The Spit

It's an odd approach to making a 'garden': dump tons of rubble and dredged silt in one place, then wait for nature to take its course. What would you expect to find after thirty years or so? Mostly rubble and silt, I'd have guessed.

But that's not what you see at the Leslie Street Spit, a 600 hectare piece of reclaimed land which juts out five kilometres into Lake Ontario from the base of Leslie Street in Toronto. Work on the site began in 1959 by dredging and dumping fill into Lake Ontario for the purpose of expanding port facilities for commercial shipping. As a result of a decline in shipping on the Great Lakes, this original plan was never realized. Over the years the Spit has become a showpiece for the power of natural succession, and now boasts an amazingly diverse biological community consisting of hundreds of species of plants, insects, birds and animals. The area is also a major breeding site and migratory stopover for a wide range of bird species.

When I first set foot on the Spit a few years ago, I found the sights and smells of the place surprisingly evocative. They uncovered mostly forgotten memories of exploring undisturbed fields near my home in Niagara, where I first encountered a range of life forms that seems to have become much less common today as a result of the interventionist approach which has dominated the management of most public spaces.
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Although it may seem the easiest thing in the world to surrender a piece of land to natural forces, the fate of the Spit has been the subject of intense contention over much of the last twenty years between advocates of various kinds of development and those who were determined to have the area left in its natural state. The chronicle of this collision of different visions is described in a fascinating account by Jacqueline Courval in her contribution to the book Green Cities - Ecologically Sound Approaches to Urban Space.

Today, the master plan for the Spit talks about "the adoption of the natural succession or ecological approach which relies on natural processes, augmented with minimal intervention and management of the park". Current plans include establishment of soils suitable for new meadow communities to be created through natural succession, and a system of walking trails and 26 lookout points to promote appreciation of the park while reducing intrusion of visitors into environmentally sensitive areas.

-P.N.