On Dragon Hill: Caution . . . Construction

Beautiful new bridges

Today was a cold day, but a sunny one, so we decided to continue our waterfront walk. My goal was to go down to the western end of the downtown Toronto waterfront and try to see the new bridges that had been built in Nova Scotia to be installed here to provide better, more attractive access to the Toronto Port Lands. The area itself is actually a bit of a mess with empty lots, heavy industrial, aging grain elevators and piles of “stuff”, mixed with a yacht club and a nice beach park at the end of the road. There is an actual marine port with access for seaway freighters as well as cruise ships, but coming from Halifax with one of the best harbours on the east coast, Toronto’s Port Lands do not look that impressive.

Walking the new bridge

There are four of the new bridges being installed but only one is actually installed and being used, while the other three are seriously under construction. Once done, these new bridges will take this rough Industrial area much more attractive, and I assume encourage some more attractive development of the underused areas of the Port Lands. These bridges are elegant attractive structures, providing a vehicle roadway, a two lane bikeway, and a nice wide pedestrian walkway. The bridges are painted white on the exterior and each is a different colour on the inside. They will be a big improvement over the narrow temporary bridge and the old rusty lift bridge. But Really . . . what do you expect from a Nova Scotia product?

Oh, and there was lots of construction . . . .

One of many detours

Our walk to explore this section of Toronto’s waterfront was not easy. Once finished the new bridges with provide a nice direct route, but we had to walk around a large parking lot, across a thin rubber track across a narrow bridge which we had to share with vehicle traffic, then back and forth via construction detours, closed sidewalks and roadblocks. The rusty lift bridge only supports one lane of traffic and the pedestrian walkway is a temporary wooden one that replaced a rusted metal lane. Information on Wikipedia says that the lift bridge is historically significant and is being restored and rebuilt, but it looks pretty bad right now.

Caution

Fortunately we survived our walk through the construction zones and continued our walk to Cherry Beach where the road ends at an attractive city park. On the way I can provide an update on an earlier post about the “sea can” market. We walked by a business that promises to provide a converted shipping container for any purpose - perhaps that is where all the ones used for the market came from. I think I recognize the shipping container washrooms . . .

And then we had retrace the route and do it all over again to get home.