There's nothing quite like a Sunday afternoon stroll with a knowledgeable guide through downtown Peterborough, following Jackson Creek.

It was taken in June with an affable group of Peterburians at a leisurely pace, but the learning was rapid. Peering down storm drains, we walked northwest from the Chamber of Commerce building, across Sherbrooke Street and the parking lot of UNIFOR and CUPE, all the while either rejoicing at the open nature of the creek with its bubbling rush of cool-looking water, or lamenting the intrusion of so much concrete that covered it.

I didn't know that our city is on a drumlin {a hill formed by glaciers 10,000 years ago) sloping to the east into the Otonabee River and to the west to Jackson Creek, We are living in a watershed that has not been sufficiently respected. It now poses a challenge to environmental leadership, to our quality of life and to our access to natural features which so enhances mental health.

I can quite imagine school trips along this route any June or September day. It's an ideal case-study for critical thinking. We have had a love affair with concrete over the past 50 years, and the private car has been given pride of place, so that now parking for vehicles is dominant in our (un)thinking

But there are now enlightened projects all over Ontario to depave areas, to recover what is under our feet and can give us delight.

The guide on this free walk was Trent graduate student, and president of the Peterborough Field Naturalists, Dylan Radcliffe. Like many gifted teachers, he wears his learning lightly and can soon make you a creek lover.

Before we built the downtown parking garage on King Street and the bus terminal on Simcoe, streams would flow freely across landscapes. They are still present, but now confined to underground pipes and largely concrete tunnels, subject to massive flooding.

I felt saddened to be staring down a three-foot-wide storm drain at the creek beside the most easterly bus bay. Maybe, Radcliffe muses, when the bus bay needs to be replaced, say 20 years from now, we'll have a chance to open this up.

The creek meanders westward and, sadly, picks up effluent and salty run-off from the streets. It continues, as did we, into Jackson Park, a natural asset that many Peterburians treasure and hope to keep pristine for public use and personal renewal.

Dylan wasn't here in 2004 during our great flood, but I was here, and later was a proud "Calendar Girl" in the subsequent fundraising effort for downtowners who has lost everything. He showed us the spot in Jackson Creek along King Street where the flooding from quickly accumulating rainfall caused water to explode "like a fire hose" into the downtown.

There was the famous photo of a beaver wandering on George Street. An equally famous shot was taken of Mayor Sylvia Sutherland reading The Examiner while treading water in Millbrook Pond.

The walk was one of several hundred across Canada each year called "Jane's Walks," to honour the memory of the great American-Canadian urban thinker, Jane Jacobs, whose influential book was "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

Jacobs left the U.S. for Toronto in 1981, choosing to live in a neighbourhood along Bloor Street. "Neighbourhoods," she wrote, "are the basis of social capital. Do we build for people or for cars?" I was glad I had biked down.

The dream is could we once again have a drinkable, fishable and swimmable Jackson Creek? Citizen groups called "Water Keepers" are educating and persuading decision-makers today. Indigenous people keep pointing to the sacredness of water.

Radcliffe showed us his favourite downtown rest stop along the creek, the patio of The Only Caf�. He studies at Trent with Dr. Thomas Whillans. We have among us knowledgeable people. I felt very much better informed.

Looking down is as valuable as looking up.

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