The Toronto slope is almost imperceptible in the busy city. Only the details give it away, and it’s easy to overlook those. Watch where the sidewalk meets some buildings on north-south streets; quite often one side will be lower than the other. The straight lines the brickwork makes can give it away, like a built-in level that reveals Toronto is no flat plain.

The idea that Toronto is flat is received wisdom, albeit in decline and not universally held of course, but the land around these parts is obscured by the city built on it. Perhaps too it was born out of a comparison with other Canadian cities with much more dramatic topography that is a strong part of their identities, like Vancouver with its mountains, Quebec’s bluff, or the rocky, quirky rump of the Halifax peninsula. Toronto and Ontario’s subtle geography can easily be snubbed.

The slope generally runs southward to the lake, but we often don’t see it or feel it. Certainly not in a car, though those who pay close attention to their fuel economy display may notice less consumption following the Don Valley Parkway south, as the Don River flows, than north. Nor does the slope make its presence felt when walking, as the speed is too slow to make the slight incline a struggle.

Cycling, though, is just the right speed to feel the long uphill when riding north in the city. The Sherbourne St. bike lane is a long, relentless slog north from Queens Quay to Bloor St., and a gentle coast down with minimal cycling needed.

There are strategies to beat the slope by zigzagging through the street grid up the incline the way a sailboat tacks against a headwind to still move forward. In San Francisco both cyclists and pedestrians have routes around that city’s notorious hills (unless the destination is the hill) but the Toronto slope’s due always must be paid in sweat somehow, a toll for going uphill.

The slope affects more than just our movement. Last month in this space I went for a walk with urban planner Nicole Hanson who has an interest in cemetery planning. She explained that there’s a gravitational pull towards the lake and that over the course of 20 to 50 years “things start to shift” underground. The slope will get its due even once we’re gone.

There are variations on the slope of course, and shifts in landscape we can’t ignore like the Scarborough Bluffs, ravines, and the ancient Lake Iroquois escarpment that runs north of Davenport. Cycling up it is a daily challenge for many, but try riding up Brimley Rd. from Bluffers Park or Twyn Rivers Dr. in the Rouge Valley by the zoo; both as tough as any Tour de France incline.

The ravines and GTA rivers create their own localized slopes and there are long, east-west slants from the major river valleys, like the impressive rise Eglinton Ave. takes from Black Creek, east towards Caledonia Rd. Less noticeable is the eastward rise from Black Creek along Lawrence Ave., but again, cyclists on that route know it’s a long, demanding pedal past the Amesbury Pk. area towards Keele St.

Even where there isn’t a ravine or stream visibly present a slope in a neighbourhood will often suggest there used to be a stream or minor ravine that was long ago buried.

We’ve done much to annihilate the natural topography in so many places in the GTA. Developers like to bulldoze the earth pancake flat to make building easier, though in places like Don Mills or Humber Valley Village in Etobicoke, two of Toronto’s earliest planned suburbs, houses and streets are blended in with the natural contours.

The slope is the gentlest reminder that we live in a watershed that drains downhill and that the landscape, even if subtle, shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef