Part pragmatist, part visionary, Helen Mills knows restoring lost rivers in a city like Toronto will involve compromise.
“I’m not really into that thing about ‘nature good, city bad.’ I think it is what it is.”
She dreams of reviving Mud Creek in sections, much like the approach used for Still Creek. Her “big crazy idea” is establishing a national park that links the watershed through walking trails and community involvement.
If that came true, “I think I would die happy,” Mills says.
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All of the maps in this project are meant to serve as general guides to the probable paths of historical waterways, based on the most accurate information available. Due to inaccuracies in historical maps, knowledge of the waterways’ original paths may evolve over time as more information comes to light.
The Toronto waterway maps are based on the work of Peter Hare, Helen Mills and John Wilson with Lost Rivers Toronto (a project of the Toronto Green Community) and Marcel Fortin’s team at the University of Toronto Libraries, who interpreted the paths of historical waterways based on dozens of maps from the 19th and 20th centuries and Digital Elevation Model data.
The Montreal waterway maps are based on the work of Valérie Mahaut at the Université de Montréal, who mapped the historical riverbeds and watersheds of the island of Montreal by referencing historical maps from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and by using more recent altimetric data to estimate the trajectories of former watercourses. A more detailed guide to her work is available here.
The Vancouver waterway maps are based on the work of Paul Lesack with the University of British Columbia, who digitized the paths of streams in Vancouver from 1880 to 1920 based on original mapping made by Sharon Proctor in the 1970s.
The black and white aerial photographs of the Saint-Pierre River are from the Archives de la Ville de Montréal and were taken between 1947 and 1949.
For further information about ancient rivers and daylighting, check out Hidden Hydrology and Lost Rivers.
