Ana Šašić

Ghost Rivers was presented as part of "You Are Here", an exhibition exploring the navigation of urban space and emotional experience, curated by Lisa Jefferies, Jordan Fee, Mary Wallace and Joanna Wreakes.

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The piece revives the ghosts of Toronto’s much-memorialized buried rivers, Garrison Creek and Taddle Creek. Their lingering pockmarks on the surface of the city are highlighted in Trinity Bellwoods, Christie Pitts, beside Queen’s Park. Other formations that directed the earliest human scenes on this piece of earth are quieter beside them, the sprawling tentacles of the Don River Valley, the spine of the ancient trail along what is now Davenport Road. The waterways are shown emerging from their original natural shoreline, drawn in contrast to the angular marinas we now navigate, before landfill closed these landmark arteries. Partly submerged, partly familiar, Ossington, Harbord, Bay glow with their streetcar lines, alongside surviving routes. These human and natural traces on the land are depicted as two layered languages in conversation, shown on today’s street network, to show residents the story under their own neighborhoods.