Highland Creek Watershed (Morningside Park)

The Highland Creek watershed consists of several neighbourhood greening projects.  

During a November frost, I wanted to take pictures of Morningside Park and the Main Highland Creek branch which is just northeast of the Hague and Cedarbrook parks (see blog).  This covered my two interests of both exploring the various park systems in Toronto as well as understanding more about how the watershed diverts the flow of storm/sewage run-off, which is so critical to our clean water supply. (ref: R.C. Harris Filtration Plant in this blog for more information on water filtration)

Morningside Park is as beautiful as I was told, and very large.  The University of Toronto campus (Scarborough) overlooks the park.  There are birdhouses in the park which contribute to the expansion of the bird habitat.  

The trail has some pretty amazing sights.  I saw a number of hawks in the area, but they were just a little too quick for me!  

Like most large cities, Toronto has our own spread of graffiti culture.  It's all around us, livening up Cabbagetown, drearily-coloured factories, the walls of old office buildings and through pedestrian tunnels like the Moccasin Trail.  Whereas other cities label them as 'art crimes' or 'vandalism', Toronto encourages our street artists.   Judge for yourself by these photographs that were taken from the base of the Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park Bridge.  While looking at them, all I kept thinking was, how could anyone call this graffiti? 

A couple of years ago, a  265 metres long bridge was put up joining two neighbourhoods together (Kingston-Galloway and Orton Park).  It was a success in every way including bringing the cultural and arts communities together.  The art work at the base of the bridge was actually done by 20 local youths which just humbled me that young people could be just so talented and here was a perfect opportunity for them to show it off forever.  

Further along the trail there were these cute smilies painted on sewage drains coming into and out of the parks.  The West Highland Branch was photographed recently (Hague/Cederbrook parks), but I completely messed up with my camera settings this time for the waterflow from the Main Highland Creek, but at least you will be able to see that both Scarborough and the watershed treatment projects in your neighbourhood not only create a practical purpose, but can be aesthetically beautiful as well.