opinion

The Toronto Portlands project has restored a water-absorbing marsh that was filled in more than 100 years ago to create an industrial district. The mouth of the Don River is now home to Biidaasige Park.

One of the first things people notice about the brilliant new park at the mouth of Toronto’s Don River – once so polluted it caught fire, twice – is the wildlife. Look, it’s a rabbit. Hey, is that a bald eagle? Oh, there’s a monarch butterfly.

Biidaasige Park opened last month on the east side of Toronto Harbour. The name is pronounced “bee-daw-si-geh,” a phrase in the Anishinaabemowin language that means “sunlight shining toward us.” It flanks a kilometre-long extension of the Don, part of a $1.35-billion, two-decade effort to protect the area from flooding. Engineers replaced

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