Absence of Water: Touring Toronto with Jane Wolff

so we're tucked back a little bit from blour and Spadina and what are we looking at what do you think what do you think we're looking at well it's some sort of great yeah have a look down there there's I see water I'm with Jane Wolf a professor of landscape architecture in downtown Toronto it's a bright sunny afternoon in late May and we're exploring how waterers hidden in the urban landscape of the city I see leaves is this connected to the subway station yes it is connected to the subway station it's a vault that is both a sump so it's collecting water to take it in a pipe away from the subway station and it's also connected to U ventilation for the subway but part of what is so interesting about it is that even the the subway station is below a ridge there's always water moving through the ground and so there has to be a system of conduits that keep the water out of the subway station and this belongs to to that set of engineered artifacts so the water the Subway has a relationship to the water which is stay away and when there's moments where sub way stations flood that's when water says I'm here you can't keep me totally away yes and you know what this is the thing I was Jane says there's a common misconception that rivers are fixed like lines on a map but water's not static it's always moving cities can try to contain Water by funneling it through pipes for instance and it will stay there until it doesn't stay there anymore and that's something that we're going to see happening more and more because the climate emergency in our part of the world is producing real changes in the hydrograph the rate at which water in a storm Falls so we have storms now that are let's say shorter than the Benchmark storm for our region Hurricane Hazel from 1954 but they're so intense that nearly as much water falls in a shorter period of time or per hour as much water is falling as felt and Hazel and the drainage infrastructure that we have was built for a different climate and it was also built for a drainage basin in which there wasn't as much development so there wasn't as much concrete asphalt Roofing surface shatting water and sending it into the storm sewer system to travel as quickly as possible to the lake [Music] I'm Melissa jismani and this is Humanities at large from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto over the course of this season we're exploring the theme of absence through the work of jhi researchers Jane Wolf studies the absence of water and in this episode Jane takes us on a tour of Toronto to pause and reflect on one of the most iCal parts of Life water much of Jane's work is collaborative and so for our walk we were joined by a special guest and I'm Jennifer weiguan and um I teach at oise and I'm also the director of indigenous digital practice with cdhi which is the critical digital Humanities Institute at UFT excellent we started our walk outside the Jackman Humanities Institute at the corner of blor and St George where Jane gave a short version of the hodon Thanksgiving address which is an indigenous practice of acknowledging all the beings and processes in the places that support us and it's a practice that has been publicly shared among other people by uh Freda Jac onandaga the clan mother of the Ananda nation and oron lions uh an Ananda faithkeeper so for today my version will be to thank the Sun for shining us on us and the moon and the stars to thank the land that supports us the living soil that's underneath the surface everything that comes up from that soil and lives on that land um and I want to especially thank the water which I think of as the presence that connects all these things together and connects to each of us and connects us to each other and of course to thank you um for coming on a walk with me watch can you tell us a little bit about our route what we're going to take yes our walk is going to be a walk that follows water but not in the way that uh people are used to thinking about it we we're going to see a little bit of open water but not very much and the route of this walk is connected to my project here at the jhi our research theme this year was absence and my investigation of absence had to do with an absence that's only apparent which is the absence of water from the surface of the city from the surface of the urban landscape and the way in which that apparent absence leads to a real absence an actual absence of water from our Consciousness collectively and often individually as well and that absence produces another kind of absence it produces an absence of political agency it produces um absences of practical um measures for living with water I think it produces an absence of Ethics because it permits people not to notice questions about the pl this place how it's sust GS us how we live here and I think it also produces a kind of emotional absence that has to do with a lack of um deep connection to all the web of relationships the con and all the constituents um of this place that we share yeah I think that um it brings to my mind a child at the Jackman Institute for child studies who when um a knowledge keeper was doing work with them and was talking about how tattle Creek is buried under the city this child who was only like in grade I think grade one or SK burst out into tears and it was just such a profound response because it's the right response right to to really feel that connection of what an injust thing to do to a living body that is you know contain spirit and being and to bury it alive and so it never sees the sun it never feels the air it never has the presence of other beings with it and I think that child's tears was signifying that so it's just that profound um respect and acknowledgment of how injust we are to to the world around us and how unkind it was to bury the water we'll come back to tattle Creek it's a waterway that got buried as Toronto developed but for now let's return to the hustle and bustle of Spadina Avenue heading north as we walked I asked Jane and Jennifer why it is that water so often taken for granted I don't know I I'm giggling because I think with in um Traditions um from many indigenous um First Nations and communities water is acknowledged daily you know there's teachings Mohawk teachings by Tom Porter who talks about you know greeting every day by acknowledging that first Ray of sunlight and so you start from there and I've heard other elders talk about the first moment of the day when you bring water to your face and to your lips for that first drink to give thanks and so that idea of gratitude and thanks is acknowledging the humility of human beings and how we're so dependent on everything and I think that that's something that is really important so in aishn Traditions around knowledge too we have like ceremonial songs about nibi nibi is the inish b word for water and so people do offerings to Lake onario we also had um Joyce madamin ba who's has since passed but she was from Wang First Nation and was a beautiful grandmother who initiated the water walks and walked around all of the lakes and walked around all of the Great Lakes and this idea of you know those Water Walkers was to reciprocate and to be in ceremony and in dialogue with the water and that was their practice when they did those water walks so I think there are different perspectives and World Views that can bring us back into balance around how we don't think of these things but you know with a capital kind of Western world view where everything is seen as commodity and resource we lose that fundamental ethics and respect for how these things are not Commodities and resources that they are beings and they have rights and relations and you know we can see even internationally there are communities now that are fighting to have bodies of water and rivers acknowledged with their own rights the New Zealand Parliament has passed a bill recognizing the wanganui river as a living entity to the same legal rights as a person tribes in the area fought with the government for recognition of its relationship yeah it's this idea of very different um what I would call epistemologies or knowledge paradigms that in order to really come into dialogue and respect people have to take time to actually learn about indigenous knowledge do you think it the the sort of having bodies of water you know recognized as with rights is that something that that could or happen here is anyone proposing that here for Lake Ontario for instance not that I know of but I think that it's curious like when people do that um and it's usually indigenous people who ask for those rights for the water and they do that so as a way to flag to Western or Colonial settlers to actually pay some respect to those bodies of water so it's almost like they're doing it for their benefit it's not really because in terms of the indigenous communities they've already recognized and respect those yeah we don't need like we know they have rights we know they have they're they're afforded so much respect and I think you have to think about about the water the trees the animals the soil everything we depend on what if tomorrow this planet woke up and there were no human beings what do you think would happen I think it would probably be better yeah everybody else would be fine yeah it would it would actually come back and Thrive like during the pandemic exactly the whales were happy everyone like the pandemic was a very good sign of our removal you know in certain spaces but if we woke up tomorrow with no water that would be hugely problematic we would not survive that in a city like Toronto situated on one of the Great Lakes it's easy to think that clean water will always be available it's a luxury many of us take for granted and it's not the case in many other parts of Canada consider consider for instance long-term drinking water advisories in first nation's communities as of July 21st 20124 according to the Canadian government there are still 31 advisories in place or what happen in Calgary this summer when residents had to restrict their water usage due to a break in the city's infrastructure from the air the problems easy to spot a busted water feeder M shutting down the Trans Canada so much water bubbling up the road buckled the broken pipe one of Calgary's main sources of water and then there's Mexico City where drought conditions threaten the water supply of North America's biggest city tonight there is serious concern in Mexico City about the Taps running dry it's a slow motion disaster decades in the making that scientists say has been made worse by human caused climate change as to that Colonial mindset Jennifer was talking about the kind of mindset that so often takes water for granted Jane says it was built into cities like Toronto literally it really does come from the attitude that land is a resource and a commodity I mean the story that happened in Toronto was that the rivers and streams that R ran through run through what we now know as the city were used um as dumps as seers uh as industrial sites um they became polluted and as they became polluted they became sources of disease particularly chalera and other waterborne illnesses so in order to deal with that health hazard they were covered up and um water was brought from the lake from far out in the lake in a weird way the success of that infrastructure that addressed the problem of water pollution that was a problem of colonization is also it's Achilles heel because it works so well that nobody thinks about it you know you turn on the tap and the water comes out where did it come from you don't have to know and then it goes down the drain it goes away where is it going you don't have to know and so I think that there's a kind of double bind I mean it's good not to have ch but I think it short changes our sense of who we are in this place not to understand something so fundamental about our existence now now we've come to a high place we have the corner of Spadina and Davenport to be exact right in front of the Baldwin steps a massive 19th century staircase with 110 steps overlooking the cityport road yet what are we seeing describe it we're seeing the escarment that was the shoreline of the ancient Lake era which was the parent Lake to Lake Ontario formed about 12,500 years a go as the laurentide ice sheet began to recede and water began to be began to melt one thing I find amazing about this place um is that first of all it always reminds me that water exists in many states it's ice it's Vaper it's liquid and also it reminds me that the past the past is alive in the present you know so to be here is to be um in the presence of something that's more than 12,000 years old it's a I always think about it as a kind of Wrinkle in Time like in that book for children you know where the two pieces of fabric go they suddenly touch and there's a there's a wrinkle in time [Music] [Music] this is a place that's all about water it's not wet right now but it's all about water and when we look down we can see that little bit Steep and then shallow shallow slope we walked up that's the bed of Lake iqua that's the bottom of the lake so we're standing on the bottom of that Lake and those stairs that we're going to climb are going to take us to what was the shore of that Lake and um and the fact of the stairs is going to allow us to understand exactly how high that is which uh is something that is hard to exactly calibrate um in a lot of other places where um roadways or Pathways go up uh that the escarment the Davenport escarment so there's that and then I guess I'm also just looking around and I'm thinking about how much water is in these trees you know how much water are they drawing from the soil it's going up it's going into their leaves it's interacting with light to make food it's going back into that atmosphere it's making those clouds and it's in us and not just in our water bottles it's in our very in our very selves so interesting because if you had said to me where's just where's water I would say well there's no water here yep and that's the water is Lake Ontario All the Way South so that that you just summed up my project at the Jackman and it's a project that I think is going to I know is going to occupy me for probably the next I don't know I'm a slow person let's call it five years or the next while let's call it the next while you know I think um about a project like the one I'm working on H how is it possible to invite people to wonder you know I I I feel like um the way we live doesn't always ask us to wonder well why is that what what what traces are we seeing of something that might not feel present right now you know cuz I I I think once we have the chance to begin asking ourselves then the questions are everywhere and the traces are everywhere because even as you're saying so I know that water is a part of life and I like I I intellectually understand that I emotionally feel that so I'm seeing plants I'm seeing flowers I'm seeing trees but I wouldn't have necessarily put two and two together and understood that waterers or the concrete water in the concrete yeah making concrete takes a lot of water yeah good point yeah so um and yet sometimes for me I don't I'm curious concrete feels like it's an opposition to water like I feel I I relate to it in terms of it's an opposition to water it is part of the thing that is getting in the way of what am I trying to say that that is that is an indicative of all of the the logic we were talking about that buries Rivers for instance does that make sense it does make sense I see why you think that and I have a question for you is it the concrete or is it the way um people decide to use the concrete it's probably the way people decide to use the concrete cuz yeah and I think that's really important because we're you know every single one of us we is always a dangerous word isn't it let's say that we the sort of collective we who are citizens we we're making choices all the time and often we don't even know it they're little tiny choices and then they Aggregate and uh into very big decisions and sometimes I think well if you can invite enough people to ask themselves about the choices they're making and ask themselves about the context in which they're making those choices and also ask themselves about the possible consequences of those choices I I feel like the choices might be different hey let's climb these stairs okay okay and as we climbed Jane told me about the history of Toronto shorelines toron actually has four shorelines that there's Lake Ira there's Lake admiralty which followed Lake iqua by about 500 years when the block of ice of what we now know um as the mouth of the St Lawrence melted and a lot of water rushed out very quickly uh toward the Sea and the edge of Lake Admiral T is an escarment that's a few kilometers offshore it's what's holding up the Toronto Islands they're on a kind of shallow shelf and that's why we have that sh protected Harbor okay uh then there's the pre-colonial shoreline which more or less follows Front Street you can see it very clearly at the side of the St Lawrence Market because there's that horizontal line of the balcony and then the street um slopes quite dramatically and then there's the constructed Shoreline that we know today everything in front of Front Street is the product of uh just a little over a 100 years time of them building up the shoreline yeah that's right at the top of the Baldwin steps we paus to look out at what was once Lake iqua we continued North on Spadina and soon we were heading down again okay so now we're down what's do you feel the temperature change anybody notice okay we'll just carry on and something strange is going to happen you see it there's a bridge you get high marks for paying attention cuz they see how it starts to go down and then it goes up again a little bit that this time the up is the camber of a bridge and um then the question is what should a bridge over ah it's a very suspenseful walk what is is it a bridge over we crossed a bridge over the nordheimer Ravine on one side there were leafy green trees and on the other a walking path and dog park it's a bit disorienting cuz when I know I'm going over a bridge I expect to see water I well I do yes you do expect to see water and that's something very interesting about the nordheimer Ravine the nordheimer Ravine is um part of the course of Castle Frank Brook which um starts Northwest of here and um meets up with the dawn uh near guess what Castle Frank station and Castle Frank but now it lives in a pipe which according to the Lost River Site is actually just to the side of the Ravine wow so it's it's um took us along St Clair and down into the Ravine as we started heading back to the jhi I asked her how the climate crisis is impacting the decisions cities make when it comes to how they handle water you know I know that in my discipline of landscape architecture I know that in the Years After Hurricane Katrina when my colleague Elise Shelly and I were um spent several years looking at Urban landscape systems um using New Orleans as a case study that stuff wasn't so much in the center of the discipline and now it's really in the center of the discipline and I think that's happened just even in the ordinary news coverage I mean I think about 15 years ago the climate emergency wasn't in the newspaper every day and now it is because it's it's we're living in it you know so part of what is so um strange and complicated is that the the future is now is that for me it feels like a very um unstable time in terms of you know a relationship with with water with fire with all of these things and I'm I know you know I can understand everything is always changing but I guess for me and maybe for others it's the pace the intensity feels like it's a lot is that sort of in reference I'm just trying of w when you said the future is now I I think that's why we call it the climate emergency yeah because the the intensity is different and the pace is different and also I don't know the the storms that are now Common Place were exceptional not very long ago there's a way of measuring the intensity of storms based on probabilities so Engineers will talk about the 100-year storm which is a storm that has uh 1% probability of occurring one in a 100 chance of occurring in any given year or there's the 500e storm a storm that has a one and 500% chance of occurring in any given year and those um calculations are based on data that are now obsolete because the the predictions are made based on on on collection of information from the past and now we see storms all the time that are much more intense than what what would have been exceptional storms not that long [Music] ago Let's see we need a drain I think there's one just up the way oh yeah here's one yep so see the you know the curb is sloping and the street is sloping consistently with a curb except then it dips to get the water into the drain so there are all these um very small scale variations in topography all over the city and if you if you start to look for them it turns out that every Everything is a kind of Land art project you know is every Everything is a is an earth work a negotiation of um of differ to encourage the water not to stay where it is but to go down into that system of underground drains so how much would you say I mean what you're describing sounds like a lot of planning and designing is in relation to water like how thinking about it I don't know I'm tempted to say controlling it I don't know if I think I think that the idea was to control it I think you're quite right yeah you know I think that's the that was the mindset when the city was built control it it's it's inconvenient I remember I I spent some time in the Netherlands and this is a total kind of sidebar but something I found very interesting is that when I was first spending time there exactly in the '90s the word people used to describe the relationship with water was control and then there was a shi a shift over like say by the middle of the a the language had shifted to manage that shift was interesting to me and I mean like a shift of the newspaper you know just a shift in the way people thought about it does manage feel like a good word for Toronto or is there another word that you that feels right for you I to me I would say live with cuz manage still has a component of manage still implies a kind of authority you know I I think for me the question is H how do we live with water how do we attend to water you know or embrace even you know what what would it mean to embrace water in Toronto that's an interesting question and maybe this is the best way to say it actually it's better than Embrace how do we live in a good relationship with water our relationship that's reciprocal earlier you heard about tattle Creek one of many waterways that was buried throughout Toronto as a city developed in the case of tattle Creek the Lost Rivers project has identified phases of burial starting before 1860 and ending in 1886 that Final Phase included the part of the creek that's around the University of Toronto but as Jane said earlier water's never static and it's not a straight line when it was safe Jane took us into the middle of a four-way stop on St George we stopped in front of a manhole cover and listened yeah it's um you know the the main line of T freak uh sewer is one block up but I'll bet you anything that's tattle Creek you think that yeah that's tattle Creek and I I I I come here pretty much every day you know on my way to the Jackman and um you know and I just I say hello and then I listen because I think that's what that that to me um as a citizen of this place that's my responsibility to listen to the water and I mean that in every [Music] sense Jane Wolf is Professor of landscape architecture at the University of Toronto and a former jhi faculty research fellow she's also the recipient of the margoles national design for living prize which honors significant contributions to the built environment and the people within it you also heard Jennifer weiguan assistant professor at o the Ontario Institute for studies in education at the University of Toronto she's also director of indigenous digital practice at uft's critical digital Humanities initiative Humanities at large is a podcast from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto if you enjoyed this conversation be sure to subscribe share this episode and leave us a five-star review it really helps to get the word out I'm Melissa jasmi and I'll be back again in 2 weeks thanks for listening

2024-11-01 12:19

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