High Park on World Water Day

Date: Mar 22, 2025 at 10:00
Meeting Location: At the south-west corner of Bloor St. and High Park Ave. (High Park’s North Gates)

Join us on World Water Day, March 22nd at 10:00 am for a 2.5 hr, 4 km circular nature and heritage walk on mostly unpaved and uneven surfaces with gentle slopes and some steep slopes, as well as some stairs.

Leader: Ellen Schwartzel

Walk Location: High Park

Meeting Point: At the south-west corner of Bloor St. and High Park Ave. (High Park’s North Gates)

Getting There: TTC to High Park subway station; exit to High Park Ave.

Walk Details: A 2.5 hr, 4 km circular nature and heritage walk on mostly unpaved and uneven surfaces, gentle slopes with some steep slopes. Some stairs.

Accessibility: Could be icy and muddy

Washrooms: At the end

Walk description: World Water Day 2025 focuses on Glacier Preservation and the critical role of glaciers in sustaining life and the water cycle. Glaciers, mountain run-off, and snowmelt provide nearly two billion people with water for drinking, agriculture, and energy production. Admittedly, our High Park has been free of glaciers for some time, but the ice was about 1 km thick just 20,000 years ago. We will talk about past ice ages, and trends for the Earth’s glaciers these days. If you have experienced glaciers first-hand, come and share your story. We’ll watch for early migrant birds, wintering ducks and raptors. Last year’s bird sightings on March 17 included wood ducks, a northern shoveler, a red-bellied woodpecker and a blue heron. We will walk south along Wendigo Creek to Grenadier Pond and then to the southwest duckponds. We will end at Grenadier Restaurant, where there are washrooms, and some of us may wish to gather for lunch.

What to Bring: Wear boots for icy, slippery terrain. binoculars for birds. Walking sticks may help.

This walk is only one of more than 140 that TFN will host this year alone! TFN members enjoy a complete listing of walks in our newsletter. Not a member? Learn more about the benefits of membership now!

Please tag any photos you take on this walk with #TFNWalk so that we can all live vicariously through your lens.

Toronto Field Naturalists wishes to acknowledge this Land through which we walk. For thousands of years, the Land has been shared by the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe. Toronto is situated on the Land within the Toronto Purchase, Treaty 13, the traditional and treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is also part of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, a covenant agreement between Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat peoples and allied nations to peaceably share the land and all its resources. Today, the Land is home to peoples of numerous nations. We are all grateful to have the opportunity to continue to care for and share the beauty of this Land.