RESOURCES

We made up the religion; we did not make up the place. The people below know the Spit far better than we do, and everything here is worth your time before (or instead of) anything we say.

• VISIT · THE OFFICIAL SITE Tommy Thompson Park — TRCA

  Hours, closures, events, and the actual rules from the actual keepers of the Middle Path. Dawn gates: weekends & holidays from 5:30 a.m.; weekday evenings from 4. No dogs, no cars, no e-bikes — the temple admits bicycles, binoculars, and humility.

• READ · THE BOOK Accidental Wilderness: The Origins and Ecology of Toronto's Tommy Thompson Park

  Walter H. Kehm, with photographs by Robert Burley (University of Toronto Press, 2020). The definitive account of how the rubble became the refuge. Burley's companion photographs live at accidentalwilderness.robertburley.com.

• WATCH · THE FILM The Nature of Things: “Accidental Wilderness — The Leslie Street Spit”

  CBC's documentary on the Spit (season 59) — the fight to let a dump rewild itself in view of downtown. Streams on CBC Gem.

• JOIN · THE DEFENDERS Friends of the Spit

  Defending the headland since 1977: car-free, entirely public, free to enter, and left to the more-than-three-hundred bird species who got there first. Decades of audacity before we named the quality.

• REMEMBER · THE NAME Tommy Thompson, Parks Commissioner

  Toronto's first Metro Parks Commissioner, who posted the signs that said “Please walk on the grass.” The park bears his name; so, with apologies and gratitude, do we.

Corrections and additions welcome — the lexicon says definitions are stable until torn down, and that goes for links too.