Creating nature

The Leslie Street spit is a rather wonderful place. It's a conservation area that forms part of Toronto harbour. It started life as a series of shallow sandbars protecting the Eastern side of the harbour but has been built out over the years. Initially the sandbars were simply reinforced to better protect the harbour but then things got more ambitious. Now, it takes virtually all the cities "clean fill"; debris from demolition and construction sites. This material is used to build artificiablwetlands, lagoons and nesting areas for wild life, replacing much of the natural habitat that has disappeared with the growth of the city. It's particularly important to migratory waterfowl. It's also constantly in a state of flux. Most people stick to the two (more or less) metalled roads that lead out to the lighthouse at it's southern extremity and so do I when what I want is a quick, enjoyable bike ride. Sometimes though it's fun to explore the bits that are WIP as i did today. It can get a bit surreal.

Here's an area where a strip several hundred meters long by maybe 50 wide is being added to the south side of a boat anchorage.



See the more mature area to the right versus the newly created bit. Clearer perhaps here:



And here's an area where materialis being staged for further expansion:



Finally I made it back to the very end of the spit which is where people usually head. It looks like they are going to build that out too (notice the cairns, sculptures or inukshuks or whwatever they are supposed to be):