Leslie Street Spit

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View along Leslie Street Spit towards Vicki Keith Point

Side lane on Leslie Street Spit

The Leslie Street Spit, is a man-made spit in Toronto, Canada, extending from the city's east end in a roughly southwesterly direction into Lake Ontario. It is about 5 km long. The official name of the spit, sometimes used on government maps is the Outer Harbour East Headland.

Its common name is technically incorrect, since it is not truly a spit, but Torontonians almost never use the official name. The road running along the peninsula is a southern extension of Leslie Street, hence the popular nickname.

1 Construction and evolution
2 Important Bird Area
3 See also
4 Sources
5 External links

[edit] Construction and evolution

The now defunct Toronto Harbour Commission (THC) began construction of the peninsula in the late 1950s. Its originally foreseen purpose was to provide a breakwater for Toronto's Outer Harbour, which itself was expected to be necessary to handle the increase in shipping on the Great Lakes after the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. However, the need for an outer harbour never arose, and all cargo ships calling at Toronto still use the Inner Harbour, while the Outer Harbour sees only pleasure boat traffic.

The need for the headland, however, did not disappear. In the 1960s and 1970s, development in Toronto proceeded rapidly, and the Leslie Street Spit was a convenient place to dump the endless supply of rubble and earth generated by all the building projects in the city. Originally a long, slender finger of bare land stretching out into the lake, the headland eventually developed several lobes enclosing small bays, and was eventually colonized by a variety of plant life. Cottonwood and poplar forests now cover much of the headland, and it has become a fine example of the development of pioneer plant communities and ecological succession. About 400 species of plants have been identified on the Leslie Street Spit.

The inner part of the spit consists of three embayments. These were designed to hold dredged material from the Inner Harbour and the Keating Channel. The first embayment has now been filled. It has been capped with clean fill and is being restored by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority as a marsh. The remaining two embayments have about 50 years' capacity remaining.

The Leslie Street Spit's evolution into an urban wilderness was never in the city's plans. Indeed, the spit's status as such was secured by a number of organizations, with the citizens' advocacy group known as Friends of the Spit at the forefront of advocacy to retain the spit in as natural a state as possible.

Several development plans have been put forward. One development plan involved an "aquatic park" which would have included a hotel, an amphitheatre, government docks, private yacht clubs, parking for 2,000 cars, a waterskiing school, and camping, among other facilities. In 1968, the Toronto Harbour Commission envisaged building yet another "spit" further west, and creating a huge residential area, complete with a new airport. These plans were debated at length, but as they were, the previously lifeless Leslie Street Spit was coming to life, and many Torontonians decided that they liked the idea of having a wilderness right in the city.

Currently, the northern half of the spit has been designated as Tommy Thompson Park, named after a former Toronto Parks Commissioner, and managed by the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority. The southern half is still an active dumping zone, managed by the Toronto Port Authority. Eventually the entire spit will become parkland.

[edit] Important Bird Area

Quite a number of bird species are also to be found on the Leslie Street Spit. More than 290 species of migratory birds are to be found, 45 of which actually breed on the headland. Among the birds that may be observed on the headland are the ring-billed gull, the black-crowned night-heron, the double-crested cormorant, the common tern, the Caspian tern, and the herring gull.

Owing to the Leslie Street Spit's importance to so many bird species, it has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by the Canadian Nature Federation (CNF) and Bird Studies Canada (BSC), which are BirdLife International's partners in Canada. Peninsula D has also become the site of a comprehensive bird banding station, run by the TRCA. The bird banding station is manned 7 days a week during spring and fall migration.

Friends of the Spit was founded in 1977. Its original members included people as varied as birdwatchers, naturalists, and cyclists. The Friends' goals, quite simply, are to keep the Leslie Street Spit open to the public (The THC had not allowed public access until 1973; the Spit is now open to the public from 9:00 am. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends and statutory holidays in the summer, and from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekends and statutory holidays in the winter. It is closed weekdays owing to the ongoing construction of the spit, conducted by the Toronto Port Authority), and to keep it in its natural — or perhaps more accurately naturalized state. Thus far, all development plans have come to naught, and the spit is still open to the public.

Along with the IBA, Tommy Thompson Park contains the Aquatic Park Sailing Club, a 100 mooring sailing club founded in 1976. The club's leasing fees help pay for the habitat creation on the Spit. The club also pays for, in part, the free-to-the-public van that operates during the summer when the park is open. The Leslie Street Spit is a car-free area when the park is open, with strictly controlled vehicle access to the mooring area when the park is closed. The spit's outermost end is known as Vicki Keith Point, after a famous Canadian swimmer. There has been an automated lighthouse there since 1974.