Meet Toronto’s new Island: Ookwemin Minising (formerly Villiers)

City of Toronto staff: Parks & Recreation - Danny Brown; City Planning - Sonja Vangjeli / Julie Bogdanowicz (Urban Design); Fred Martin (Waterfront Secretariat and the Indigenous Affairs Office); and David Stonehouse (Waterfront Secretariat). Waterfront Toronto staff: Shannon Baker

Toronto has a new island where the Don River meets Lake Ontario. Formerly known as Villiers Island, Ookwemin Minising is a new island born from one of the world’s most ambitious flood protection and river restoration projects.

Join us for a walk in the Port Lands across three new Canadian-made bridges. Take a peek at the new park that will begin to open this summer. Walk the Ookwemin Street (formerly Cherry Street) heritage corridor and visualize how the industrial area will transform into a vibrant, complete community over the coming decades.

Take in the new kilometre-long river valley at the mouth of the Don River that delivers new habitats and witness the construction of imaginative new parkland. When complete, this 60-acre park will be the largest to open in Toronto in a generation, offering new play areas, including water play features, a large owl-themed play structure, the Lassonde Art Trail, picnic areas with barbecues, walking trails, fishing and birdwatching, and 6.1 kilometres of trails, connecting the parks to the wetlands and greenspace within the new river valley. These new parks are part of a design for flood protection, protecting over 200 hectares from flooding and enabling the next generation of waterfront revitalization.

Learn about Indigenous reconciliation and the process that led to the island’s new name. "Ookwemin Minising" (pronounced Oh-kway-min Min-nih-sing) is the new name for the island that means "place of the black cherry trees" in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin, acknowledging the area's historical abundance of black cherry trees.

Hear about all of this, and more, on the tour and ask questions of the professionals helping to deliver this momentous project. The Port Lands Flood Protection Project is being delivered by Waterfront Toronto with funding from the Government of Canada, Province of Ontario and City of Toronto, in partnership with CreateTO, Ports Toronto, and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

Please dress warmly, the waterfront is cold and windy. Help us celebrate the rebirth of the river by wearing blue and green or dressing like your favourite plant or animal that we’ve seen on-site or designed habitat for:
Red Fox
Muskrat
Ring-billed Gull
Green Frog
Beaver
Northern Pike
Alewife Herring
Eastern Grey Squirrel
Meadow Vole
Snowy Owl
Mink
American Toad
Monarch Butterfly
Painted Turtle
Red-Tailed Hawk
Green Heron
Rock Bass
Chinook Salmon
Raccoon
Skunk
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit
Pileated Woodpecker
Chimney Swifts
Osprey
Bald Eagle
Coyote
Red-winged blackbird
Bank swallows
Kildeer

Find the event on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/share/16VHYs9JuC/

Walk Start:

Meet on the new Cherry Street bridge across the Keating Channel (just south of Lake Shore Boulevard). Join us from 2:30pm onwards to enjoy music by Mosquito Bar.

Join us for more music followed by social gathering and wrap-up at the Keating Channel Pub.

Walk End: