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posted May 04, 2007
City honours urban vision of Jane Jacobs: theglobeandmail.com, pdf.
posted May 01, 2007
Last year Mayor Miller declared May 4 to be Jane Jacobs Day in Toronto (that was her birthday). The next day (May 5) is the first occasion of what Jane’s friends hope will be an annual day of neighbourhood walks to mark her love of cities and of the many ordinary people who make them lively.
In this neighbourhood, the walk is called “Jane’s campfire walk.” It starts at noon at Susan Tibaldi Park (just north of Bloor, on the subway lands behind Duffy’s Tavern, visible from the Emerson Ave exit of the Lansdowne TTC station). Park campfire staff Anna Bekerman and Amy Withers will be cooking fritters made with wild greens and farmers’ market eggs over the campfire there, and artist/activist Dyan Marie will talk about how the area is changing. The walk will go to the site of the new railpath park to pick some more wild greens and get a sneak peak at the sculptures that John Dickson has prepared for the site. The walk then moves on to the heritage buildingsand theTower Automotive building in the Sterling Ave. light industrial area that will soon house a very large new movie studio.
Along Sterling Avenue the zoning is "light industrial," which ranges from the large Moloney Electric Company to warehouses for fish and for marble slabs, to small units making kitchen cabinets, to a place called Sanctuary, a well-equipped cabinet-making shop for homeless people who want to have meaningful work.
The second campfire will be waiting at MacGregor Park, with more tasty food. Artist-in-residence Kristen Fahrig will talk about (and show) what she’s doing there with kids. Then the walk will follow Dundas (with its wonderful mix of old and new, oddly-angled buildings) over to Gladstone.
Brockton triangle resident Emily Visser has some fascinating stories to tell about that stretch of the oldest street in this neighbourhood. Walking north on Gladstone, Kim Malcomson will be at St.Anne’s Church to tell a little about it. From there the walk ends at Dufferin Grove Park, at the third campfire near the cob courtyard, with Anna and Amy cooking the final course, and toasting forks for people who want to cook their own hot dogs or toast marshmallows.
This walk has multiple options for shortcuts, or dawdling and catching up (for parents with little kids). For people with good walking shoes, there will also be a chance for a detour with railpath enthusiast Bruce Ward and park staff Corey Chivers along the proposed rail path park site to get a close look at the grand graffiti show on the multiple piers underneath the Dundas streetcar bridge.
If walking the entire thing isn't for you and you would like to join up with the walk somewhere along the way, you can see the main stops on the map below.
There are lots of other “Jane’s walks” in the city that day too: see www.janeswalk.net/
See the route map below for the locations of some of the points of interest.
For the Jane's walk website, including other walk locations, see www.janeswalk.net.
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