Lost Rivers is a small group of citizen geographers, researching and mapping long-buried creeks. Newer related projects are Rivers Rising and RAINscapeTO, both social enterprises that connect people to neighbourhood greening projects and eco-gardening job opportunities. Grounded in historical connections of the place to Indigenous, settler, and immigrant communities, Lost Rivers/Rivers Rising travels through time to envision a future for the city that connects us all.
Setayesh Babaei is an Iranian-Canadian artist and designer based in Toronto. During her undergraduate studies at OCAD University in the Environmental Design program, she dedicated her work to the realization of the buried rivers in Toronto and their transformation due to urbanization from waterways to underground sewage systems. Her project explores the history as well as the future of the city’s hydrological system; from the greenbelt to rivers, the “Veins” of our city. Besides her full-time career as a designer at a transportation planning and engineering company, Babaei has been collaborating with the Toronto Lost Rivers for the past two years. She is currently a graduate student at OCAD University where she is continuing to develop her project and expand her research.
John Wilson (born in Youngstown, OH, USA; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) is an independent community engagement specialist and waterfront advocate. Wilson leads public walks with the Lost Rivers project, a collaboration of the Toronto Green Community and Toronto Field Naturalists, and serves as co-chair of the West Don Lands Committee. From 2000 to 2011, Wilson served as chair of the Task Force to Bring Back the Don, a citizens’ advisory committee of Toronto City Council with a mandate to restore a clean, green, accessible Don River.
Helen Mills (born in Johannesburg, South Africa; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) is the founder of Lost Rivers, a project of the Toronto Green Community. When she came to Toronto, she noticed a sunken park near her house. Years later she learned that it was a remnant ravine and home to lost Mud Creek. Mesmerized, she wanted to paint blue lines on the street and over buildings, to name the creeks and bring them back to the surface of our awareness. Then the Lost River Walks began through the alchemy of the very first public meeting of the Toronto Green Community (1994). More than 33,000 people have walked on a Lost River since then.
The River Poets
Anita Lahey’s memoir, The Last Goldfish: A True Tale of Friendship (2020), is a finalist for the 2021 Ottawa Book Award. She’s series editor of the annual anthology, Best Canadian Poetry, and author of two Véhicule Press poetry collections (Spinning Side Kick, 2011 and Out to Dry in Cape Breton, 2006), as well as The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture (2013). Lahey is also an accomplished magazine journalist and ghost writer. She lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin, Anishinabek territory, where she is becoming well acquainted with a different river, the Rideau, which has quite a different personality (and history) from Toronto’s Don.
Dilys Leman’s documentary-style poetry book, The Winter Count (2014), both presents and disrupts colonial narratives about the 1885 Rebellion and Métis leader Louis Riel. Her poetry and short fiction can be found in literary magazines such as Arc, Grain, CV2, Vallum, and Prairie Fire. Several of her “lost river” poems appear in The Wonder of Water: Lived Experience, Policy and Practice, a volume of scholarly essays published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. Leman lives in Toronto where she works as a freelance writer and editor and teaches yoga, focusing on techniques to relieve chronic pain and stress.
Maureen Hynes (based in Toronto, ON, Canada) has just launched her fifth book of poetry, Sotto Voce (2019). Previous collections have won the Lampert Poetry Prize from the League of Canadian Poets, and were shortlisted for the Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster awards. She has contributed poems to more than twenty-five anthologies, twice including Best Canadian Poetry in English. Hynes loves the work of writing to and for Toronto’s rivers.
Maureen Scott Harris is based in Toronto and has published three collections of poetry. Her second book, Drowning Lessons (2004), won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2005. Her poems and essays have appeared in periodicals and anthologies in Canada, the US, Italy, and Australia. “Be the River”, a prayer for the Don, was Arc’s poem of the year in 2002. Her essay “Broken Mouth: Offerings for the Don River, Toronto”, won the 2009 WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. Scott Harris is grateful to Toronto’s rivers, both buried and visible, for their enduring presence and living connection to the natural world.
Nicholas Power performs in wild places with the River Poets. His published work includes the books ordinary clothes: A Tao in a Time of Covid (2020), Tin Dittos (2019), Melancholy Scientist (2014), The Play of Light in Wychwood (2014), and “Writing on Water” (2013); anthologies including The Boneshaker (2015) and Canada’s 150th (2017); and writing in journals including Bywords, Descant, Rampike, wildculture.com, and ottawater. He has been part of Artfest in Kingston, the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and the 2017 International Festival of Authors in Toronto. He has published over twenty-five different writers as publisher of Gesture Press where his own poetry and one-poem appreciations can be found. He also works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. gesturepress.com