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 I could probably write an entire entry detailing the inaccuracies of that one report, it did get a few key details correct. A friend and I were arrested after a passerby noticed the two of us entering a sewer system in a residential area of Toronto and decided to call the police. While we were underground, blissfully unaware of the situation brewing above us, an entire fleet of emergency response teams were brought in to investigate the situation.

It was obvious that they reacted to the situation without knowing just who or what they were dealing with; this isn’t exactly the sort of thing that happens on a routine basis in any city. Workers proceeded to enter the sewer via a winch and harness system. They assumed that conditions below them were too dangerous to navigate, so only travelled as far through the system as the ropes they were tethered to allowed.

A stretch deemed too dangerous to navigate through without the aid of ropes.

Getting caught was the result of bad luck, but also poor decisions, the kind that are easy to make after doing this for years without ever having faced any serious consequences. You begin to feel less nervous about doing things over time, like opening up manhole covers while other people are nearby. You start to forget about the little things that can often lead to consequences.

While I’ve had run-ins with various people (including police officers) in the past, misunderstandings have usually been cleared up on the spot. Based on what I’ve heard, this has generally been the case with other people around the world involved in similar activities. So it’s easy to feel complacent and maybe even a bit cocky, but I suppose it was a given that something like this would happen eventually.

After the police discovered the two of us, or rather, after we gave ourselves up, we were brought to the station (yes, in handcuffs) and questioned individually. My policy is always to be up-front about everything I do. I showed them the pictures on the camera , told them why I was down there, gave them the URL for this site and hoped for the best.

Some officers found the situation humourous, while others were astonished that two people would deliberately enter what they thought was a shit-infested tunnel that spelled instant death. It seemed as though everyone there who had never set foot underground before in their lives was suddenly an expert. “You two are lucky to be alive!”

Aside from their concern, jokes were made and compliments were paid to our photography, but it was hard to laugh along or feel flattered knowing that there was a chance that I might receive a criminal record. In most scenarios, a situation like this would warrant a provincial-level trespassing fine, which is a touch more expensive than a parking ticket. That wasn’t going to be the case here.

After several hours we were fingerprinted and had our mugshots taken, and the two of us were let go for the night, and told that under no circumstances were we to talk to one another outside of legal council. Of course, we were also forbidden to enter sewers or areas related to “public works.”

After arriving home, interview requests started showing up in my inbox from various media outlets who had caught wind of the story, probably by listening in on events using police scanners. They only escalated over the course of the day. Knowing how often dialogue can be misquoted or taken out of context, I decided it was best not to respond to any of it. I also avoided commenting on the situation on my site.

Subtitle from the Toronto Star. I have no idea where they got the term 'undergrounding' from.

The following day, our man bites dog story had officially entered the daily news cycle and while a lot of it was inaccurate and exaggerated, it didn’t go as terribly as I expected. Maybe this was the result of the two of us having a good amount of material online that even the laziest of journalists could use as a reference point. It probably also helped having intelligent people who spoke well on our behalf. Also, if the comments left on news sites were any indication, there was a good deal of public support behind us. (And anyone who reads online comments knows that they’re often the last place you can expect to find support.)

24 hours later news agencies had moved onto the next big strange story, which was something of a relief. I’m not adverse to being in the media, but I disliked the idea of having what I do being framed around the arrest. The legal aspect isn’t something that I generally talk about here, partly because I feel it would be distracting, but also because I wouldn’t want anyone to get the impression that it’s a reason why I do any of this.

Nice headline in an otherwise terrible article. (See link at bottom of entry to read it in its entirety.)

While the criminal charge was considered to be light, the following days I, along with my wife, were a bit nervous about what might happen. The court date was set at the end of the month, but not having ever been in this sort of situation before, we were dependent on the generous levels of support and advice we received from family, friends and strangers alike.

The more advice we received, the clearer it became that the charge of mischief wasn’t something that would stick in relation to our situation. At the same time, we decided it would be a good idea to obtain some form of legal representation. We wasted no time in finding a lawyer who confirmed that it would be difficult to find us guilty of a charge that’s usually reserved for acts of vandalism or other activities where ill-intent is involved. Still, it wasn’t clear how long it might take for the charges to be dropped or how much any of it was going to cost us financially.

As was anticipated, the charges were eventually withdrawn. We received this good news a couple of weeks ago during the first leg of my hiatus here in Greece and are relieved to put it behind us. Plus, I’m glad I can now talk to my friend without requiring the presence of a lawyer.

While Athens seems to have its share of things worth seeing below street level, it’s not worth the risk – any run-ins with the law here might turn out worse than the one in Toronto. Language barriers, unclear trespassing laws and one of the highest urban population densities in the world probably wouldn’t make for the best combination. Aside from this though, I’m looking forward to photographing another city using a different frame of reference. And I still have a backlog of entries to post about Montreal that I’ll post over the next few months.

Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who offered their support during the course of this past ordeal. I feel indebted to those who took the time to send kind words or to offer advice. It would be easy for something like this to make me feel discouraged or defeated, but on the contrary, I’m left feeling more validated. Thank you for your kindness.

Further reading:

Toronto Star  article
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/790701–two-men-arrested-for-late-night-foray-into-sewers?bn=1#photo

CBC news report
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/04/05/sewer-explorers.html

The Hour (based on an interview I did for a local paper)
http://www.hour.ca/news/news.aspx?iIDArticle=19676

Spacing Montreal article (Thanks, Alanah)
http://spacingmontreal.ca/2010/04/07/blogger-arrested-in-toronto-sewer-forray/

Mischief, as defined by the Canadian Criminal Code
http://www.efc.ca/pages/law/cc/cc.430.html

The Garrison creek and sewer system
http://www.lostrivers.ca/GarrisonCreek.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Creek

http://humanriver.ca/?page_id=39

Other sewers and storm drains in toronto
http://vanishingpoint.ca/d_tor.html
http://pipecleaner.wordpress.com/

The lovely three meter wide brick pipe of Toronto's "Humble Howard."

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.

Inside the combined sewer that was given the nickname "High There."

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.

Brick meets concrete somewhere at the south end of Toronto's "Humble Howard"

That’s not to say that Toronto has better or more interesting stuff (most of the time, anyway) , but because it’s so spread out and is, in many ways, a bit more cosmopolitan, there’s always a sense that one could never run out of new things to find and to try and get into. Just when you think everything in that city has already been cracked, something new and exciting inevitably comes along.

Montreal, on the other hand, tends to feel a bit more finite in its opportunities. While we have an extensive sewer system, much of which can be walked through, it tends to lack in other areas such as steam and service tunnels or infrastructure related to its waterworks. I get the feeling that in a couple of years, I’ll be starting to run out of things to put down on my to-do list. I have no reason to complain right now, not while I still have a pile of things to get to and to try and document well,  but I can feel it coming.

What appears to be an overflow pit for a low-level sewer found on the right side of Rochester's Densmore Creek drain.

Rochester is another city that seems ripe for great discoveries, mostly because it’s an old city, but also because so little of it seems to have been examined in detail thus far. It also features the impressive Deep-Rock Tunnel System, a sewer overflow system that puts Montreal’s interceptor network to shame.

After reading about the exploits of two underground enthusiasts living there, we decided to take the long way back to Montreal and meet up with the two of them. “Trent” and “Whittaker Owens” guided us through a rather interesting storm drainage system that involves a mammoth overflow chamber, colloquially referred to as the “Titanic Room” due to the bow-like structure planted in the middle of the room.

Inside Rochester's "Titanic Room" aka the overflow chamber of the Densmore Diversion Facility.

The rest of the drain is arch-shaped, similar in style, but far larger than Toronto’s “High There” and the Point St. Charles Collector of Montreal.

Inside the big arch that makes up the better part of this Rochester drain.

Also of interest along the way were two flooded stone pits located off to the side with the smell of combined sewerflow wafting up from below. I’m not familiar enough with the city’s system to be able to make sense of how all of this fits together. I’ll leave any explanations to its local explorers who know far more about these things than I do.

Additional  underground reading & viewing:

Toronto
Vanishing Point
Angels of the Underground
Jon Muldoon’s image collection

Rochester

Trent’s Flickr collections