The lake and ravines define the GTA’s natural landscape, causing streets and neighbourhoods to bend around and submit to their shape. Yet nearly as powerful are the railways. They often came before much of the city was built and have established how we move around the city today.

The great stretched out “U” shape of the old Grand Trunk line that sweeps down toward Union Station from the east and west created a formidable barrier we’re forever trying to get around. The rarity of level railway crossings in Toronto means this and other corridors are only crossable at major streets and where there’s a pedestrian bridge or tunnel. Toronto is not a city that you negotiate “as the crow flies,” though these barriers have been here so long they’re as accepted as the mountain in Montreal.

Throughout our region there are vast tracks of land we never get to see that are given over to railway yards, some still functioning, others not so much, as is the case with the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Lambton Yard, found across the top of The Junction neighbourhood from Keele St. to Scarlett Rd. A minor yard today, the small worker-style houses along its length are evidence of the thousands of people it once employed.

Today, most of the work is done by massive yards farther out, such as the CPR’s Toronto Yard a few kilometres north of the Scarborough Town Centre, or Canadian National’s vast MacMillan Yard in Vaughan. It’s hard to appreciate their scale, though a fantastic view of the MacMillan’s rail lines can be seen from the Hwy. 7 bridge between Keele and Jane Sts.

Other traces of railways are much easier to experience everyday, like the lakefront itself. In the mid-1800s, the railway companies extended the waterfront south of Front St. so their tracks could come right downtown. The Esplanade, now a small street with a grand name, was once a promenade running parallel to tracks where the St. Lawrence neighbourhood is now.

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As well, there are former rights of way, sidings, and spur lines all over the Toronto region that once belonged to both existing and defunct companies and where we can get a sense of our lost rail network. Some have gone feral with weeds, others remain only as ghost shapes on the landscape. Keep an eye open for curved lots in industrial zones, usually the sign of a spur line.

Where the rails have become trails, this legacy is most accessible, as is the case with the West Toronto Railpath that follows the defunct Toronto, Bruce, and Grey railway line that ran along Grand Trunk corridor. Another long-gone company, The Toronto Beltline Railway, created what is now the Beltline Trail in the 1890s.

Part of the CN Leaside Spur on the west side of Don Mills was recently converted into a nicely paved, but short trail. South of Lawrence Ave. it dead-ends quickly, but to the north the paved portion of the trail ends at Bond Park and an informal path continues along the old right-of-way up to York Mills Rd. There, an escape hole in a fence is evidence it is much used. There’s lots of similar potential throughout the city for proper trails like this to be continued.

But as nice as these trails are, there’s something quite sad about ripping out tracks, whether it’s for streetcars or the big trains. The laying of rails is a near-permanent statement that a place matters, that there is confidence in the growth of both the city and its economy. Removing rails tears away a bit of our civilization, something we might regret one day.

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

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