Try riding east on Eglinton or Lawrence and you might think you’re riding up a Tour de France incline in the Alps

An outdoor photography exhibit called No Flat City at Harbourfront Centre is challenging the conventional wisdom that our landscape is boring. Though we have hills and valleys, we’ve done everything we can to forget that Greater Toronto has a varied topography. Ravines have been filled in, the street grid generally ignores natural landforms, and in many parts of the city bulldozers flattened the land before it was developed.

In cities like Vancouver or Montreal, mountains (or just one mountain) dominate the landscape and can’t be ignored. Because Toronto’s topography is more subtle, the human-built parts of the city, the parts most visible every day, get more of our attention.

A partnership with the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority (TRCA), No Flat City features 72 large-scale photographs shot by six photographers commissioned to capture “the many unusual and unexpected characteristics of the landscape” in TRCA’s jurisdiction. It’s an area that includes the watersheds between Etobicoke Creek on the Mississauga-Toronto border to Carruthers Creek in Ajax.

The waterfront is an interesting venue for an exhibition exploring Toronto’s topography, considering the actual Harbourfront location was a few hundred metres out in Lake Ontario until the shoreline was slowly extended to where it is today.

The photos reveal an unsung landscape: suburban apartment towers on the edges of ravines; rehabilitation projects underway to repair damage done during last year’s summer flooding and winter ice storm; and places within the city fabric where elevation changes are dramatic, like the Baldwin Steps by Casa Loma or Riverdale Park West in Cabbagetown.

Cyclists know the city isn’t flat though; riders notice even the slightest incline that is missed when in a vehicle or even on foot. The city generally slopes towards the lake, almost invisibly in many places, but pedalling north is more work than going south. In some places the city slopes towards rivers and creeks, whether buried or exposed. Try riding east on Eglinton or Lawrence Aves. from Black Creek Dr. and you might think you’re riding up a Tour de France incline in the Alps.

Some of the No Flat City photos were taken at the East Duffins Headwaters in the Glen Major Forest and Walker Woods area. North of Pickering, this 3,700-acre (1,500 hectare) parcel of land “represents some of the most unspoiled lands in the Greater Toronto Area,” according to TRCA.

These headwaters are also the site of a former aggregate quarry that has been naturalized. It’s here that the eastern tributaries of Duffins Creek begin in a trickle before flowing south, carving an at-times wide and impressive meandering valley, eventually emptying into Lake Ontario east of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

It’s a good place for a daytrip. Pleasant country roads lead to a trailhead on Concession Rd. 7 in Durham Region. Nearly 75 kilometres of trails are tangled into the rolling landscape, crisscrossing each other and curving around and up hills while passing through open meadows and forests. Eight kilometers of this network is part of the Trans Canada Trail.

During a walk here late last Sunday afternoon, in the fading light of the first real snowfall, I felt very far away from Toronto. There are markers with small maps along the way, but it was easy to loose my bearings as it got darker. I wondered if we might lose our way, circling endlessly, missing the way out. Eventually we came to a path and recognized our footprints just as they began to disappear in the falling snow, and we followed them out to the car.

Next to a metropolis of 5 million people it’s still possible to feel a little lost in the East Duffins Headwaters, while being reminded of our overlooked landscape.

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

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Read more about: