Ashbridges Bay

Ashbridges Bay was, before the 20th century, a large natural marsh at the mouth of the Don River, an important wetland habitat that also served for a period as an informal recreational and cottage area for Torontonians. City planners viewed the marsh differently: as an obstacle to industrial expansion and a public health hazard, and through the early 1900s the city drained and filled much of the bay with landfill, part of the same industrial-era mindset that reshaped the nearby Toronto Harbour and Don River mouth.

Toronto's largest treatment plant

The filled land became the site of the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, which opened in the 1910s and grew over the following century into Toronto's largest sewage treatment facility, processing wastewater for a large share of the city's population. A stretch of shoreline near the plant is now maintained as Ashbridges Bay Park, a popular waterfront recreational space that gives the name a very different public association today than the industrial treatment operation next door.

Sources

• City of Toronto — Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant
• Wikipedia — Ashbridge's Bay

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