Industrial Pad by Evergreen, an impact study and enhancement strategy was carried out and developed in 2007. Among the recommendations at the time were curtailing informal entries to the Quarry Park, development of a rational pathway system, and creating a sense of ownership among the volunteer groups (The Planning Partnership, 2007, p. iii).
More recently, site managers talk of advanced preparation for the influx of people expected from new development which will bring 150,000 new people to the base of the
Don River (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013). Although there are
94 fears about the degradation the increased use will bring, Armour is approaching the challenge as an opportunity to balance the tensions that this use brings: “we know that there will be more people coming here, we know that we have to provide passage for them to use these places safely, and that it’s an opportunity for us rather than a negative thing and we need to kind of figure out how we can harness that energy and get that really important knowledge out about natural environment lands” (Ibid). While the site was from the beginning designed to attract human users, it is simultaneously a challenge to balance this use with the ecological needs of the site and striking this balance has been deemed to require management intervention for years to come.
95 Chapter 9: Transferable Lessons
This paper has examined the ecological restoration of the Don Valley Brick
Works by analyzing the political influences that shaped the project, evaluating the quality of the ecological restoration, and considering the balance between human-nature interactions on site. The Brick Works restoration – though aspects are contested – is thought of by many as a pioneer in natural landscape parks, an innovative brownfield restoration, and a success as an urban recreational greenspace. An argument is made that cities will soon (or already) require more brownfield conversions of this type. The hope in this research is therefore to uncover lessons, from the successes as well as failures of the site, to be applied in future brownfield-to-greenspace projects. The most critical lessons derived from the research findings are outlined in what follows.
9.1 Political Factors & Actors
(1) Cultivate community leadership in potential brownfield-to-greenspace conversions.
As seen in the case of the Brick Works’ expropriation, community involvement may be the critical factor in beginning the process of conversion. Without a group of concerned citizens who agitated for a stop to the condo development and who got the local government onboard, the Brick Works quarry today would not be a public greenspace.
Additionally, the existence of a citizen’s group interested in the restoration of the watershed provided support for the project. Both of these groups – though they eventually became part of or worked closely with the government – began independently of government action. Cultivating an interest and awareness in local citizens in new development proposals and the potential to spearhead brownfield-to-greenspace
96 conversions is therefore important. Initiatives for projects like this cannot always be expected to begin top-down from the government.
(2) Purposely solicit a diverse range of community groups and perspectives for input and engagement, even at the risk of diminishing the input of a self-selecting group. As the first lesson points out, bottom-up community interest in brownfield restorations is highly desirable and sometimes critical. However, there is additionally a need for government, planners, and agencies involved in restorations to actively ensure that a wide range of community perspectives are represented, beyond the self-selecting community groups and individuals. A pitfall of the Brick Works restoration is the amount of influence exerted on the high-level planning, programming, and design of the site by one principal group to the exclusion of wider community engagement. The result is a site that caters primarily to one societal group’s interests. To correct for this, the opinions and engagement of people with different socio-economic backgrounds, from different neighbourhoods, and representing a variety of interests must be actively solicited. The engagement of one enthusiastic group does not make up for a diversity of community perspectives.
(3) Ensure fair distribution of access and use of funds in creating new greenspace through the conversion of brownfields. While the expropriation of the Brick Works site from a developer has been described as a “huge coup” (Garth Armour, personal communication, March 2013), it also drained a fund for the acquisition of ravine lands of
40% of its resources. The site furthermore contributed new greenspace within a neighbourhood that already has access to high-quality parks and whose streets are lined
97 with lawns, gardens, and large trees. This raises questions about environmental justice, and in particular the distribution of access to parks and greenspace. In the creation of future brownfield-to-greenspace projects, it will be important to examine greenspace- access needs on a city-wide scale and attempt to distribute funds for conversion projects where they are needed most. Brownfield conversions pose an opportunity to balance previously unjust or problematic greenspace access, and this potential demands to be taken into account.
(4) Devise strategies to buffer the ecological effects arising from the flux of funds – both from the lack of funds and their availability. The ecological decisions about how a brownfield site is to be restored to greenspace are influenced by the availability of finances as well as their source. In the case of the Brick Works, a shortage of government funds during the recession and amalgamation resulted in a scaled-back master plan and the loss of vegetation due to insufficient maintenance and oversight. On the other hand, a large donation from the Westons allowed quarry plantings to begin, along with prescribed conditions which made it difficult to control invasives. In planning future brownfield conversions, it would be beneficial to determine from the outset what ecological options
(including required maintenance) are possible with given funding, and to agree on baseline criteria which would be non-negotiable for potential donors. In this way, clear goals for the restoration can be maintained throughout the process, leading to less loss of plant life and successful follow-through on site vision regardless of the ebb and flow of funding.
98 9.2 Ecological Considerations
(5) Use the site’s natural processes and plant succession as a template for the restoration. The Brick Works site was converted to a greenspace just as the mindset in ecological restoration began to shift. The site was in the right place at the right time to pioneer a new approach to restoration, which has since become widely accepted. This approach is to work with natural systems by identifying ecological processes already occurring on the degraded site to guide the restoration’s layout and by drawing on plant succession to eventually establish mature vegetation. The Brick Works demonstrates this in the formation of the three major habitat types based on revegetation and water flow that began occurring pre-restoration. It is further demonstrated in its emphasis on native species that would have colonized the area pre-disturbance, demonstrating attentiveness to historical conditions. By working with these natural processes, the creation of the site envisioned in the master plans has largely been possible. When they were ignored – for example, when vegetation was planted without the required pioneer species and failed to thrive – restoration success was hampered. Future brownfield-to-greenspace projects should therefore seek to emulate this approach. Each site’s inclination towards certain natural processes should be incorporated into site design, and plant succession should be used to successfully establish mature ecosystems.
(6) Test regularly and uniformly for intended ecological outcomes. Despite the effort that has been expended at the Brick Works in restoring the site, it is unclear how the ecological integrity of the site is faring. This is due in larger part to the fact that there is no regular testing or analysis of ecological markers, and in some important areas, none at
99 all. For example, though improvement of Don River water quality was heavily emphasized in the creation of the wetland ponds, there is no structured testing in place to monitor the results. In some instances where ecological testing has been carried out, the criteria and techniques have varied, culminating in different conclusions. Without more comprehensive and consistent information, it is difficult to know if the restoration is attaining its goals, if there is room for improvement, or if ecological health may be in decline. Especially in a site that perceives itself as an area of ecological “demonstration”, regular testing of the site using standardized methodology would be beneficial in order to obtain results that can inform both its own management and restoration projects in other locations. Additionally, new brownfield-to-greenspace projects should develop and apply a sound and consistent monitoring system in order to track progress and assess the attainment of goals. This can in turn help make the case for further projects of this type, as well as ensure successful and ecologically valuable restorations.
9.3 Human-Nature Balance
(7) Educate site users in two key areas: park-use behaviour and the site’s ecological background. Many interview subjects lamented the negative impacts from human use of the restored Quarry Park. Among these issues were erosion caused by informal trails, the dumping of exotic pets, off-leash dog-walking, and mountain biking. Increased traffic exacerbates these problems and more visitors are expected in the future. However, the biggest human-use issues are not simply the result of increased traffic resulting in over- use of the site, but from improper and detrimental use. At the same time, it was noted that people are not intentionally using the site improperly, but are doing so due to a lack of
100 knowledge of the impacts of their actions. Frequently, site managers displayed knowledge of the impacts of site use that went beyond the average site-user’s knowledge or the information displayed in signage. It cannot therefore be assumed that site users have this same understanding and efforts must therefore actively be made to impart this knowledge. This can be carried out on a city-wide scale (for example, information on city websites), or on a site-specific scale using explicit signs, hand-outs, and on-site staff.
Such education may be able to encourage more sound park use, leading to fewer detrimental environmental impacts. In a second educational realm, sites that strive to demonstrate ecological processes or techniques to be replicated by site users ought to offer comprehensive information on the achievement of these projects. For example, while the showcasing of native plants is designed to demonstrate to site users at the Brick
Works how they can replicate similar landscapes, removing invasives and not explicitly addressing them as part of the site’s ecology presents visitors with only half the picture.
The struggle with invasives is something site users would have to contend with if they attempt to duplicate the habitat in another location, and would be better equipped to do so if they understand the full context. Therefore, in education of the public for demonstration purposes, information not only of ideal conditions or outcomes should be provided, but rather the full context, pitfalls include, should be made apparent.
(8) Avoid problem closure in site management by questioning prevailing mindsets.
Echoed throughout master plans and site studies, and in interviews with individuals involved in the operation of the site, there is a prevailing mindset that the Brick Works
Quarry Park needs to be managed indefinitely. However, what is not clear is why failure to maintain the landscape a certain way would be so detrimental and who would be
101 negatively affected as a result. Without human influence, landscapes often do very well from an ecological perspective, and could likely provide improved animal habitat. The main issue at the Brick Works is that without maintenance, the site would no longer be ideal for the type of human-nature interactions that have been planned for: paths would become overgrown, signs would fade, and the natural features that were designed for certain user experiences would succeed to other states. However, could it not be possible that humans may enjoy visiting such an area even more and gain an even better connection to the natural environment? While the current research cannot provide a conclusive answer, the lesson in this is that problem closure can cause a single perspective to dominate the approach of a brownfield-to-greenspace restoration, causing other potential approaches and outcomes to be dismissed without consideration. It is important to be able to question this. While the adaptive management approach currently used at the Brick Works site helps small-scale management techniques evolve to meet changing needs, the same principle should be extrapolated to higher-level site-planning in order to encourage continued questioning of the site vision. This is a lesson from which any restoration could benefit.
There are additional lessons to be drawn from the Brick Works quarry restoration, and those presented above represent only the most compelling that have been derived from the present research. Together, they can be used to improve current brownfield-to- greenspace conversions, as well as future plans for similar projects.
102 Chapter 10: Conclusion
The Don Valley Brick Works quarry restoration was always intended to be more than simply an ecological restoration of an industrial site. Rather, it was from the beginning anticipated to provide urban residents with “nature in the city”, a greenspace where human use was a principle target for its ultimate function. While it is only one example of a greenspace used for human-nature interaction, it is notable for its use of natural plant communities and succession, its combination of habitats, the care and involvement it has garnered from neighbouring residents, and its niche as a natural environment park in the City of Toronto.
Despite its accolades, such a site also raises complex philosophical questions.
Who should be involved in a site’s restoration and to what extent? When a site is ecologically restored for the purpose of human use, how do you balance the ecosystem needs with the health, safety, and the desires of visitors? If human visitors are coming to the area to experience the natural world, why should the natural ecosystem functions be curtailed at all? If these will be curtailed, how should it be communicated to visitors that what they are experiencing is a modified and managed version of the ecosystem which might exist if it were not for human intervention? Why is the notion that such sites must be “managed forever” if they are to “succeed” so prevalent? Finally, how do you allow people to enjoy a park without destroying what they came to experience in the first place?
The answers to these questions largely depend on planning and management goals and will vary for each site. However, it is important to be explicitly reminded of them in order to avoid the constrictive perspectives resulting from problem closure.
103 There are additional research questions that could not be covered in this paper which could further enrich the lessons learned from this site. To begin with, the question of ecological justice could be pursued by examining more closely the expropriation transaction for this site and elucidating what impact this use of funds had on the acquisition of other properties in other neighbourhoods. The ethical question of building a greenspace designed to attract humans and wildlife on soil of uncertain quality could be probed: an attempt can be made to locate soil-testing results, conduct further testing, and determine appropriate responses to the results. The ecological integrity of the site could be examined in greater depth by developing evaluation methods which can provide a comprehensive and comparable overview of the site’s ecological qualities, helping to determine the restoration’s success in this area or identify issues that require improvement. Human-nature interaction on site could be better understood by soliciting the perspective of site users directly through surveys and interviews, including a range of perspectives from the “ideal” passive-recreation site user to off-leash dog-walkers and mountain bikers. Finally, the issue of problem closure related to the way the site must be managed into the future could be challenged by examining alternative approaches to site management, or lack thereof.
It is hoped that this research – and suggested extensions of it – can help catalyze further conversions of urban brownfields to greenspaces as we move into an era dominated by Smart Growth. Not only do such projects hold the potential to balance the effects of increasing densification by supporting local ecosystem functions and the health and well-being of human visitors, they may be critical to shaping a future urban society that is mindful and proactive with regards to the preservation of healthy ecosystems on
104 much larger scales. The opportunity brownfields present for the provision of urban greenspace merits increased consideration as population patterns and planning mandates continue to forecast the high-density cities of the future.
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109 Appendix A – List of Interview Subjects
1. David Stonehouse – current General Manager of Evergreen at the Brick Works, as
well as former Director of the Take Back the Don working group and volunteer in
the Brick Works restoration;
2. Lorraine Johnson – expert on native plant ecosystems and former president of the
Canadian Wildflower Society (now the North American Native Plant Society)
who worked on restoring the Brick Works through a wildflower meadow;
3. Jeffrey Smyth – resident of Rosedale, member of Governor’s Bridge Ratepayers
Association, former vice president of Friends of the Valley, as well as former
Chair of the City of Toronto’s Brick Works Public Advisory Committee;
4. Garth Armour – Natural Environment and Community Programs Coordinator for
the City of Toronto and current site manager for the Don Valley Brick Works
Park who was involved in the initial restoration as a representative of the City;
5. David Leinster – Partner, Planner, and Landscape Architect at The Planning
Partnership, as well as former collaborator on the original Don Valley Brick
Works master plans as a member of Hough Stansbury Woodland Limited;
6. Nick Saccone – Director of Restoration Services at the TRCA, formerly involved
in the Don Valley Brick Works quarry restoration as a project manager; and
7. Kim Stratham – Natural Environment Specialist at the City of Toronto and capital
park planner for ongoing management of the Don Valley Brick Works Park.
8. The eighth interview subject, who did not wish to be identified, is a second
member of the TRCA who was also involved in the Don Valley Brick Works
quarry restoration.
110