The Leslie Street Spit

This chapter investigates the Leslie Street Spit, a 5-km-long construction waste dump that juts into Lake Ontario from Toronto’s waterfront. Dumping only began in the 1950s, a time when natural features were unplanned and unanticipated. It soon became a magnet for flora and fauna, particularly migrating birds. In response to the astounding ecological communities that evolved as a result of neglect and accelerated natural succession, the Spit became an Environmentally Significant Area in 1982. Intimately tied to urban modernist strategies for capital accumulation by means of creative destruction, this new landform gained massive appeal as an “accidental wilderness.” But the widespread celebration of this greenspace masks less savoury dynamics of urban transformations, such as the creation of toxic and perilous habitat and the dispossession Indigenous and low-income and working-class communities. As a consequence of slum clearance policies, the Spit serves as a material archival record of lives and communities that were destroyed in the name of progress. Today, the Spit is frequented by diverse communities, including cyclists, birders and wildlife enthusiasts, artists and recreationists. It is also valued as a refuge for usages that fall outside of the urban mainstream, including for homeless encampment, and as a space of queer experiences of nature and relative safety for many.