Excavation in Toronto Port Lands uncovers long-lost natural habitat

A 1.25-billion-dollar construction project is underway in the Toronto Port Lands area.  Stella Acquisto talks to those involved in the project about what they found during excavation. 

By Stella Acquisto and Meredith Bond

An excavation at a Toronto Port Lands construction site has uncovered a long-lost natural habitat near the Don River.

University of Toronto researchers are studying the soil removed from the site, thought to have been buried for over 100 years.

The $1.25 billion construction project began in 2018 to protect the area from potential flooding and is part of the re-creation of the mouth of the Don River.

“We are building a one-kilometre river that is the new mouth of the Don River, reconnecting it to the lake. About 100 years ago, it was channelized and put into the Keating Channel. Now it’s going to be naturalized and connected out at the Polson slip,” explained Shannon Baker, the project director for Parks and Public Realm at Waterfront Toronto.

Baker said through that excavation of 1.5 million cubic metres of soil, they discovered the hundred-year-old seeds that had begun to germinate about seven metres below.

It had been filled a century ago to create a larger port and was used for heavy industry.

“We were able to harvest the plants and take them to Tommy Thompson Park,” shared Baker. The soil is also now with the U of T researchers to see what the earth might germinate and what other species might come out of that topsoil.

Paleoecologist Sarah Finkelstein said their first goal is to understand what the marsh looked like back then. “We’ll try to answer questions like: What was the plant community like? What were the food webs like? What role did this marsh play ecologically on a local and regional scale?'” she said in a release from U of T.

“I’m quite curious about what we will find,” added ecosystem ecologist Shelby Riskin. “If there is going to be a viable seed bank of native plants in those soils or if there’s evidence that it was already a degraded ecosystem a hundred years ago.”

“We are also going to collect some of the seeds from the plants that were relocated to Tommy Thompson and bring them back to the sedge meadow here to see if we can make that link between the original marsh that was here and the new habitat we are creating on-site,” explained Baker.

A rendering of what the mouth of the Don River is expected to look like once the construction project in the Port Lands is complete.

A rendering of what the mouth of the Don River is expected to look like once the construction project in the Port Lands is complete. Photo credit: Waterfront Toronto


The project is expected to wrap up in 2024 and will create hectares of new parks and green space.

“It’s revitalizing the area,” said Baker. “Because it was a marshland, it has poor geotechnical soil, so it doesn’t support building very easily.”

“Through all our work, we will be able to develop a new neighbourhood, revitalize the area and again flood protect through climate-resilient solutions.”

She added the new plants are not the only “artifacts” they’ve discovered on site.

“A jar of pickles, for instance, that was intact. Nobody has eaten it or tried it out,” Baker laughed.

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