The past month or so has been interesting, to say the least. I suppose that followers of this site are used to sporadic updates by now. Usually it’s because other things are keeping me busy or distracted and while my trip to Greece has certainly kept me busy, this last bout of inactivity stemmed from more serious matters.
A local news broadcast from Toronto is a good a primer to the situation:
While in Toronto this past weekend, I managed to take a (very) quick dip down into an overflow section of the Garrison sewer system. Thanks to Michael, Jon, Jeremy and Bryan for the short but sweet tour. I plan on setting aside an entire weekend in the near future to be able to see more of what this historic system has to offer.
A couple of weeks ago I made a trip back to my old underground stomping (sloshing?) grounds of Toronto to go and have a look at a recent discovery made by a group of local explorers. “Humble Howard”, named after Toronto’s first land surveyor John Howard, consists of a 3 meter-high circular brick sewer that starts at the northeastern edge of High Park and eventually makes it way down towards Lake Ontario. Today it serves primarily as an overflow conduit for the smaller sewers if ever ever the city’s interceptors become overburdened.
The evening I visited the system with Kowalski, nel58 and Controleman led to the discovery of a beautiful (but extremely foggy) connecting sewer built of brick and concrete. Its shape and overall atmosphere gave it a certain warmth and coziness. I would have gladly followed it to its conclusion had it not been so late in the evening at that point.
While I can’t say I’ve missed Toronto that much since moving to Montreal three years ago, I am envious of its range of possibilities when it comes to exploring the underground. Even after a decade of people actively exploring it and looking for new things to get into, there’s still a feeling that there’s still a lot of infrastructure down there that remains untapped.
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