Site Navigation
Return to Homepage
- The Living City:
- Enjoy
- Understand
- Protect
- Support
Flowing through the heart of Toronto, the Don River is one of Canada's most degraded urban rivers. Its 360-square kilometres of land is over 80 per cent urbanized and is home to over 800,000 people.
As degraded as the Don is, it is also blessed: no other urban watershed in Canada has a more dedicated group of passionate stewards actively advocating on its behalf.
In older areas of the City of Toronto, in the Don's lower reaches, stormsewers still receive overflows from sanitary sewers in periods of high rainfall. This means untreated waste - raw sewage - flows directly to the Don River. The elimination of these Combined Sewer Overflows (or CSOs) is a high priority for the future health of the Don.
The Don, once 100% forested, now has only 7.2% forest cover. It has also lost almost all of it's significant wetlands. The Don's health is severely threatened by the loss of it's natural areas.
In the spring of 2000, a specially appointed task force, The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Task Force released their report on the future of the Toronto Waterfront. The report, entitled Gateway to the New Canada, Our Toronto Waterfront, joined a long list of reports prepared by many different agencies to call for renaturalizing the channelized and degraded section of the Don where it flows into lake Ontario.
The West Don Lands is an 80-acre parcel of land located in the east downtown of the City of Toronto between the mouth of the Don River and the original ten blocks of the old Town of York. For over 100 years industry thrived in the West Don Lands; today that industry is all but gone and this prime tract of land sits in a largely derelict condition awaiting redevelopment. Its location adjacent to the mouth of the Don River presents a terrific opportunity to significantly add to the restoration of this degraded and unnatural section of the Don.
