A little neighborhood exploration led Helen Mills to discover a waterway unmarked in the city grid. She later determined it was a lost river — the former lifeblood of a land forever altered by industry and infrastructure.

The discovery led to her creation of an effort to educate others about the city’s past waterways. The initiative has since turned into one of the most extensive walking tour groups in the province.

The Star spoke with the Lost Rivers Toronto founder and local estuary historian to learn more about six hidden currents flowing underneath our city’s surface.

Lavender Creek

This “tributary of a tributary” of the Humber River watershed flows west into Black Creek near Alliance Ave. Water is carried through rolling sand hills — little ridges called drumlins — a course shaped by the footsteps of glacial landforms.

Historically, it was a clean, clear stream that hosted trout. But with farmers who settled the area came cattle and plows, which permanently reshaped the land along the river’s edge.

“This is a very lost creek because it isn’t even on our website,” joked Mills. She described the above-ground waterway as “stinky” and polluted, with a reputation for flooding nearby basements.

Garrison Creek

This west-side river’s roots, like many others, reach back to the days of the ice age. Water cut through deposits left by the massive ice sheet and flowed into the bed of an ancient Lake Iroquois.

Vegetation eventually enveloped the terrain and settled into woodland that was later cleared for settlement.

Buried since the 1920s, the Garrison now travels through a series of storm sewers and under our roads from just north of St. Clair down towards the western harbour near the historic Fort York.

For Mills, its winding channel forms the “ground zero” of Toronto’s lost river movement and where her personal journey documenting these extinct watercourses began.

Taddle Creek

The waterway begins slightly above Wychwood Park and its headwaters remain invisible, albeit but for a dip in the road. In the centre of the private lands, however, a pond hints at the river running underneath. An outlet from the pond flows a hundred metres or so and disappears into a culvert near the sidewalk on Davenport Rd.

The Taddle descends from there, forking between Bloor and College Sts. at the University of Toronto. Students in the mid-1800s were noted to have relaxed along this “decorative” stretch of water.

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The Taddle became “lost” in part because of new understanding of the relationship between polluted waterways and waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid. Once that connection was made, “there was an effort to manage this water,” said Mills. “It was a heroic engineering project that created the sewage system, a life support system we know very well today.”

Mud Creek

Toronto’s seniors may recall Mud Creek, a former rushing stream now buried under Lytton Park and the underside of King’s Highway 401.

A “spectacular” section of it daylights at Evergreen Brick Works in the Don River valley. Meanwhile at Wilson Heights, a couple of ditches run circles around city blocks. When cleaning up these small remnants of the creek years ago, Mills was reminded of the difference such a small amount of water can make.

Mills said crayfish, redwinged blackbirds and mallard ducks had been found in the creek. “Such a tiny little bit of exceedingly degraded water still supports life.”

Rouge River

The Rouge River is “certainly not perfect, but gets the best river report card in the city.”

Originating in the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Rouge illustrates a future possibility of preserved “urban nature” towards which Mills is working.

“The fascinating thing about this river is that it is part of the first urban national park in Canada,” she said, pointing to environmental stewardship efforts that are attempting to preserve agricultural land around the proposed Pickering airport.

Highland Creek

One of the more popular lost river walks led by Mills is at Highland, thanks to the annual salmon run there. As one of the most urbanized watersheds in Toronto and the GTA, it’s also one of the most in need of TLC.

The trouble began in the ’70s. Development in Scarborough, Mills explained, led to increased run-off, rainfall-induced flash flooding and an altered landscape that combined to “rip apart the riverbank.”

“This water is hot, fast and dirty,” she said. “It’s also carrying sediment, which creates problems for the fish.”

But Mills commended several green-minded groups who are collaborating with the City of Toronto and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to rehabilitate and beautify the river. The city, in particular, has undertaken “remarkable efforts” to rebuild the riverbed in Morningside Park in an effort to better protect habitat and prevent the future breakdown of sewer pipes.

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