LOCATIONS: Discovering the Humber
The Short Portage - The Carrying Place, LaSalle on the way over the Humber River
George Agnew Reid, Archives of Ontario
The east bank of the Humber, where it flows into Lake Ontario, is formed by a ridge, whose steep sides are still clothed by vestiges of the original forest. ...
There is no monument to recall the past, but this is one of the most historic spots in the lake region, and where we may go back to the beginning of Canadian history. [1]
– Percy J. Robinson
It was the original North Americans who first discovered the river, about 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. We aren’t certain of the precise date, or what they called it, or even what they thought about it. But we surmise that the event coincided with the end of the last Ice Age, when the continent’s hunter-gatherers had begun to move northward to the fringes of the glaciated areas, to find rivers now flowing in newly formed valleys that were lush and alive.
The newly discovered river, teeming with fish and wildlife (as, to a degree, it still is) was soon animated by human activity. On the eastern bank, beginning at the river’s mouth, a walking path was carved from the wilderness, stretching northward, connecting what is now Lake Ontario with Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron. Along this route, settlements grew. One of these, the Iroquois settlement Teiaiagon, established in 1650, is thought to be the germination point for the City of Toronto. Its approximate location was a few hundred metres from where I’m sitting right now.
Etienne Brulé Parkette and the Humber Trail
Photo: The Author
The walking path most certainly enabled the second discovery – the official European discovery – of the river, which was now known as the Taronto. Historians believe that the French explorer Etienne Brulé (1592–1633), on a reconnaissance mission for Samuel de Champlain, had followed his Huron guides southward along the riverside path to a high point of land, from where he became the first European to behold Lake Ontario. Or possibly not. In fact Brulé may have discovered the lake from another trail on another path farther east. This discovery, like the first, is clouded by uncertainty.
The river itself was subsequently named after the Humber Estuary in Northeast England, and the path came to be known to European settlers as the Carrying Place Trail. Both have survived into the 21st century – the river as a Canadian Heritage river, and the path as a disjointed collection of cycle tracks, pedestrian paths, narrow roadways and nature trails. In its entirety, the network, although frequently interrupted by small patches of civilization, weaves from the lake to the city’s northern boundary, over a course of about 25 km. From there, the trail proceeds in disjointed strings until it peters out in the Albion Hills, about 30 km to the northwest.
The southern end of the path network, the Humber River Recreation Trail, [2] connects a remarkable variety of natural environments, and even better, its southern terminus, Étienne Brulé Parkette, named for its possible European discoverer, is conveniently located just down the street from my house.
This brings me to March, 2020, and the third discovery of the river – my discovery – about which there is no dispute. Some of the credit for this event goes to the French explorer, who had the foresight to establish his parkette near my house. The rest of the credit goes to COVID-19.
Stuck at home under coronavirus lockdown, and with Oscar, our small dog in need of exercise, my wife and I began walking by the river every day at “rush hour.” Our new riverside rush hour is similar to the old rush hour, in that everything moves at a slow pace, but there are no cars, no crowding and no fumes. There is still honking, but that’s just the Canada geese flapping away as Oscar tugs at his leash in an effort to chase them. Along the trail and in the river, the animals – feathered, finned and furry, wild and domestic – are more conspicuous than the people. Last week, in broad daylight, a white-tailed doe stared me down from about ten paces, before ambling back into the brush.
It is calm and quiet by the river. So Oscar and I were surprised last week to encounter a full-throated gospel choir approaching us on a narrow part of the path. They were singing “Will your anchor hold in the storm of life?” – an old Methodist hymn5 that sent me back through many decades to my Sunday school days, well before “storm of life” held any meaning for me. But the question couldn’t be more appropriate than it is right now, when life feels especially stormy. For the choir and others, the metaphorical anchor is religious faith. But in this setting, on this particularly warm August evening, I was just as inclined to think about more immediate anchors, such as the natural serenity of this very location. The French landscape painters of the early 19th century thought of nature’s spectacle as an antitoxin to the industrial environment, and called it “contemplative sublime.”
It may be an overstatement to refer to my new appreciation of the Humber as a “discovery.” Like most Torontonians, I’ve always known about the river. I even grew up near one of its tributaries, and amazingly, I’ve lived right across the street from it for the past 20 years. But my new relationship has all the hallmarks of discovery: surprise, enlightenment, admiration and awe.
Those of you who are Torontonians might be aware that you inhabit a “city of ravines,” in fact, the ravine system, “measuring more than 300 kilometres and 11,000 hectares, ... is one of the largest in the world.” [3] If you are wearying of ZOOM meetings, social distancing and confined spaces, there is probably a river, stream, ravine or nature trail waiting to be discovered, somewhere near you.
Through these great sunken gardens you can traverse the city beneath the streets, look up to the floating neighbourhoods, houses built in the treetops.
Anne Michaels [6]
NOTES
Percy J. Robinson, “Shadows on the Street.” The Toronto Book, William Kilbourn, ed. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976, p. 13
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/ontario/humber-river-recreation-trail
https://www.theartstory.org/definition/the-sublime-in-art/history-and-concepts/
Written in 1882 by Episcopal Methodist Sunday school teacher Priscilla Jane Owens, Music by William J. Kirkpatrick.
Referring to Toronto’s ravines. Anne Michaels. Fugitive Pieces. New York: Vintage Editions, 1998