Ken Greenberg had described the walk as follows:

Major world cities such as Toronto are in transition, needing to re-integrate strategically important post-industrial landscapes while reframing their interactions with the natural environment. Through a major initiative of WATERFRONToronto the long neglected area where the Don River enters Toronto Harbour is being transformed into a naturalized river mouth in a generous park setting as the centerpiece of vibrant new mixed-use riverfront and lakefront neighborhood that unifies the goals of ecological restoration and urban regeneration. A team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates of which I am part was selected through an international competition to guide this effort. The tour will explore the past, present and future of this remarkable site.

Looking northwest from the pub, downstream on the Keating Channel, the Cherry Street bridge south of Lakeshore Boulevard East is in the foreground, and downtown Toronto is beyond.

Looking east, upstream on the Keating Channel, the elevated Gardiner Expressway turns north to enter the Don Valley Parkway. The Don River would naturally have gone south through the area now the Port Lands, but was redirected at the beginning of the 20th century to flush sewage more rapidly into the harbour as an alternative to the natural path through the marsh. Greenberg foreshadowed the announcement by Mayor David Miller that the elevated roadway would be brought down to grade, and routed further north so that promenades can be constructed along both the north and south banks.

From the pub, we walked east on Villiers Street, parallel to the Keating Channel. As we approached Don Roadway, I looked back west. The railway tracks reflect a history of industry, but we don’t live in the iron age any more. The Port Lands implementation plan by WATERFRONToronto will put housing and light rail transit in this area for thousands of people.

Looking north, the eastbound and westbound elevated roads of the Gardiner Expressway will eventually be demolished, and the northbound ramp will be brought down to grade. The area covered by grass acts as a natural flood plain, should a torrential rainfall into the Don River cause the Keating Channel to overflow.

On Villiers Road just east of Don Roadway is the new Filmport complex. As construction continues to fill in the area over the next ten years, Toronto will not only have one of the world’s largest studio campuses, it will also include North America’s largest soundstage.

The tour took us south on Don Roadway, and then turned west on Commissioner’s Road. There are some businesses, such as this foundry, that city planners would like to preserve in the community. In a mixed use neighbourhood, it’s important to have both housing for residents, and jobs where they can walk to work.

The Dominion Bank opened a branch on Commissioner’s Road in in 1921. It hasn’t been active as a bank for some decades, but perhaps in the redevelopment of the area, it will be a bank again.

Commissioner’s Street dead ends into Cherry Street. The Cherry Restaurant hasn’t served food in recent years, but has been the site of some film shoots. The Essroc silos store cement from Picton to be distributed around the region.

Looking south on Cherry Street, the T&T Supermarket is the largest full service grocery store in downtown Toronto. We crossed over to the west side of the street, and walked south.

Continuing west, Polson Street leads to Toronto Harbour. Looking north, there’s a large parking lot, and the Keating Channel would be just beyond.

Turning to look south, we see the reason for the parking lot. Polson Pier is large entertainment complex for nightlife and corporate events.

Polson Pier is right up against the water’s edge. The boardwalk is presumably city property, but admission onto the Polson property must be blocked when there’s entertainment playing.

It’s a short distance from Polson Street to the eastern tip of the Toronto Islands. The land was a peninsula until 1858, when a storm separated the tip from mainland, creating a channel.

Looking northwest from Polson Street, the West Don Lands are still in an early stage of redevelopment, yet more mature than the Port Lands.

Despite the looming clouds, our walk had been fortunately dry. The start of a light rain made this a natural end for the formal tour. I walked back to the pub and biked home. I wasn’t motivated to join the evening walks in the rain. I probably should have followed through with another walk on the Sunday, but got distracted by other interests.

Jane Jacobs passed away in April. This event was organized by John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto, who was described as “disciple” of Jane. The ground floor of Trinity St. Paul’s Church was filled to standing room, and the balcony was about half full. The attendees seemed to include both people from the neighbourhood who had known Jane, as well as some had travelled from a longer distance.

• Mary Rowe, president and editor of Ideas That Matter, acted as the master of ceremonies for the evening. She said that Jane wouldn’t have liked this gathering if it was about her. She could, however, warm up to the gathering as a discussion of her ideas. Jane liked debate, and liked having people come to her house to discuss ideas.
• Ken Greenberg, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, related Jane’s history, as she moved from New York to Toronto. Jane was offered honourary degrees multiple times, but chose to turn them down. Given a choice between celebrity and work, she chose work. Although many have pegged Jane as a pure urbanist, in recent years she spent a significant amount of time in the Toronto suburbs observing and trying to understand how they worked.
• Ann-Marie MacDonald, a Toronto-based writer and actor, read from Cities and the Wealth of Nations. She read a passage on import substitution, describing the roles that cities played in the a funeral in the south (i.e. the casket, clothes, nails, etc. all came from cities from the north).
• A quartet, led by Caitlin Brom-Jacobs (oboe) — Jane’s grand-daughter and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music — with Michelle Zapf-Belanger (violin), Carolyn Blackwell (viola) and Anne-Marie Zapf-Belanger (cello), played a Mozart Quartet for Oboe and Strings. The performance was quite moving, and the sound (from our seats in the balcony) was wonderful.
• A video montage of Jane including segments of her on the streets in Toronto wearing an afghan, and in conversation at home. She described the way she thought as web thinking — perhaps an emphasis on part-part interaction from systems thinking.
• Vince Pietropaolo, photographer and town planner, described a course from a college in upstate New York called Two Cities, which included a visit by students to New York City, and then to Toronto — ending up on Albany Street, where Jane lived. He read an article from The Village Voice on April 18, 1968 republished in Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs, where Jane disrupted a civic hearing, was arrested, and then released by police due to crowds calling for her freedom for two hours.
• Anne Collins, Jane’s editor from Random House Canada, said that she could hear Jane’s voice in her head but couldn’t quite reproduce the sound. Looking at the cover of Dark Age Ahead, she said that she wished that should could have convinced Jane to put her name on two lines, so that it would read Jane … Jacobs. She said that she was tempted to read from the footnotes, because they provide depth to the body of the chapters. Anne started reading from near the end of the book, and then made the joke that since she was Jane’s editor, she would skip over some of Jane’s explanation to read the final paragraph of the book.
• Max Allen, a producer from the CBC, introduced a recording of Jane’s 1979 Massey Lecture, that would become The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle Over Sovereignty. Max pointed out that the discussion on transfer payments is back in today’s headlines. In Canada, three of the provinces are clearly in surplus, and six are clearly in deficit, but Quebec is so close to balancing its books that its separation from Canada could potentially have minimal economics effects (on at least that dimension).
• The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band played three tunes. David Buchbinder said that Jane had come to the release party of their third CD, not as a celebrity, but just as someone who was easy to talk with. Dave Wall made a quip that klezmer music can be appropriate for any occasion, because no one understands what the words are about. The final song had a dozen dancers in a chain prancing up and down the aisles between the pews.
• Margie Zeidler, recipient of the 2003 Jane Jacobs Prize, said that she would give the perspective of a 10-year, since she had known Jane for 30 years. Jane was first introduced as a famous writer, but since Jane didn’t write Nancy Drew novels, Margie wasn’t impressed. They had many conversations where Jane was quite interested in listening to Margie’s thoughts, and Jane occasionally chiding Margie when she wasn’t thinking straight.
• John Sewell read from Systems of Survival, at the point at which Kate describes how she came about to categorize behaviours into commercial and guardian syndromes. This emphasized a difference that, unlike other animals, human beings can be commercial.
• R. H. Thomson, a renowned actor, described how after being away for a few weeks in other places, he comes home twice: once to his wife, two sons and dog, and then to Bloor Street, where he knows the shopkeepers. He read from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane describes an entire day on Hudson Street in New York, where she used to live.
• Mike Ford, on guitar and then piano, performed two songs. In “Stars shone on Toronto”, he described a peaceful city in the darkness of a power failure. He then sang “Crossroads”– written for the Ideas That Matter conference in 1997 — which includes the lines …
• The world’s at a crossroads — this town’s at a crossroads
  Jane Jacobs help us decide how it unfolds and what we should do …

with the audience singing along in the choruses.

• The evening closed with a second video montage of Jane at her typewriter and pulling sheets from her stacks of notes. Jane said that she was most proud of her work in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, because that was her largest intellectual contribution.

I see that there’s supposed to be a similar event in New York on June 28, but can’t quite get all of the details.

In doing the searches for web links for this posting, I note that Ideas That Matter volume 3, number 3 includes commentary on Dark Age Ahead, as well as some other authors that I wouldn’t have expected in traditional pegging of Jane Jacob’s work as “urban planning”. These include Robert Lucas (1995 Nobel Laureate in economics) and Henry Mintzberg (from management). I think that I’ll take a break and read a bit more ….