TORONTO'S DON RIVER

-A Menace to Society-

By the 1880s, the Don was widely recognized as a menace to public health, and an obstacle to the development of the city’s east end. Heavily polluted waters stagnated in the slow moving, serpentine reaches of the lower river and the massive reach of marshlands at its mouth. Annual accumulations of silt and debris at the mouth of the Don threatened navigation in Toronto harbour and clogged access to industrial wharves, presenting a persistent challenge to waterfront industry. Frequent floods in spring and fall created further problems, damaging river-side properties, drowning livestock, and occasionally taking human lives as well. The “Don problem,” as it became known, prompted a series of unsuccessful interventions in the 1870s and 80s, culminating in the Don Improvement Plan of 1886.

In the early 1880s, city politicians and business interests forwarded a proposal to "widen, straighten, deepen and otherwise improve the River Don” with the goal of creating a navigable channel for ship traffic south of Gerrard Street, expanding industrial lands in the area, and flushing out pollution in the Lower River and Ashbridge’s Bay. Straightening the course of the river in its lower reaches would also allow for the construction of riverside railway tracks, and with them, the creation of an additional railway entrance into Toronto through the Don Valley. In March 1886 the Don Improvement Act was passed by the provincial legislature, empowering the City to borrow funds and expropriate lands to complete the improvement works. Toronto ratepayers gave Council the final go-ahead in a public referendum in September 1886, and construction began the following month.

Read more at Don River Historical Mapping Project