Lost islands within the early Don River system.
Details of Site Location: There were five small islands: one south of the forks at the point where Silver or Yellow Creek entered the Don; a small second one just below Castle Frank; a third small one south of Winchester Street; and two slightly larger ones within the delta at the Don’s mouths.
Boundary History: The boundaries are difficult to define: the islands are quite small and were not mapped, as they were of no interest to landowners and land grantees. Their sizes ranged from below an acre to a hump in the river of only a few feet in diameter.
Current Use: None, as all have vanished without a trace.
Historical Description: The Don’s islands existed in the time when the Don itself was a meandering river with little oxbow lakes that were not much more than small ponds. The river, undisturbed except by nature’s action, was very irregular in its contours. The valley walls and flood plains were covered with lush growth and tall trees, and the river lazed among them except at spring or fall flood times. The floods and human interference caused the loss of the islands, as officials decided at the end of the 19th century to channel the Don. Along with the islands, the meanders, oxbow ponds, and natural flood plains also disappeared. Most of what is known about the islands comes from Council Minutes and Public Works records, although there are references to the islands in domestic accounts of those living in the vicinity. It is not clear from the Scadding papers or Mrs. Simcoe’s account, but the latter’s painting of Scadding’s bridge (i.e., a fallen tree) suggests that Scadding made use of the upper edge of one of the islands in his “bridge.”
There is no indication in any of the records that anyone ever claimed possession or made use of the islands, as the risk of loss from annual floods was too great to justify expenditure of either funds or labour. Their main function seems to have been only to beautify and make interesting the river, and to give pleasure to boaters or explorers on foot. In the earliest years, the Don was navigable to near the forks by small vessels and up to Gerrard Street by schooners; therefore, the islands did not constitute an obstacle. There were wharves up as far as Winchester Street at one time. Near the mouth, John Scadding cut channels in the marshlands, thus creating the first artificial islands in the Don. The last schemes to moor lake vessels at the islands at the Don’s mouth were abandoned in 1889, and the channelling that followed erased forever all traces of the original river and its wild, tangled character along with the little islands.
Relative Importance: It is important for Torontonians to learn how greatly their landscape has been altered. The Don was once so beautiful that music was written about it, and many artists worked, and still work, there. The character of the Don, its meanders, islands, and oxbow ponds, flood plains, and formerly steep valley walls are among the city’s greatest lost natural heritage features.
Planning Implications: A handbook to enlighten hikers along the trails about the natural and human heritage of the river is most desirable. Planning implications for the Don are the preoccupation of many people. It is not possible, or even desirable, to bring back the past or, in other words, to attempt to restore the Don to the state in which the first settlers found it. But it is important to echo that past. Other aspects of the Don can be echoed or naturalized, but because of the network of roads and bridges existing today, it is not possible to re-create the islands except at the river’s mouth. Even there, the vast wetlands and delta cannot be re-created, but one island there would divide the river’s flow as it once did as an echo of past flows into the harbour and Ashbridge’s Bay.