The
Beauty of the Don Facebook group is usually about just that. Members regularly share photos of majestic owls, cavorting deer, gorgeous purple dahlias and all other manner of beautiful creatures and vegetation that make the Don River Valley the oasis it is in Toronto’s east end.
But this week, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s massive storm, the site was an ugly reminder of what nature’s fury can bring.
Posts revealed fallen trees, trails covered with debris, and flattened flowers and grasses. One video showed a field, where deer normally graze, completely submerged. Meanwhile another clip surveyed the remains of a waterfall once favoured by hummingbirds and washed away by a mudslide.
“Instantly, my heart was breaking,” the video’s narrator said as the camera panned over the scene. “This park has become home to so many of us and loved by so many of us.”
That disembodied voice belongs to
wildlife photographer Steven Shpak, who
created the Facebook community in 2020 to showcase the beauty of the
Don Valley Park trail system. Every day since the storm, he has been taking visual stock of the damage.
“I have been (trekking the area) for 20 years, maybe longer, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
On July 16, Toronto had one of the wettest days in its history. About 98 millimetres of rain fell on the city, according to Environment Canada. It came down fast and hard,
knocking out power, filling basements, trapping people in elevators, turning Union Station into a waterpark and flooding the city’s roadways, including the nearby Don Valley Parkway where some of the human species, instead of running away from the rising tide, drove right into it.
While most of the focus since has been on the costly fallout of short-circuited vehicles, collapsed infrastructure and waterlogged homes —
damage estimated to surpass $1 billion — the potential loss of habitat and urban wildlife has been weighing heavy on followers of Beauty of the Don, whose membership is at 19,000. “Oh my — I hope all the critters are safe!!!” wrote one; “Omg that is crazy, those poor animals,” commented another.
Toronto’s ravine system measures more than 300 kilometres, with
the Humber River watershed being the largest. These natural expressways snake through the city and are filled with a diversity of flora and fauna. Deer, coyotes, foxes, mink, groundhogs, raccoons and opossums are just some of the animals that call the ravines home. There are also
hundreds of species of birds and fish.
Some watersheds were hit harder than others. Wildlife in Black Creek, for instance, which is smaller than the Don and heavily channelized, would have had little escape. Meanwhile wildlife in the Humber, which is larger with lots of marshland, may have fared better than in the Don which is, in places, hugged in concrete.