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Earth Day, Saturday April 24, saw a group of City staff, Friends of Fort York, and friends of Friends turn out to pick up trash on along the north side of the site, on land owned formerly by the CNR where homeless people sometimes lived. ree hours later several steel drums, dozens of railway ties, parts of seven bicycles, a number of metal office chairs, scores of bottles and quantities of steel strapping, water-sodden bedding and clothing was piled along the foot of the ramparts waiting for removal by the City’s trucks. e volume and variety of the trash surprised everyone involved in the blitz. It was suggested that similar bees might be held more often than once a year.is idea will be considered by FOFY’s directors. But the cleanup of some areas will have to be left to the City Works department, for example, under the Strachan Avenue bridge where personal possessions and garbage lie intermingled, and on the south ramparts where a squatter’s hut stands close by the centre bastion. is latter encroachment existed when the land was transferred by Wittington Properties Ltd. to the City of Toronto in 1996, and probably began several years before then when the CPR was the owner. Indeed, squatting on the public lands at Fort York is an old tradition. It can be traced back as early as the 1870s when at least three cottages were erected without formal consent
Just a few of the many piles of refuse collected in the vicinity of the north ramparts. along Strachan Avenue south of the railway corridor. ey were occupied by labourers, widows and the like for more than thirty-five years until about 1915 when they were demolished in conjunction with the rebuilding and straightening of Strachan. 3 e Fife and Drum
Council Approves New Management
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