Toronto Built Over Everything Except This | The Story of Trinity Bellwoods

Trinity Bellwoods is fifteen hectares of open ground in one of the densest parts of Toronto, in a neighbourhood built to the lot line, where every other parcel this size was developed generations ago. This one never was. The reason is a creek. Garrison Creek cut a ravine across this land, and the ravine made the ground worthless for building. That is why Bishop John Strachan could afford twenty acres here in 1850 for the Anglican university he founded after losing King’s College to the province. It is also why, over the next eighty years, four different things were removed from this site: the creek, the college, the bridge, and finally the valley itself. SOURCES - Heritage Toronto — Crawford Street Bridge plaque (2008), and the Trinity College marker at the Queen Street gates - City of Toronto Archives - The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Daily Star - Goad’s Atlas of the City of Toronto - Jon Harstone, Between the Bridge and the Brewery, Trinity Bellwoods Community Association - Brown and Storey Architects, in Wayne Reeves and Christina Palassio, eds., HTO, Coach House Books, 2008 - Tessa Fortier, “Conflicting Identities of Garrison Creek,” MES major paper, York University, 2017