Don River, ON

’ve always enjoyed coming to the Don Valley because it offers so many things. Anywhere from picnicking to beautiful bike trails and the water front. Especially when you have kids, it’s a beautiful resource for kids to explore and play in. But a year ago I started doing trail running in the Don Valley and I had no idea there was such a vast system of single use trails. It’s like a network of more than 60 kms that go through beautiful - what looks like wild rough nature. To have that in the middle of the city is just astonishing and it offers so many different faces.

The Don Valley is a really rich area, you have little valleys where you see a ton of ferns coming up or there’s a little valley where it’s full of trilliums in the spring. Then you have places where there’s beavers and coyotes and dear. It just has a lot of different faces and especially through my experience trail running through the Don Valley, I have come across so many things and its really very precious to me.

I think over the years the Don Valley has really suffered a lot form a lot of things like invasive species, erosion, and a lot of garbage, garbage dumping, plastics. It’s just choking the Don Valley. I really wish to see in the future that we’re taking better care of our green spaces. It is our duty. We’re Toronto with so many people, 2.5 million or more people, in a city that a resource that is so unique. The Don Valley is something that, there are no places in North America that I know of that such a vast beautiful system of ravines and trails and rivers that are going right through your city. That are basically at your door step.

So I think that we have the obligation to take better care of the ravines and to help them restore and come back with their native species, thrive with wildlife and offer a beautiful green space that is not choked with litter.