Mud Creek has its source near the Downsview Airport in North York and flows southeast for 11 kilometres, eventually through Moore Park ravine. It cut deep though sub glacial deposits before reaching its mouth at the Don River at the site of the Don Valley Brickworks. Along the way it descended 275 feet.
Where is Mud Creek today?
In the City of Toronto Plan from 1908, Davisville Village doesn't yet exist and Mud Creek is shown as flowing southeast from Yonge Street.
If you visit Davisville Village between Eglinton and Davisville Avenues, Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road, you will not find any running water. But you may discover several features of the neighbourhood that tell us that there was a river here in the past. The waters of Mud Creek still courses through pipes deep underground before exiting a culvert south of Moore Avenue just beyond Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Looking at a current road map, from the northwest to the southeast you can see that Tullis and Cuthbert Drives are roughly parallel and curved away from the grid pattern we normally see in cities. Following this path, we see Pailton Crescent is also curved in the same direction. Extending this curve it is apparent that it would meet up with the Moore Park Ravine in the south east.
The coordinates of this Earth Cache take you to a remnant of the former river bank where you can see how this neighbourhood has been built overtop of Mud Creek.
To Log this Earth Cache:
- At the Earth Cache coordinates you will be at the bottom of former river bank. Measure the elevation at the lowest point on either sidewalk. Towards the west you will see a steep, small hill. Measure the elevation at the highest point in either sidewalk. How tall is this former riverbank?
- Locate the manhole over the buried river. On the date of your visit can you hear it flowing underneath?
- Email me with the answers to these questions and go ahead and log your find. Feel free to post pictures.
Optional Activities:
A. If you walk along Tullis drive from the third reference point at Belsize Drive, N 43° 42.054 W 079° 23.625 to the second reference point at Manor Road, N 43° 42.151 W 079° 23.815 you will be walking along the former shoreline of Mud Creek. Looking west along Glebe Road or east along Carey Road you can see the remnants of the slopes of this former valley.
B. Follow the Beltline trail towards the Brickworks and locate the culvert where Mud Creek finally exits its long underground tunnel. In her novel Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood wrote about Mud Creek. Do you think Margaret Atwood’s description of Mud Creek is accurate?
The water of the creek is cold and peaceful, it comes straight from the cemetery, from the graves and their bones. It's water made from the dead people, dissolved and clear, and I am standing in it.