All those Toronto folks dying of old age sitting in traffic to try and escape the concrete jungle for a fishing weekend north of the city could just grab a fishin' pole, hop on a bike and head down to the spit for some amazing multi species fishing was probably my best memories of living in T.O.
I remember climbing the PanAm site as a kid. In the 80's there was an idea for a Waterslide park for that location if you can believe it. And yeah, once near the top of the garbage hill, you could smell the off gases.
My Toronto friend laughed because I live in front of a bunch of condos made from an old high school built on a landfill. He lives close to the Don River... 😁 Thanks for those videos! They are always fascinating!
When I went to cederbrook public school when I was in grade 4, there was a rumor that cederbrea collegiate was built on a landfill, at least I think it was cederbrea, maybe it was a different secondary school in the area
@MamaStyles they kept the school building but converted the classrooms into lofts. The funny thing is that no one knew it was a landfill so archeologists went there and found tons of stuff. They were so excited about it... then they realized they have been digging in garbage 🤣
Digging in my backyard as a kid next to the railway tracks in the Junction (house was built in the 20’s) I would find old bricks, bottles, nails, toys… always thought the area was a landfill but there’s a good chance people were just digging holes and getting rid of their trash that way lol
@@TheScottbb1 before garbage collection people burned their garbage in the back yard or stove. Dug out my small back yard for a sunken patio. It was a series of unburned garbage holes till I got to the clay
Fantastic! Really get excited when I see the notifications of your new videos. Thanks. Actually I approached a guy that looked like you on the subway, was embarrassed when it turned out not to be you!
Twice this year I've been approached while setting up my camera by a stranger who told me they love my channel ... so maybe one day you'll join the list! Glad to hear you enjoy my videos.
@@notsmoothsteve So you've become such an icon that you now have imitators! I'm a lot older than many commentators, so I *used to know* a lot of this, but watching this jogs the memory as per: 'Oh yeah, I remember that!'. Great channel!
These are genuinely all my preferred drone flying spots! (Not Leslie Spit...clearly) I live super close to the Greenwood train yard and recognized Sun Valley (My #1 spot) from the thumbnail. I had NO IDEA those poles at Riverdale release methane!!! I can't wait to sound smart next time I'm there with friends. Great video!!
Interesting video. I can add a few more to your list: a) I was born in a house on Jasper Ave (near the bottom of Black Creek Drive). At one point Conn Smyth (who owned Maple Leaf Gardens) used the area as a gravel pit (his other business being "aggregates"--there's a famous shot of a very muscular Tim Horton sitting on top of a tractor as he worked for Conn Symth in the off-season). Once he was done (late 40's or early 50's?), he sold the land to a developer named Griffiths who decided to build "British-style row housing" which is where I was born. (I'm not sure if there was any landfill at the site, but it seems likely if there previously was a gravel pit.) b) When I was around 4, my family moved up to Thistletown. I recall, for a number of years, across the river in North York there was a quite a large landfill site that, after a few years, was filled up and closed. It is now Blue Haven Park. c) I now live down near the mouth of the Humber River. Back in the early 60's the area was quite swampy. Along Southport, there were houses on the east side of the street, but none on the west side as the area was a swamp. Developers in the late 60's/early 70's and built a number of condo buildings in the area. However, the legacy of the landfilling lives on as a THC housing project nearby was completely shut down last year as the whole townhouse project had been sinking for a number of years and they finally decided to "pull the plug" when a piece of concrete detached from the ceiling in the parking garage. Two more condo towers are scheduled to be built on what used to be the local plaza. This has caused considerable concern as a previous set of condos built close by in the early 90's caused some considerable damage to nearby buildings. (The plaza also had problems with sinkage.) So now this new development is going to be much, much heavier than the plaza was and also going to contain a four-level underground parking garage. Seems like a crazy thing to do given the history of the area. But the developer got all his approvals. So there's nothing the local residents can do except wait and see if anything bad happens.
Pollution Probe operating out of the former police station number nine on Pape Avenue in the late nineties identified over 300 dumpsites in Riverdale alone. When I dug out my basement and back yard on Logan Avenue south of Eastern I discovered a series of holes where resdents burned their garbage until the hole filled with unburnables and a new hole was dug
I’m 65 years old, and I can remember seeing garbage trucks dumping loads at both Sun Valley and on Eglinton and Leslie as a child when in the car with my dad. Another site I remember was on Donlands avenue, half way between O’Connor and the Millwood (Leaside) bridge.
Good video but there is as much in the west end along the Humber, and since you say you're from Brampton, along the Credit River too. Erindale Flats is an old garbage dump and there are several old dumps nearby too. Great Topic!
I lived in Brampton till grade 3, I loved going to chinguacousy park, I had a book of strange facts, and one of the facts was a Canadian goose was once shot with an arrow through the head and survived, so I always looked for a goose with an arrow at chinguacousy park even though the book was probably from America lol I also remember loving professors lake, I remember once they found a piranha in it someone dumped
The Beare landfill used to have torches to burn off the methane gas. As a teenager we used to drive there at night just to watch them. It was such a strange sight, dozens and dozens of flames all across the hills
FOUR DOZEN landfills along the river?! Does not surprise me but is quite shocking none the less.... its so funny that we burry our trash AND burry our treasures...then pretend we didn't do either. I dug this video!!
Not to be overlooked (pun fully intended) is the Black Creek dump (ex-Smythe Gravel pits) either side of Jane Street just north of and including Woolner Ave. The area was teaming with rats and used condoms floating down the creek up until the late Sixties.
Can you tell me, which direction is your camera is facing during your beare hill segment? 5:28 … looks like a nice spot for possibly viewing the sunset
The Leslie spit site contains lead sludge from a battery facility near Bathurst street,truck loads were dumped into Lake Ontario around 1967, so if records were kept of the progress of the operation,the location of the lead deposits could be found ,i often wondered how this was ever allowed -the lead content was so low ,the scrap yards on cherry street would only pay about five cents a pound,and after a load or two would turn you away and you would have to go to the next scrap yard down the street, after a while none of the scrap yards would take this crap as they realized they may not be able to get rid of it,so our little business venture came to an end-and the sludge continued to be dumped into the lake---so much for the environment--lets hear your comments about this--
Nothing is nearby when it's on the other side of Toronto traffic :-( I have one Hamilton idea that I might do in future, and who knows, there may be others.
Do you think you could use the Toronto archive aerial maps to figure out exactly where some of these were? (the first public release is in 1949 so I suspect with some digging you could figure it out)
That would probably show where some of the more recent ones are, but it would still leave out a lot - even some of the ones I mention in my video were closed by then. To paraphrase from textbooks, it's left as an exercise for the viewer :-)
can't wait for the swap of one of these scenes shot with a green screen & man in t-shirt conspicuously levitates and floats away, or gets smaller very slowly...
I lived about where you’re standing at riverdale park through my childhood 1966-73. I lived on sparkhall avenue. We always wondered why it was called that. Any ideas? I was also hit by a car there one sunny afternoon. Spent that summer in sick kids
So what happened to all the Toronto brick production? Brick is notoriously expensive today, but if we had abundant high quality clay in our very own city.... Where did it go?
As far as I know, we did pretty much exhaust the supply of clay. In the early days they used clay from close to the surface and there were numerous small brick companies, but as that ran out and they had to dig deeper and deeper, only larger businesses were practical, and eventually it got to the point where digging up more clay just wasn't economically feasible any more.
@@bannanaboy8 There are spots along the Humber River where there are exposed seams of clay. It might or might not be of good quality. Or maybe it isn't a big enough deposit to be worthwhile. And, of course, transportation is a lot cheaper today than it was in the 19th C. So, like a lot of other things, it might be cheaper to get the clay from elsewhere. Interestingly enough, if you go east and look at, for instance, the Rouge River, it has a lot more gavel. The Humber, in contrast, tends to have more shale and clay. All this suggests that there were some differences in the glacial deposits in the area.
Interesting; Toronto has a good guys who knew what they were doing for the future generation, good to know while enjoying the different area of our great place....
Excellent video, concise videos are only becoming more important as everything goes online. Wouldn't be surprised if physical documentation on local history gets lost in the future
toronto is full dumps was a dump and getting to be just one big dump . You see I have only a few months left living in this cesspool. but i love you vids
You missed Bluffer's Park. My mom and dad bought a house at Brimley & St. Clair in 1967. The southern foot of Brimley was a collapsed cliff that spilled into lake Ontario. I sold that house in 2015. You are cherry picking like a true Canadian. Take another 5 minutes and do some research.
All those Toronto folks dying of old age sitting in traffic to try and escape the concrete jungle for a fishing weekend north of the city could just grab a fishin' pole, hop on a bike and head down to the spit for some amazing multi species fishing was probably my best memories of living in T.O.
At Gunns road on Weston Road, ABC Lumber is a land fill where debris and ash from the great Toronto fire of 1904 was dumped, from rail cars.
I grew up in TO And love your Channel !!
Fascinating
Love your videos, and love learning more about my city!
I remember climbing the PanAm site as a kid. In the 80's there was an idea for a Waterslide park for that location if you can believe it. And yeah, once near the top of the garbage hill, you could smell the off gases.
Subscribed! Awesome content
Another triumph, Smooth Steve. There....I fixed it for you.
Well presented video, the theme also applies to every city on the planet.
My Toronto friend laughed because I live in front of a bunch of condos made from an old high school built on a landfill. He lives close to the Don River... 😁
Thanks for those videos! They are always fascinating!
What high school?My old high school North Toronto is some condo nightmare built around my glorious old school 😂😢
@@MamaStyles Not doxing myself 😅, but it's not in Ontario
When I went to cederbrook public school when I was in grade 4, there was a rumor that cederbrea collegiate was built on a landfill, at least I think it was cederbrea, maybe it was a different secondary school in the area
@@emalieth8220 no wouldn’t expect you to dox yourself but I assumed since the school was gone it wouldn’t be a privacy issue :)
@MamaStyles they kept the school building but converted the classrooms into lofts. The funny thing is that no one knew it was a landfill so archeologists went there and found tons of stuff. They were so excited about it... then they realized they have been digging in garbage 🤣
Always interesting and informative!
Digging in my backyard as a kid next to the railway tracks in the Junction (house was built in the 20’s) I would find old bricks, bottles, nails, toys… always thought the area was a landfill but there’s a good chance people were just digging holes and getting rid of their trash that way lol
@@TheScottbb1 before garbage collection people burned their garbage in the back yard or stove. Dug out my small back yard for a sunken patio. It was a series of unburned garbage holes till I got to the clay
I'm from Brampton and I never knew that about Chinguacousy Hill. Great video
Love the consistent shot composition
Great job! Found this quite interesting and really enjoyed the maps.
I enjoy all your content looking forward to the next one
Fantastic! Really get excited when I see the notifications of your new videos. Thanks. Actually I approached a guy that looked like you on the subway, was embarrassed when it turned out not to be you!
Twice this year I've been approached while setting up my camera by a stranger who told me they love my channel ... so maybe one day you'll join the list! Glad to hear you enjoy my videos.
@@notsmoothsteve So you've become such an icon that you now have imitators! I'm a lot older than many commentators, so I *used to know* a lot of this, but watching this jogs the memory as per: 'Oh yeah, I remember that!'.
Great channel!
These are genuinely all my preferred drone flying spots! (Not Leslie Spit...clearly) I live super close to the Greenwood train yard and recognized Sun Valley (My #1 spot) from the thumbnail. I had NO IDEA those poles at Riverdale release methane!!! I can't wait to sound smart next time I'm there with friends. Great video!!
Interesting video. I can add a few more to your list:
a) I was born in a house on Jasper Ave (near the bottom of Black Creek Drive). At one point Conn Smyth (who owned Maple Leaf Gardens) used the area as a gravel pit (his other business being "aggregates"--there's a famous shot of a very muscular Tim Horton sitting on top of a tractor as he worked for Conn Symth in the off-season). Once he was done (late 40's or early 50's?), he sold the land to a developer named Griffiths who decided to build "British-style row housing" which is where I was born. (I'm not sure if there was any landfill at the site, but it seems likely if there previously was a gravel pit.)
b) When I was around 4, my family moved up to Thistletown. I recall, for a number of years, across the river in North York there was a quite a large landfill site that, after a few years, was filled up and closed. It is now Blue Haven Park.
c) I now live down near the mouth of the Humber River. Back in the early 60's the area was quite swampy. Along Southport, there were houses on the east side of the street, but none on the west side as the area was a swamp. Developers in the late 60's/early 70's and built a number of condo buildings in the area. However, the legacy of the landfilling lives on as a THC housing project nearby was completely shut down last year as the whole townhouse project had been sinking for a number of years and they finally decided to "pull the plug" when a piece of concrete detached from the ceiling in the parking garage.
Two more condo towers are scheduled to be built on what used to be the local plaza. This has caused considerable concern as a previous set of condos built close by in the early 90's caused some considerable damage to nearby buildings. (The plaza also had problems with sinkage.) So now this new development is going to be much, much heavier than the plaza was and also going to contain a four-level underground parking garage.
Seems like a crazy thing to do given the history of the area. But the developer got all his approvals. So there's nothing the local residents can do except wait and see if anything bad happens.
Pollution Probe operating out of the former police station number nine on Pape Avenue in the late nineties identified over 300 dumpsites in Riverdale alone. When I dug out my basement and back yard on Logan Avenue south of Eastern I discovered a series of holes where resdents burned their garbage until the hole filled with unburnables and a new hole was dug
Thank you for the interesting information.
I’m 65 years old, and I can remember seeing garbage trucks dumping loads at both Sun Valley and on Eglinton and Leslie as a child when in the car with my dad. Another site I remember was on Donlands avenue, half way between O’Connor and the Millwood (Leaside) bridge.
The address at 485 donlands is a parkette but the hill down to the dvp was a landfill. At the bottom there is a fan house for some gas exhaust
Good video but there is as much in the west end along the Humber, and since you say you're from Brampton, along the Credit River too. Erindale Flats is an old garbage dump and there are several old dumps nearby too. Great Topic!
Excellent and informative video.
Thank You!
Also, the bottom of the Scarborough Bluffs was used to dump excavation material from digging the Bloor line.
I was going to comment about Chinguacousy Park until you mentioned it and corrected my knowledge lol
I lived in Brampton till grade 3, I loved going to chinguacousy park, I had a book of strange facts, and one of the facts was a Canadian goose was once shot with an arrow through the head and survived, so I always looked for a goose with an arrow at chinguacousy park even though the book was probably from America lol I also remember loving professors lake, I remember once they found a piranha in it someone dumped
The Beare landfill used to have torches to burn off the methane gas. As a teenager we used to drive there at night just to watch them. It was such a strange sight, dozens and dozens of flames all across the hills
@@bradlevantis913 still burning, you just can't see them during the day
awesome video! thanks for all the effort you put into your content
I grew up in TO I miss it Thanks for these videos🍀
Hi Steve! Watching from nearby greater Rochester area. Again sorry for your loss of beautiful Tuxx cat
FOUR DOZEN landfills along the river?! Does not surprise me but is quite shocking none the less....
its so funny that we burry our trash AND burry our treasures...then pretend we didn't do either.
I dug this video!!
Not to be overlooked (pun fully intended) is the Black Creek dump (ex-Smythe Gravel pits) either side of Jane Street just north of and including Woolner Ave. The area was teaming with rats and used condoms floating down the creek up until the late Sixties.
Very interesting!
awesome video. love these so much
Can you tell me, which direction is your camera is facing during your beare hill segment? 5:28 … looks like a nice spot for possibly viewing the sunset
Toward downtown - it's hard to see as it's far off in the distance, but the CN Tower is actually in the background to the right of centre.
@@notsmoothsteve right on, thank you
Some Great Toronto facts.
Nice intermodal train in the background at Beare Rd Landfill Steve!
CN York sub. CPKC Belleville sub runs nearby, too.
Love your channel.
Very interesting video!
The Leslie spit site contains lead sludge from a battery facility near Bathurst street,truck loads were dumped into Lake Ontario around 1967, so if records were kept of the progress of the operation,the location of the lead deposits could be found ,i often wondered how this was ever allowed -the lead content was so low ,the scrap yards on cherry street would only pay about five cents a pound,and after a load or two would turn you away and you would have to go to the next scrap yard down the street, after a while none of the scrap yards would take this crap as they realized they may not be able to get rid of it,so our little business venture came to an end-and the sludge continued to be dumped into the lake---so much for the environment--lets hear your comments about this--
Listening to this while operating the garbage truck in Toronto
Love it! A very Canadian "robslondon".
Shaw St I think used incinerator as h as fill. Anytime I dug on that street we’d find amazing old bottles.
You can dig for treasures were Chapman creek goes into the humber River in Etobicoke. Old garbage dump . Find interesting things from years gone by.
Very interesting. Didn’t really think about landfills and how former quarry sites could be repurposed as landfills until now.
Great video dude
These video's are neat, I would love to see some done for nearby Hamilton.
Nothing is nearby when it's on the other side of Toronto traffic :-( I have one Hamilton idea that I might do in future, and who knows, there may be others.
good one
Do you think you could use the Toronto archive aerial maps to figure out exactly where some of these were? (the first public release is in 1949 so I suspect with some digging you could figure it out)
That would probably show where some of the more recent ones are, but it would still leave out a lot - even some of the ones I mention in my video were closed by then. To paraphrase from textbooks, it's left as an exercise for the viewer :-)
Would love to see you cover the WW2 era tunnels in Scarborough...I believe they linked ammunition factories
Id love if you did some historic midland ontario videos
great video
can't wait for the swap of one of these scenes shot with a green screen & man in t-shirt conspicuously levitates and floats away, or gets smaller very slowly...
I lived about where you’re standing at riverdale park through my childhood 1966-73. I lived on sparkhall avenue. We always wondered why it was called that. Any ideas?
I was also hit by a car there one sunny afternoon. Spent that summer in sick kids
There was one in earl bales park as well if i remember correctly.
How deep would someone have to dig in one of these parks to find trash? assuming they had all the proper permits and such.
Swansea Public School/Rennie Park near Runnymede is built entirely on a huge dump, I used to play there every day as a kid
you did not mention the dump at the scarborough bluffs and the landslide which closed off the road trapping residents
as above, so below
So what happened to all the Toronto brick production? Brick is notoriously expensive today, but if we had abundant high quality clay in our very own city.... Where did it go?
It's in all the brick in all the old houses.
@@gregory-of-tours so did we exhaust all the deposits? There's just no more clay in Toronto?
As far as I know, we did pretty much exhaust the supply of clay. In the early days they used clay from close to the surface and there were numerous small brick companies, but as that ran out and they had to dig deeper and deeper, only larger businesses were practical, and eventually it got to the point where digging up more clay just wasn't economically feasible any more.
@@bannanaboy8 There are spots along the Humber River where there are exposed seams of clay. It might or might not be of good quality. Or maybe it isn't a big enough deposit to be worthwhile.
And, of course, transportation is a lot cheaper today than it was in the 19th C. So, like a lot of other things, it might be cheaper to get the clay from elsewhere.
Interestingly enough, if you go east and look at, for instance, the Rouge River, it has a lot more gavel. The Humber, in contrast, tends to have more shale and clay. All this suggests that there were some differences in the glacial deposits in the area.
What about Brampton Brick? Do they actually make bricks anymore, or just import them from elsewhere ?
I thought you should include the "so" in not smooth Steve but I guess that would have made it to smooth, maybe ?
High end real estate built on trash. Perfect analogy.
After decades of environmental work in Toronto. Always assume any park or school is a former dump site.
Why is there never a link above when you point at it?
Maybe RUclips was having a bad day? I always check the links once I've uploaded the video before it goes live, and they work for me.
w00t! 🙏
You rock, Steve
Well that explains our worship of Trash Panda's
Crothers woods and Sun Valley are also dumps
Most of Mississauga is also built on top of landfills....central Canada, the land that garbage built.....
i proposed to my wife on a garbage dump 💀
So when people call Toronto a dump, they would be very accurate.
Interesting; Toronto has a good guys who knew what they were doing for the future generation, good to know while enjoying the different area of our great place....
Excellent video, concise videos are only becoming more important as everything goes online. Wouldn't be surprised if physical documentation on local history gets lost in the future
So this is all leaching chemicals to the rivers and lakes, and then we drink the water from the lake. Wow.
Those posts venting methane could catch fire some day,,,never put it out. Hmmmm
So with out our waste we would have less green space.
I loved the old Toronto (pre 2000). Now I visit and when I do it looks like India.
This video is trash!
(Interesting video as always 😂)
What kind of trashy person trashes my work with a comment like that? 😃
toronto is full dumps was a dump and getting to be just one big dump . You see I have only a few months left living in this cesspool. but i love you vids
yes, Canaduh has more buried garbage, human or otherwise, than anywhere.
A lot of Parks were used for dumps.
Are you carrying a gun? It looks like you've got one tucked in the waistline
Your question suggests that you were never a BlackBerry user :-)
Trash goes in, trash goes on top and lives there
What a dump
Sensing a trend… 🗑️🤔
Built on trash? Nah, it is the trash.
You missed Bluffer's Park. My mom and dad bought a house at Brimley & St. Clair in 1967. The southern foot of Brimley was a collapsed cliff that spilled into lake Ontario.
I sold that house in 2015. You are cherry picking like a true Canadian. Take another 5 minutes and do some research.
What is he cherry-picking? His video is a sampling of former landfill sites around the city, not a complete list.
Yeah, with about 160 former landfills, it's simply not practical to include more than a small sample.
You are nitpicking like a true Canadian.