October 23, 2024 • 34 mins
Landscape architect Jane Wolff and Indigenous scholar Jennifer Wemigwans guide host Melissa Gismondi on a tour that explores how water is hidden in Toronto's urban landscape. They examine the city's relationship with water, from buried creeks to the impact of climate change and discuss the need to shift from controlling water to living in a reciprocal relationship with it, and to recognize water's spiritual and ecological significance. This episode highlights how cities can overlook or undervalue water, and the potential consequences of that absence. Jane Wolff was one of the JHI's 2023-24 Faculty Research Fellows and her activist research draws on her education in landscape architecture and documentary filmmaking; it uses drawing, writing, walks, and public installations to decipher and represent the web of relationships, processes, and stories that shape the everyday landscapes of the Anthropocene.
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Episode Transcript
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Melissa Gismondi (00:00):
So we're tucked back a little bit from Bloor and Spadina, and what are we looking at?
Jane Wolff (00:10):
What do you think? What do you think we're looking at?
Melissa Gismondi (00:13):
Well, it's some sort of grate.
Jane Wolff (00:15):
Yeah. Have a look down there.
Melissa Gismondi (00:17):
I see water.
Jane Wolff (00:18):
You do.
Melissa Gismondi (00:19):
I'm with Jane Wolff, a Professor of Landscape Architecture, in downtown Toronto. It's a bright sunny afternoon in late May, and we're exploring how water's hidden in the urban landscape of the city.
I see leaves. Is this connected to the subway station?
Jane Wolff (00:39):
Yes, it is connected to the subway station. It's a vault that is both a sump, so it's collecting water to take it in a pipe away from the subway station, and it's also connected to ventilation for the subway. But part of what is so interesting about it, is that even though the subway station is below a ridge, there's always water moving through the ground. And so there has to be a system of conduits that keep the water out of the subway station, and this belongs to that set of engineered artefacts. So the subway has a relationship to the water, which is stay away.
Melissa Gismondi (01:28):
And when there's moments where subway stations flood, that's when water says, "I'm here. You can't keep me totally away"?
Jane Wolff (01:38):
Yes. And you know what, this is the thing I was...
Melissa Gismondi (01:40):
Jane says there's a common misconception that rivers are fixed like lines on a map, but water's not static. It's always moving. Cities can try to contain water by funnelling it through pipes, for instance.
Jane Wolff (01:56):
And it will stay there until it doesn't stay there anymore. And that's something that we're going to see happening more and more, because the climate emergency in our part of the world is producing real changes in the hydrograph, the rate at which water in a storm falls. So, we have storms now that are, let's say, shorter than the benchmark storm for our region, Hurricane Hazel from 1954. But they're so intense that nearly as much water falls in a shorter period of time, or per hour as much water as falling as felt in Hazel. And the drainage infrastructure that we have was built for a different climate, and it was also built for a drainage basin in which there wasn't as much development. So there wasn't as much concrete, asphalt roofing surface shedding water and sending it into the storm sewer system to travel as quickly as possible to the lake.
Melissa Gismondi (03:04):
I am Melissa Gismondi, and this is Humanities at Large from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Over the course of this season, we're exploring the theme of Absence through the work of JHI researchers. Jane Wolff studies the absence of water. And in this episode, Jane takes us on a tour of Toronto to pause and reflect on one of the most integral parts of life, water. Much of Jane's work is collaborative. And so for our walk, we were joined by a special guest.
Jennifer Wemigwans (03:49):
And I'm Jennifer Wemigwans and I teach at OISE, and I'm also the Director of Indigenous Digital Practise with CDHI, which is the Critical Digital Humanities Institute at U of T.
Melissa Gismondi (04:02):
Excellent. We started our walk outside the Jackman Humanities Institute at the corner of Bloor and St. George, where Jane gave a short version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.
Jane Wolff (04:14):
Which is an Indigenous practise of acknowledging all the beings and processes in the places that support us. And it's a practise that has been publicly shared among other people, by Frieda Jacques, Onondaga Clan Mother of the Onondaga Nation, and Oren Lyons, an Onondaga Faithkeeper.
(04:36):
So for today, my version will be to thank the sun for shining on us, and the moon and the stars. To thank the land that supports us, the living soil that's underneath the surface, everything that comes up from that soil and lives on that land. And I want to especially thank the water, which I think of as the presence that connects all these things together and connects to each of us and connects us to each other. And of course, to thank you for coming on a walk with me.
Jennifer Wemigwans (05:10):
Miigwech
Melissa Gismondi (05:14):
Can you tell us a little bit about our route, what we're going to take?
Jane Wolff (05:18):
Yes. Our walk is going to be a walk that follows water, but not in the way that people are used to thinking about it. We're going to see a little bit of open water, but not very much. And the route of this walk is connected to my project here at the JHI. Our research theme this year was Absence, and my investigation of absence had to do with an absence that's only apparent, which is the absence of water from the surface of the city, from the surface of the urban landscape, and the way in which that apparent absence leads to a real absence, an actual absence of water from our consciousness collectively and often individually as well.
(06:05):
And that absence produces another kind of absence. It produces an absence of political agency, it produces absences of practical measures for living with water. I think it produces an absence of ethics, because it permits people not to notice questions about this place, how it sustains us, how we live here. And I think it also produces a kind of emotional absence that has to do with a lack of deep connection to all the web of relationships and all the constituents of this place that we share.
Jennifer Wemigwans (06:52):
Yeah, I think that it brings to my mind a child at the Jackman Institute for Child Studies, who when a Knowledge Keeper was doing work with them and was talking about how Taddle Creek is buried under the city, this child, who was only in grade, I think grade one or SK, burst out into tears. And it was just such a profound response because it's the right response, to really feel that connection of what an unjust thing to do to a living body that contains spirit and being and to bury it alive. And so it never sees the sun, it never feels the air, it never has the presence of other beings with it. And I think that child's tears was signifying that. So it's just that profound respect and acknowledgement of how unjust we are to the world around us and how unkind it was to bury the water.
Melissa Gismondi (08:06):
We'll come back to Taddle Creek. It's a waterway that got buried as Toronto developed. But for now, let's return to the hustle and bustle of Spadina Avenue, heading north. As we walked, I asked Jane and Jennifer why it is that water so often taken for granted?
Jennifer Wemigwans (08:26):
I don't know. I'm giggling because I think within traditions from many Indigenous First Nations and communities, water is acknowledged daily. There's teachings, Mohawk teachings by Tom Porter who talks about greeting every day by acknowledging that first ray of sunlight. And so you start from there. And I've heard other Elders talk about the first moment of the day when you bring water to your face and to your lips for that first drink, to give thanks. And so that idea of gratitude and thanks is acknowledging the humility of human beings and how we're so dependent on everything.
(09:19):
And I think that that's something that is really important. So, in Anishinaabe traditions around knowledge, too, we have like ceremonial songs about nibi. Nibi is the Anishinaabe word for water. And so people do offerings to Lake Ontario. We also had Joyce [Josephine] Mandamin "ba", who has since passed, but she was from Wikwemikong First Nation, and was a beautiful grandmother who initiated the Water Walks and walked around all the lakes and walked around all of the Great Lakes. And this idea of those water walkers was to reciprocate and to be in ceremony and in dialogue with the water. And that was their practise when they did those water walks.
(10:14):
So I think there are different perspectives and worldviews that can bring us back into balance around how we don't think of these things. But with a capital Western worldview, where everything is seen as commodity and resource, we lose that fundamental ethics and respect for how these things are not commodities and resources, that they are beings and they have rights and relations. And we can see even internationally, there are communities now that are fighting to have bodies of water and rivers acknowledged with their own rights.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
The New Zealand parliament has passed a bill recognising the Whanganui River as a living entity to the same legal rights as a person.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Tribes in the area fought with the government for recognition of its relationship.
Jennifer Wemigwans (11:14):
Yeah, it's this idea of very different, what I would call epistemologies or knowledge paradigms, that in order to really come into dialogue and respect, people have to take time to actually learn about Indigenous knowledge.
Melissa Gismondi (11:31):
Do you think that having bodies of water recognised with rights, is that something that could happen here? Is anyone proposing that here for Lake Ontario, for instance?
Jennifer Wemigwan (11:47):
Not that I know of, but I think that it's curious when people do that. And it's usually Indigenous people who ask for those rights for the water. And they do that as a way to flag to Western or colonial settlers to actually pay some respect to those bodies of water. So it's almost like they're doing it for their benefit. Because in terms of the Indigenous communities, they've already recognised and respect those-
Jane Wolff (12:19):
We don't need.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:20):
Yeah, we don't need. We know they have rights. We know they're afforded so much respect. And I think you have to think about the water, the trees, the animals, the soil, everything we depend on. What if tomorrow this planet woke up and there were no human beings? What do you think would happen?
Melissa Gismondi (12:44):
I think it would probably be better.
Jane Wolff (12:45):
Yeah, everything else would be fine.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:47):
Yeah, it would actually come back and thrive.
Melissa Gismondi (12:51):
Like during the pandemic.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:52):
Exactly. The whales were happy. The pandemic was a very good sign of our removal in certain spaces. But if we woke up tomorrow with no water, that would be hugely problematic. We would not survive that.
Melissa Gismondi (13:13):
In a city like Toronto, situated on one of the Great Lakes, it's easy to think that clean water will always be available. It's a luxury many of us take for granted. And it's not the case in many other parts of Canada. Consider, for instance, long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities. As of July 21st, 2024, according to the Canadian government, there are still 31 advisories in place. Or what happened in Calgary this summer when residents had to restrict their water usage due to a break in the city's infrastructure.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
From the air, the problem's easy to spot, a busted water feeder main shutting down the Trans Canada. So much water bubbling up, the road buckled. The broken pipe, one of Calgary's main sources of water.
Melissa Gismondi (14:06):
And then there's Mexico City, where drought conditions threaten the water supply of North America's biggest city.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
Tonight, there are serious concern in Mexico City about the taps running dry. It's a slow motion disaster decades in the making that scientists say has been made worse by human caused climate change.
Melissa Gismondi (14:26):
As to that colonial mindset Jennifer was talking about, the kind of mindset that so often takes water for granted, Jane says it was built into cities like Toronto, literally.
Jane Wolff (14:40):
It really does come from the attitude that land is a resource and a commodity. The story that happened in Toronto was that the rivers and streams that ran through, run through what we now know as the city were used as dumps, as sewers, as industrial sites. They became polluted, and as they became polluted, they became sources of disease, particularly cholera and other waterborne illnesses.
(15:16):
So, in order to deal with that health hazard, they were covered up and water was brought from the lake, from far out in the lake. In a weird way, the success of that infrastructure that addressed the problem of water pollution, that was a problem of colonisation, is also its Achilles heel, because it works so well that nobody thinks about it.
(15:45):
You turn on the tap and the water comes out, where did it come from? You don't have to know. And then it goes down the drain and it goes away. Where is it going? You don't have to know. And so I think that there's a kind of double bind. It's good not to have cholera, but I think it short changes our sense of who we are in this place not to understand something so fundamental about our existence. Now, we've come to a high place.
Melissa Gismondi (16:29):
We have. The corner of Spadina and Davenport, to be exact, right in front of the Baldwin Steps, a massive 19th century staircase with 110 steps overlooking the city. Davenport Road. Yeah. What are we seeing? Describe it.
Jane Wolff (16:47):
We're seeing the escarpment that was the shoreline of the ancient Lake Iroquois, which was the parent lake to Lake Ontario, formed about 12,500 years ago as the Laurentide ice sheet began to recede and water began to began to melt. One thing I find amazing about this place is that, first of all, it always reminds me that water exists in many states. It's ice, it's vapour, it's liquid. And also, it reminds me that the past is alive in the present. So to be here is to be in the presence of something that's more than 12,000 years old. I always think about it as a kind of wrinkle in time, like in that book for children where the two pieces of fabric, they suddenly touch and there's a wrinkle in time.
(18:14):
This is a place that's all about water. It's not wet right now, but it's all about water. And when we look down, we can see that a little bit steep and then shallow, shallow slope we walked up, that's the bed of Lake Iroquois, that's the bottom of the lake. So we're standing on the bottom of that lake. And those stairs that we're going to climb, are going to take us to what was the shore of that lake. And the fact that the stairs is going to allow us to understand exactly how high that is, which is something that is hard to exactly calibrate in a lot of other places where roadways or pathways go up the escarpment, the Davenport escarpment.
(19:10):
So, there's that. And then I guess I'm also just looking around and I'm thinking about how much water is in these trees, how much water are they drawing from the soil? It's going up, it's going into their leaves. It's interacting with light to make food. It's going back into the atmosphere. It's making those clouds. And it's in us. And not just in our water bottles, it's in our very, very selves.
Melissa Gismondi (19:39):
So interesting, because if you had said to me just, "Where's water?" I would say, "Well, there's no water here."
Jane Wolff (19:46):
Yep. And that's-
Melissa Gismondi (19:47):
The water's Lake Ontario, all the way south.
Jane Wolff (19:50):
So, you just summed up my project at the Jackman, and it's a project that I know is going to occupy me for probably the next, oh, I don't know, I'm a slow person, let's call it five years, or the next while. Let's call it the next while.
I think about a project like the one I'm working on, how is it possible to invite people to wonder? I feel like the way we live doesn't always ask us to wonder, "Well, why is that? What traces are we seeing of something that might not feel present right now?" 'Cause I think once we have the chance to begin asking ourselves, then the questions are everywhere and the traces are everywhere.
Melissa Gismondi (20:52):
Because even as you were saying, so I know that water is a part of life, and I intellectually understand that, I emotionally feel that. So I'm seeing plants, I'm seeing flowers, I'm seeing trees, but I wouldn't have necessarily put two and two together and understood that water's... Or the concrete-
Jane Wolff (21:09):
Well, what about the water in the concrete?
Melissa Gismondi (21:10):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (21:11):
Making concrete takes a lot of water.
Melissa Gismondi (21:15):
Yeah, good point. Yeah. And yet, sometimes for me, I'm curious, concrete feels like it's an opposition to water. I relate to it in terms of it's an opposition to water. It is part of the thing that is getting in the way of, what am I trying to say? That is an indicative of all of the logic we were talking about that buries rivers, for instance. Does that make sense?
Jane Wolff (21:42):
It does make sense. I see why you think that. And I have a question for you. Is it the concrete or is it the way people decide to use the concrete?
Melissa Gismondi (21:54):
It's probably the way people decide to use the concrete.
Jane Wolff (21:57):
And I think that's really important, because every single one of us, we is always a dangerous word, isn't it? Let's say we, the sort of collective we who are citizens, we're making choices all the time. And often we don't even know it. They're little tiny choices and then they aggregate into very big decisions. And sometimes I think, well, if you can invite enough people to ask themselves about the choices they're making and ask themselves about the context in which they're making those choices, and also ask themselves about the possible consequences of those choices, I feel like the choices might be different. Hey, let's climb these stairs.
Melissa Gismondi (22:43):
Okay.
Jane Wolff (22:44):
Okay. Should we count and then we'll know-
Melissa Gismondi (22:46):
As we climbed, Jane told me about the history of Toronto's shorelines.
Jane Wolff (22:52):
Toronto actually has four shorelines. There's Lake Iroquois, there's Lake Admiralty, which followed Lake Iroquois by about 500 years, when the block of ice of what we now know as the mouth of the St. Lawrence melted and a lot of water rushed out very quickly toward the sea. And the edge of Lake Admiralty is an escarpment that's a few kilometres offshore. It's what's holding up the Toronto Islands. They're on a kind of shallow shelf, and that's why we have that shallow protected harbour.
(23:32):
Then there's the pre-colonial shoreline, which more or less follows Front Street. You can see it very clearly at the side of the St. Lawrence Market, because there's that horizontal line of the balcony and then the street slopes quite dramatically. And then there's the constructed shoreline that we know today. Everything in front of Front Street is the product of just a little over 100 years time.
Melissa Gismondi (23:59):
Of them building up the shoreline?
Jane Wolff (24:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Melissa Gismondi (24:03):
At the top of the Baldwin Steps, we paused to look out at what was once Lake Iroquois. We continued north on Spadina and soon we were heading down again.
Jane Wolff (24:15):
Okay, so now we're down. Do you feel the temperature change?
Melissa Gismondi (24:21):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (24:22):
Anybody notice? Okay. But we'll just carry on and something strange is going to happen. You see it?
Melissa Gismondi (24:30):
There's a bridge.
Jane Wolff (24:33):
You get high marks for paying attention, 'cause see how it starts to go down and then it goes up again a little bit?
Melissa Gismondi (24:42):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (24:43):
This time, the up is the camber of a bridge. And then the question is, what's it a bridge over? Ah, it's a very suspenseful walk. What is it a bridge over?
Melissa Gismondi (25:02):
We crossed a bridge over the Nordheimer Ravine. On one side, there were leafy green trees, and on the other, a walking path and dog park. It's a bit disorienting, 'cause when I know I'm going over a bridge, I expect to see water.
Jane Wolff (25:20):
You do. Yes, you do expect to see water. And that's something very interesting about the Nordheimer Ravine. The Nordheimer Ravine is part of the course of Castlefrank Brook, which starts northwest of here and meets up with the Don near, guess what? Castlefrank Station and Castlefrank. But now it lives in a pipe, which according to the Lost Rivers site, is actually just to the side of the ravine.
Melissa Gismondi (25:55):
Wow.
Jane Wolff (25:56):
So it's...
Melissa Gismondi (25:58):
Jane took us along St. Clair and down into the ravine. As we started heading back to the JHI, I asked her how the climate crisis is impacting the decisions cities make when it comes to how they handle water.
Jane Wolff (26:13):
I know that in my discipline of landscape architecture, I know that in the years after Hurricane Katrina, when my colleague, Elise Shelley and I spent several years looking at urban landscape systems using New Orleans as a case study, that stuff wasn't so much in the centre of the discipline. And now, it's really in the centre of the discipline. And I think that's happened just even in the ordinary news coverage. I think 15 years ago the climate emergency wasn't in the newspaper every day, and now it is because we're living in it. So, part of what is so strange and complicated is that the future is now.
Melissa Gismondi (27:01):
For me, it feels like a very unstable time in terms of a relationship with water, with fire, with all of these things. And I can understand everything is always changing, but I guess for me, and maybe for others, it's the pace, the intensity feels like it's a lot. I'm just trying to wed, when you said the future is now and-
Jane Wolff (27:30):
I think that's why we call it the climate emergency.
Melissa Gismondi (27:33):
Yes. Yeah.
Jane Wolff (27:38):
Because the intensity is different and the pace is different. And also, I don't know, that the storms that are now commonplace were exceptional not very long ago. There's a way of measuring the intensity of storms based on probabilities. So, engineers will talk about the 100-year storm, which is a storm that has a 1% probability of occurring, 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Or there's the 500-year storm, a storm that has a 1 in 500% chance of occurring in any given year. And those calculations are based on data that are now obsolete because the predictions are made based on collection of information from the past. And now, we see storms all the time that are much more intense than what would've been exceptional storms not that long ago.
(28:40):
Let's see, we need a drain. I think there's one just up the way. Oh yeah, this one. Yep. So see, the curb is sloping, and the street is sloping consistently with a curb, except then it dips to get the water into the drain. So there are all these very small scale variations in topography all over the city. And if you start to look for them, it turns out that everything is a kind of land art project. Everything is an earthwork, a negotiation of difference to encourage the water not to stay where it is, but to go down into that system of underground drains.
Melissa Gismondi (29:48):
What you're describing sounds like a lot of planning and designing is in relation to water, thinking about it, I don't know, I'm tempted to say controlling it. I don't know if-
Jane Wolff (30:02):
I think that the idea was to control it. I think you're quite right. I think that was the mindset when the city was built, control it. It's inconvenient. I remember I spent some time in the Netherlands, and this is a total kind of sidebar, but something I found very interesting is that when I was first spending time there, exactly in the '90s, the word people used to describe the relationship with water was control. And then there was a shift, say, by the middle of the aughts, the language had shifted to manage. That shift was interesting to me. And I mean like a shift in the newspaper, just a shift in the way people thought about it.
Melissa Gismondi (30:56):
Does manage feel like a good word for Toronto, or is there another word that feels right for you?
Jane Wolff (31:05):
To me, I would say live with.
Melissa Gismondi (31:10):
Because manage still has a component of-
Jane Wolff (31:15):
Manage still implies a kind of authority. I think for me, the question is, how do we live with water? How do we attend to water? Or embrace, even?
Melissa Gismondi (31:28):
Embrace?
Jane Wolff (31:30):
What would it mean to embrace water in Toronto? That's an interesting question. And maybe this is the best way to say it, actually. It's better than embrace. How do we live in a good relationship with water? A relationship that's reciprocal.
Melissa Gismondi (31:52):
Earlier you heard about Taddle Creek, one of many waterways that was buried throughout Toronto as the city developed. In the case of Taddle Creek, The Lost Rivers Project has identified phases of burial, starting before 1860 and ending in 1886. That final phase included the part of the creek that's around the University of Toronto. But as Jane said earlier, water's never static, and it's not a straight line. When it was safe, Jane took us into the middle of a four-way stop on St. George. We stopped in front of a manhole cover and listened. Yeah.
Jane Wolff (32:43):
The main line of Taddle Creek sewer is one block up. But I'll bet you anything, that's Taddle Creek.
Melissa Gismondi (32:54):
You think that, yeah?
Jane Wolff (32:55):
That's Taddle Creek. And I come here pretty much every day on my way to the Jackman and I just, I say hello, and then I listen. Because I think that to me, as a citizen of this place, that's my responsibility, to listen to the water. And I mean that in every sense.
Melissa Gismondi (33:49):
Jane Wolff is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto and a former JHI Faculty Research Fellow. She's also the recipient of the Margolese National Design for Living Prize, which honours significant contributions to the built environment and the people within it. You also heard Jennifer Wemigwans, Assistant Professor at OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She's also Director of Indigenous Digital Practise at U of T's Critical Digital Humanities Initiative. Humanities at Large is a podcast from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe, share this episode, and leave us a five star review. It really helps to get the word out. I'm Melissa Gismondi and I'll be back again in two weeks. Thanks for listening.
So we're tucked back a little bit from Bloor and Spadina, and what are we looking at?
Jane Wolff (00:10):
What do you think? What do you think we're looking at?
Melissa Gismondi (00:13):
Well, it's some sort of grate.
Jane Wolff (00:15):
Yeah. Have a look down there.
Melissa Gismondi (00:17):
I see water.
Jane Wolff (00:18):
You do.
Melissa Gismondi (00:19):
I'm with Jane Wolff, a Professor of Landscape Architecture, in downtown Toronto. It's a bright sunny afternoon in late May, and we're exploring how water's hidden in the urban landscape of the city.
I see leaves. Is this connected to the subway station?
Jane Wolff (00:39):
Yes, it is connected to the subway station. It's a vault that is both a sump, so it's collecting water to take it in a pipe away from the subway station, and it's also connected to ventilation for the subway. But part of what is so interesting about it, is that even though the subway station is below a ridge, there's always water moving through the ground. And so there has to be a system of conduits that keep the water out of the subway station, and this belongs to that set of engineered artefacts. So the subway has a relationship to the water, which is stay away.
Melissa Gismondi (01:28):
And when there's moments where subway stations flood, that's when water says, "I'm here. You can't keep me totally away"?
Jane Wolff (01:38):
Yes. And you know what, this is the thing I was...
Melissa Gismondi (01:40):
Jane says there's a common misconception that rivers are fixed like lines on a map, but water's not static. It's always moving. Cities can try to contain water by funnelling it through pipes, for instance.
Jane Wolff (01:56):
And it will stay there until it doesn't stay there anymore. And that's something that we're going to see happening more and more, because the climate emergency in our part of the world is producing real changes in the hydrograph, the rate at which water in a storm falls. So, we have storms now that are, let's say, shorter than the benchmark storm for our region, Hurricane Hazel from 1954. But they're so intense that nearly as much water falls in a shorter period of time, or per hour as much water as falling as felt in Hazel. And the drainage infrastructure that we have was built for a different climate, and it was also built for a drainage basin in which there wasn't as much development. So there wasn't as much concrete, asphalt roofing surface shedding water and sending it into the storm sewer system to travel as quickly as possible to the lake.
Melissa Gismondi (03:04):
I am Melissa Gismondi, and this is Humanities at Large from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Over the course of this season, we're exploring the theme of Absence through the work of JHI researchers. Jane Wolff studies the absence of water. And in this episode, Jane takes us on a tour of Toronto to pause and reflect on one of the most integral parts of life, water. Much of Jane's work is collaborative. And so for our walk, we were joined by a special guest.
Jennifer Wemigwans (03:49):
And I'm Jennifer Wemigwans and I teach at OISE, and I'm also the Director of Indigenous Digital Practise with CDHI, which is the Critical Digital Humanities Institute at U of T.
Melissa Gismondi (04:02):
Excellent. We started our walk outside the Jackman Humanities Institute at the corner of Bloor and St. George, where Jane gave a short version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.
Jane Wolff (04:14):
Which is an Indigenous practise of acknowledging all the beings and processes in the places that support us. And it's a practise that has been publicly shared among other people, by Frieda Jacques, Onondaga Clan Mother of the Onondaga Nation, and Oren Lyons, an Onondaga Faithkeeper.
(04:36):
So for today, my version will be to thank the sun for shining on us, and the moon and the stars. To thank the land that supports us, the living soil that's underneath the surface, everything that comes up from that soil and lives on that land. And I want to especially thank the water, which I think of as the presence that connects all these things together and connects to each of us and connects us to each other. And of course, to thank you for coming on a walk with me.
Jennifer Wemigwans (05:10):
Miigwech
Melissa Gismondi (05:14):
Can you tell us a little bit about our route, what we're going to take?
Jane Wolff (05:18):
Yes. Our walk is going to be a walk that follows water, but not in the way that people are used to thinking about it. We're going to see a little bit of open water, but not very much. And the route of this walk is connected to my project here at the JHI. Our research theme this year was Absence, and my investigation of absence had to do with an absence that's only apparent, which is the absence of water from the surface of the city, from the surface of the urban landscape, and the way in which that apparent absence leads to a real absence, an actual absence of water from our consciousness collectively and often individually as well.
(06:05):
And that absence produces another kind of absence. It produces an absence of political agency, it produces absences of practical measures for living with water. I think it produces an absence of ethics, because it permits people not to notice questions about this place, how it sustains us, how we live here. And I think it also produces a kind of emotional absence that has to do with a lack of deep connection to all the web of relationships and all the constituents of this place that we share.
Jennifer Wemigwans (06:52):
Yeah, I think that it brings to my mind a child at the Jackman Institute for Child Studies, who when a Knowledge Keeper was doing work with them and was talking about how Taddle Creek is buried under the city, this child, who was only in grade, I think grade one or SK, burst out into tears. And it was just such a profound response because it's the right response, to really feel that connection of what an unjust thing to do to a living body that contains spirit and being and to bury it alive. And so it never sees the sun, it never feels the air, it never has the presence of other beings with it. And I think that child's tears was signifying that. So it's just that profound respect and acknowledgement of how unjust we are to the world around us and how unkind it was to bury the water.
Melissa Gismondi (08:06):
We'll come back to Taddle Creek. It's a waterway that got buried as Toronto developed. But for now, let's return to the hustle and bustle of Spadina Avenue, heading north. As we walked, I asked Jane and Jennifer why it is that water so often taken for granted?
Jennifer Wemigwans (08:26):
I don't know. I'm giggling because I think within traditions from many Indigenous First Nations and communities, water is acknowledged daily. There's teachings, Mohawk teachings by Tom Porter who talks about greeting every day by acknowledging that first ray of sunlight. And so you start from there. And I've heard other Elders talk about the first moment of the day when you bring water to your face and to your lips for that first drink, to give thanks. And so that idea of gratitude and thanks is acknowledging the humility of human beings and how we're so dependent on everything.
(09:19):
And I think that that's something that is really important. So, in Anishinaabe traditions around knowledge, too, we have like ceremonial songs about nibi. Nibi is the Anishinaabe word for water. And so people do offerings to Lake Ontario. We also had Joyce [Josephine] Mandamin "ba", who has since passed, but she was from Wikwemikong First Nation, and was a beautiful grandmother who initiated the Water Walks and walked around all the lakes and walked around all of the Great Lakes. And this idea of those water walkers was to reciprocate and to be in ceremony and in dialogue with the water. And that was their practise when they did those water walks.
(10:14):
So I think there are different perspectives and worldviews that can bring us back into balance around how we don't think of these things. But with a capital Western worldview, where everything is seen as commodity and resource, we lose that fundamental ethics and respect for how these things are not commodities and resources, that they are beings and they have rights and relations. And we can see even internationally, there are communities now that are fighting to have bodies of water and rivers acknowledged with their own rights.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
The New Zealand parliament has passed a bill recognising the Whanganui River as a living entity to the same legal rights as a person.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Tribes in the area fought with the government for recognition of its relationship.
Jennifer Wemigwans (11:14):
Yeah, it's this idea of very different, what I would call epistemologies or knowledge paradigms, that in order to really come into dialogue and respect, people have to take time to actually learn about Indigenous knowledge.
Melissa Gismondi (11:31):
Do you think that having bodies of water recognised with rights, is that something that could happen here? Is anyone proposing that here for Lake Ontario, for instance?
Jennifer Wemigwan (11:47):
Not that I know of, but I think that it's curious when people do that. And it's usually Indigenous people who ask for those rights for the water. And they do that as a way to flag to Western or colonial settlers to actually pay some respect to those bodies of water. So it's almost like they're doing it for their benefit. Because in terms of the Indigenous communities, they've already recognised and respect those-
Jane Wolff (12:19):
We don't need.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:20):
Yeah, we don't need. We know they have rights. We know they're afforded so much respect. And I think you have to think about the water, the trees, the animals, the soil, everything we depend on. What if tomorrow this planet woke up and there were no human beings? What do you think would happen?
Melissa Gismondi (12:44):
I think it would probably be better.
Jane Wolff (12:45):
Yeah, everything else would be fine.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:47):
Yeah, it would actually come back and thrive.
Melissa Gismondi (12:51):
Like during the pandemic.
Jennifer Wemigwans (12:52):
Exactly. The whales were happy. The pandemic was a very good sign of our removal in certain spaces. But if we woke up tomorrow with no water, that would be hugely problematic. We would not survive that.
Melissa Gismondi (13:13):
In a city like Toronto, situated on one of the Great Lakes, it's easy to think that clean water will always be available. It's a luxury many of us take for granted. And it's not the case in many other parts of Canada. Consider, for instance, long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities. As of July 21st, 2024, according to the Canadian government, there are still 31 advisories in place. Or what happened in Calgary this summer when residents had to restrict their water usage due to a break in the city's infrastructure.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
From the air, the problem's easy to spot, a busted water feeder main shutting down the Trans Canada. So much water bubbling up, the road buckled. The broken pipe, one of Calgary's main sources of water.
Melissa Gismondi (14:06):
And then there's Mexico City, where drought conditions threaten the water supply of North America's biggest city.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
Tonight, there are serious concern in Mexico City about the taps running dry. It's a slow motion disaster decades in the making that scientists say has been made worse by human caused climate change.
Melissa Gismondi (14:26):
As to that colonial mindset Jennifer was talking about, the kind of mindset that so often takes water for granted, Jane says it was built into cities like Toronto, literally.
Jane Wolff (14:40):
It really does come from the attitude that land is a resource and a commodity. The story that happened in Toronto was that the rivers and streams that ran through, run through what we now know as the city were used as dumps, as sewers, as industrial sites. They became polluted, and as they became polluted, they became sources of disease, particularly cholera and other waterborne illnesses.
(15:16):
So, in order to deal with that health hazard, they were covered up and water was brought from the lake, from far out in the lake. In a weird way, the success of that infrastructure that addressed the problem of water pollution, that was a problem of colonisation, is also its Achilles heel, because it works so well that nobody thinks about it.
(15:45):
You turn on the tap and the water comes out, where did it come from? You don't have to know. And then it goes down the drain and it goes away. Where is it going? You don't have to know. And so I think that there's a kind of double bind. It's good not to have cholera, but I think it short changes our sense of who we are in this place not to understand something so fundamental about our existence. Now, we've come to a high place.
Melissa Gismondi (16:29):
We have. The corner of Spadina and Davenport, to be exact, right in front of the Baldwin Steps, a massive 19th century staircase with 110 steps overlooking the city. Davenport Road. Yeah. What are we seeing? Describe it.
Jane Wolff (16:47):
We're seeing the escarpment that was the shoreline of the ancient Lake Iroquois, which was the parent lake to Lake Ontario, formed about 12,500 years ago as the Laurentide ice sheet began to recede and water began to began to melt. One thing I find amazing about this place is that, first of all, it always reminds me that water exists in many states. It's ice, it's vapour, it's liquid. And also, it reminds me that the past is alive in the present. So to be here is to be in the presence of something that's more than 12,000 years old. I always think about it as a kind of wrinkle in time, like in that book for children where the two pieces of fabric, they suddenly touch and there's a wrinkle in time.
(18:14):
This is a place that's all about water. It's not wet right now, but it's all about water. And when we look down, we can see that a little bit steep and then shallow, shallow slope we walked up, that's the bed of Lake Iroquois, that's the bottom of the lake. So we're standing on the bottom of that lake. And those stairs that we're going to climb, are going to take us to what was the shore of that lake. And the fact that the stairs is going to allow us to understand exactly how high that is, which is something that is hard to exactly calibrate in a lot of other places where roadways or pathways go up the escarpment, the Davenport escarpment.
(19:10):
So, there's that. And then I guess I'm also just looking around and I'm thinking about how much water is in these trees, how much water are they drawing from the soil? It's going up, it's going into their leaves. It's interacting with light to make food. It's going back into the atmosphere. It's making those clouds. And it's in us. And not just in our water bottles, it's in our very, very selves.
Melissa Gismondi (19:39):
So interesting, because if you had said to me just, "Where's water?" I would say, "Well, there's no water here."
Jane Wolff (19:46):
Yep. And that's-
Melissa Gismondi (19:47):
The water's Lake Ontario, all the way south.
Jane Wolff (19:50):
So, you just summed up my project at the Jackman, and it's a project that I know is going to occupy me for probably the next, oh, I don't know, I'm a slow person, let's call it five years, or the next while. Let's call it the next while.
I think about a project like the one I'm working on, how is it possible to invite people to wonder? I feel like the way we live doesn't always ask us to wonder, "Well, why is that? What traces are we seeing of something that might not feel present right now?" 'Cause I think once we have the chance to begin asking ourselves, then the questions are everywhere and the traces are everywhere.
Melissa Gismondi (20:52):
Because even as you were saying, so I know that water is a part of life, and I intellectually understand that, I emotionally feel that. So I'm seeing plants, I'm seeing flowers, I'm seeing trees, but I wouldn't have necessarily put two and two together and understood that water's... Or the concrete-
Jane Wolff (21:09):
Well, what about the water in the concrete?
Melissa Gismondi (21:10):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (21:11):
Making concrete takes a lot of water.
Melissa Gismondi (21:15):
Yeah, good point. Yeah. And yet, sometimes for me, I'm curious, concrete feels like it's an opposition to water. I relate to it in terms of it's an opposition to water. It is part of the thing that is getting in the way of, what am I trying to say? That is an indicative of all of the logic we were talking about that buries rivers, for instance. Does that make sense?
Jane Wolff (21:42):
It does make sense. I see why you think that. And I have a question for you. Is it the concrete or is it the way people decide to use the concrete?
Melissa Gismondi (21:54):
It's probably the way people decide to use the concrete.
Jane Wolff (21:57):
And I think that's really important, because every single one of us, we is always a dangerous word, isn't it? Let's say we, the sort of collective we who are citizens, we're making choices all the time. And often we don't even know it. They're little tiny choices and then they aggregate into very big decisions. And sometimes I think, well, if you can invite enough people to ask themselves about the choices they're making and ask themselves about the context in which they're making those choices, and also ask themselves about the possible consequences of those choices, I feel like the choices might be different. Hey, let's climb these stairs.
Melissa Gismondi (22:43):
Okay.
Jane Wolff (22:44):
Okay. Should we count and then we'll know-
Melissa Gismondi (22:46):
As we climbed, Jane told me about the history of Toronto's shorelines.
Jane Wolff (22:52):
Toronto actually has four shorelines. There's Lake Iroquois, there's Lake Admiralty, which followed Lake Iroquois by about 500 years, when the block of ice of what we now know as the mouth of the St. Lawrence melted and a lot of water rushed out very quickly toward the sea. And the edge of Lake Admiralty is an escarpment that's a few kilometres offshore. It's what's holding up the Toronto Islands. They're on a kind of shallow shelf, and that's why we have that shallow protected harbour.
(23:32):
Then there's the pre-colonial shoreline, which more or less follows Front Street. You can see it very clearly at the side of the St. Lawrence Market, because there's that horizontal line of the balcony and then the street slopes quite dramatically. And then there's the constructed shoreline that we know today. Everything in front of Front Street is the product of just a little over 100 years time.
Melissa Gismondi (23:59):
Of them building up the shoreline?
Jane Wolff (24:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Melissa Gismondi (24:03):
At the top of the Baldwin Steps, we paused to look out at what was once Lake Iroquois. We continued north on Spadina and soon we were heading down again.
Jane Wolff (24:15):
Okay, so now we're down. Do you feel the temperature change?
Melissa Gismondi (24:21):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (24:22):
Anybody notice? Okay. But we'll just carry on and something strange is going to happen. You see it?
Melissa Gismondi (24:30):
There's a bridge.
Jane Wolff (24:33):
You get high marks for paying attention, 'cause see how it starts to go down and then it goes up again a little bit?
Melissa Gismondi (24:42):
Yeah.
Jane Wolff (24:43):
This time, the up is the camber of a bridge. And then the question is, what's it a bridge over? Ah, it's a very suspenseful walk. What is it a bridge over?
Melissa Gismondi (25:02):
We crossed a bridge over the Nordheimer Ravine. On one side, there were leafy green trees, and on the other, a walking path and dog park. It's a bit disorienting, 'cause when I know I'm going over a bridge, I expect to see water.
Jane Wolff (25:20):
You do. Yes, you do expect to see water. And that's something very interesting about the Nordheimer Ravine. The Nordheimer Ravine is part of the course of Castlefrank Brook, which starts northwest of here and meets up with the Don near, guess what? Castlefrank Station and Castlefrank. But now it lives in a pipe, which according to the Lost Rivers site, is actually just to the side of the ravine.
Melissa Gismondi (25:55):
Wow.
Jane Wolff (25:56):
So it's...
Melissa Gismondi (25:58):
Jane took us along St. Clair and down into the ravine. As we started heading back to the JHI, I asked her how the climate crisis is impacting the decisions cities make when it comes to how they handle water.
Jane Wolff (26:13):
I know that in my discipline of landscape architecture, I know that in the years after Hurricane Katrina, when my colleague, Elise Shelley and I spent several years looking at urban landscape systems using New Orleans as a case study, that stuff wasn't so much in the centre of the discipline. And now, it's really in the centre of the discipline. And I think that's happened just even in the ordinary news coverage. I think 15 years ago the climate emergency wasn't in the newspaper every day, and now it is because we're living in it. So, part of what is so strange and complicated is that the future is now.
Melissa Gismondi (27:01):
For me, it feels like a very unstable time in terms of a relationship with water, with fire, with all of these things. And I can understand everything is always changing, but I guess for me, and maybe for others, it's the pace, the intensity feels like it's a lot. I'm just trying to wed, when you said the future is now and-
Jane Wolff (27:30):
I think that's why we call it the climate emergency.
Melissa Gismondi (27:33):
Yes. Yeah.
Jane Wolff (27:38):
Because the intensity is different and the pace is different. And also, I don't know, that the storms that are now commonplace were exceptional not very long ago. There's a way of measuring the intensity of storms based on probabilities. So, engineers will talk about the 100-year storm, which is a storm that has a 1% probability of occurring, 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Or there's the 500-year storm, a storm that has a 1 in 500% chance of occurring in any given year. And those calculations are based on data that are now obsolete because the predictions are made based on collection of information from the past. And now, we see storms all the time that are much more intense than what would've been exceptional storms not that long ago.
(28:40):
Let's see, we need a drain. I think there's one just up the way. Oh yeah, this one. Yep. So see, the curb is sloping, and the street is sloping consistently with a curb, except then it dips to get the water into the drain. So there are all these very small scale variations in topography all over the city. And if you start to look for them, it turns out that everything is a kind of land art project. Everything is an earthwork, a negotiation of difference to encourage the water not to stay where it is, but to go down into that system of underground drains.
Melissa Gismondi (29:48):
What you're describing sounds like a lot of planning and designing is in relation to water, thinking about it, I don't know, I'm tempted to say controlling it. I don't know if-
Jane Wolff (30:02):
I think that the idea was to control it. I think you're quite right. I think that was the mindset when the city was built, control it. It's inconvenient. I remember I spent some time in the Netherlands, and this is a total kind of sidebar, but something I found very interesting is that when I was first spending time there, exactly in the '90s, the word people used to describe the relationship with water was control. And then there was a shift, say, by the middle of the aughts, the language had shifted to manage. That shift was interesting to me. And I mean like a shift in the newspaper, just a shift in the way people thought about it.
Melissa Gismondi (30:56):
Does manage feel like a good word for Toronto, or is there another word that feels right for you?
Jane Wolff (31:05):
To me, I would say live with.
Melissa Gismondi (31:10):
Because manage still has a component of-
Jane Wolff (31:15):
Manage still implies a kind of authority. I think for me, the question is, how do we live with water? How do we attend to water? Or embrace, even?
Melissa Gismondi (31:28):
Embrace?
Jane Wolff (31:30):
What would it mean to embrace water in Toronto? That's an interesting question. And maybe this is the best way to say it, actually. It's better than embrace. How do we live in a good relationship with water? A relationship that's reciprocal.
Melissa Gismondi (31:52):
Earlier you heard about Taddle Creek, one of many waterways that was buried throughout Toronto as the city developed. In the case of Taddle Creek, The Lost Rivers Project has identified phases of burial, starting before 1860 and ending in 1886. That final phase included the part of the creek that's around the University of Toronto. But as Jane said earlier, water's never static, and it's not a straight line. When it was safe, Jane took us into the middle of a four-way stop on St. George. We stopped in front of a manhole cover and listened. Yeah.
Jane Wolff (32:43):
The main line of Taddle Creek sewer is one block up. But I'll bet you anything, that's Taddle Creek.
Melissa Gismondi (32:54):
You think that, yeah?
Jane Wolff (32:55):
That's Taddle Creek. And I come here pretty much every day on my way to the Jackman and I just, I say hello, and then I listen. Because I think that to me, as a citizen of this place, that's my responsibility, to listen to the water. And I mean that in every sense.
Melissa Gismondi (33:49):
Jane Wolff is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto and a former JHI Faculty Research Fellow. She's also the recipient of the Margolese National Design for Living Prize, which honours significant contributions to the built environment and the people within it. You also heard Jennifer Wemigwans, Assistant Professor at OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She's also Director of Indigenous Digital Practise at U of T's Critical Digital Humanities Initiative. Humanities at Large is a podcast from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe, share this episode, and leave us a five star review. It really helps to get the word out. I'm Melissa Gismondi and I'll be back again in two weeks. Thanks for listening.
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