Toronto - Part 4 Beastly Mings

This image is what one had to transverse to walk Toronto's streets. Every single grate for the 7 block walk we took back to our hotel was covered with the homeless sleeping over the sewer grates. I couldn't understand why at first until I walked over one that was uncovered before someone had claimed it. The heat coming up from the grate would keep anyone warm. The problem was the stench.

When we first arrived hubs and I thought it was because the inside workers and outside workers were on strike for the 30th day. Toronto downtown just plain stunk aka bad smell aka sewer smell permeating your nasal hairs. We would pass people who would smell like that and wondered if we too would smell like this by the time we left. We honestly thought it was the garbage since the no garbage had been picked up in 30 days and it was being collected in public park sites. Yep, in children's playgrounds, swimming pools, Toronto's public parks - filled with garbage bags. So imagine just one large park packed with bags of garbage coupled with a Toronto heat wave of 30 degrees Celsius aka 90 coupled with rain every day. Yeah - stinky.

When we got home I opened the suitcases to dump the dirty clothes in the laundry room and yeah - we brought back Toronto sewer smell on us and in the suitcases.

So I thought I would do some research on said stench. It seems there are many underground lost rivers in Toronto and people have been mapping them and offer free walking tours to show how the streams have become part of the water course of Toronto.

Some of the original streams were filled in by developing neighborhoods but many became incorporated into the city sewer system. In the 1830's Toronto was a town of 10,000 people and didn't have any sanitation. It was nicknamed "Muddy York" because it was a dirty, smelly, and filthy place. This underground water system became the place where garbage, human waste products, sewage, and dead animals were put. Along with this filth came disease and the contaminated water courses did lead to several cholera epidemics.

Francis Collins, founder of the Canadian Freeman newspaper in 1825, wrote of the harbour: "All the filth of the town – dead horses, dogs, cats, manure – drops down into the water, which is used by almost all the inhabitants on the shore." Ironically, Collins died during the city's cholera epidemic in 1834.

By the end of the 19th century Toronto began building water filtration plants and a sewer system but used the old underground water system since they followed the natural topography. The politicians at the time agreed to combine the storm and sanitary sewers with this underground water system because it was cheaper than having 2 separate systems. It works unless heavy rains overwhelm the sewers, spilling sewage and rainwater into the streets.

This is why there were beastly mings and I came home washing every stitch of our clothing twice with Lysol added to the laundry to make sure every ounce of stench was out.