After 18 years of work, Toronto’s Port Lands opens to the public

On a sunny July afternoon, the Don River flowed into Toronto Harbour. Its banks were lined with lake sedge, switchgrass and Canada anemone. Paths and bridges laced through the landscape, which looked as if they had always been there.

In fact, this stretch of river and its surrounding lands − now known as Biidaasige Park − are entirely manufactured. They are not a work of nature but a feat of civic imagination.

They are the product of a $1.5-billion effort known as the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, which has redrawn the mouth of the Don and conjured vast new public spaces from what had long been a civic afterthought.