Weddings and funerals are some of the most universally profound events of our lives. Both acts, however disparate, ultimately celebrate life. This thesis draws on themes of life and regeneration in its reading of a neglected yet historically significant site in the port lands of Toronto. The changes that have occurred at the mouth of the Don mirror the changes that have occurred in Toronto from settlement to post-modernity. It is here that the thesis proposes a place that simultaneously reclaims its roots and creates a new identity for the port lands. As a means of reinhabiting this site, the design uses the power of weddings and funerals to generate a collective point of gathering that reflects the multicultural nature of Toronto today.

Weddings and funerals are some of the most universally profound events of our lives. Both acts, however disparate, ultimately celebrate life. This thesis draws on themes of life and regeneration in its reading of a neglected yet historically significant site in the port lands of Toronto. The changes that have occurred at the mouth of the Don mirror the changes that have occurred in Toronto from settlement to post-modernity. It is here that the thesis proposes a place that simultaneously reclaims its roots and creates a new identity for the port lands. As a means of reinhabiting this site, the design uses the power of weddings and funerals to generate a collective point of gathering that reflects the multicultural nature of Toronto today.

This dissertation explores human interactions with Toronto’s Don River Valley from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the period of intense urbanization and industrialization between 1880 and 1940. Its concentration on the urban fringe generates new perspectives on the social and environmental consequences of urban development. From its position on the margins, the Don performed vital functions for the urban economy as a provider of raw materials and a sink for wastes. Insights derived from the intersections between social and environmental history are at the heart of this project. The dissertation begins by documenting the industrial history of the river and its transformation from a central provider in the lives of early Toronto residents to a polluted periphery in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of the valley’s related function as a repository for human “undesirables” reveals connections between the processes that identified certain individuals as deficient “others” and similar imperatives at work in classifying difficult or unpredictable environments as “waste spaces.” Efforts to “reclaim” and improve the river are the subject of the remaining chapters. A series of initiatives between 1870 and 1930 aimed at reconfiguring the lower Don as an efficient corridor for transportation and industrial development reveal in their shortcomings and unintended consequences a failure to accommodate dynamic and often unpredictable ecological processes. Reclamations of a different kind are explored in the conservation movement of the twentieth century, through which the valley emerges as a valuable public amenity. The dissertation concludes by investigating how the valley’s history informs current plans to “renaturalize” the river mouth. Throughout, the Don functions as an autonomous and causal force in the city’s history. On this small river on the urban fringe, nature and society worked in mutually constitutive ways to shape and reshape the metropolis.

This dissertation explores human interactions with Toronto’s Don River Valley from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the period of intense urbanization and industrialization between 1880 and 1940. Its concentration on the urban fringe generates new perspectives on the social and environmental consequences of urban development. From its position on the margins, the Don performed vital functions for the urban economy as a provider of raw materials and a sink for wastes. Insights derived from the intersections between social and environmental history are at the heart of this project. The dissertation begins by documenting the industrial history of the river and its transformation from a central provider in the lives of early Toronto residents to a polluted periphery in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of the valley’s related function as a repository for human “undesirables” reveals connections between the processes that identified certain individuals as deficient “others” and similar imperatives at work in classifying difficult or unpredictable environments as “waste spaces.” Efforts to “reclaim” and improve the river are the subject of the remaining chapters. A series of initiatives between 1870 and 1930 aimed at reconfiguring the lower Don as an efficient corridor for transportation and industrial development reveal in their shortcomings and unintended consequences a failure to accommodate dynamic and often unpredictable ecological processes. Reclamations of a different kind are explored in the conservation movement of the twentieth century, through which the valley emerges as a valuable public amenity. The dissertation concludes by investigating how the valley’s history informs current plans to “renaturalize” the river mouth. Throughout, the Don functions as an autonomous and causal force in the city’s history. On this small river on the urban fringe, nature and society worked in mutually constitutive ways to shape and reshape the metropolis.

With the shift in perspective from temporary to permanent residence in this country, Sikhs are caught in between two polar ends of homeland and diaspora. This thesis attempts to illuminate a third – a universal permanence free of physical barriers. This account describes a movement towards establishing a Sikh homeland that is manifested in the collective Sikh body of the world rather than in the physical land of Punjab. The turban that is the physical identity of the Sikhs in diaspora has also come to represent the rigidities of the culture, which neglect the omnipresent divinity, and sacredness of every place. In its form and content, this thesis is engaged in “unfolding of the turban” to open it to the new worlds it is now a part of, to create a new beginning as a human body unfolds upon death into its five primal elements on the verge of reviviscence. Sikhs worldwide are aware of their need to convert diaspora back into a homeland, to fight against restrictions that hinder the completion of rituals of life and death. The unraveling of the turban into an undulating path allows for a new perspective on permanence for the Sikhs in foreign lands. Unfolded into a form of the meandering river, the turban also represents the eternally flowing waters. The silent sacredness of the water indistinctly exists in Toronto. Behind the towering city, the Don River often flows quietly, leading a life parallel to that of the River Ganges and the River Sutlej. This once pastoral valley that sustained villages and nature is now discarded, in post-industrial despair. Trapped within these modern city confines, the river still secretly retains the power to transfigure souls, but its powers of reviviscence remain unidentified and unused due to restrictive cremation bylaws. This thesis attempts to create for the Sikhs an essential funeral landscape, whose icons may be read through an anamorphic lens of Sikh culture, while providing for all an opportunity to engage the forgotten river, and its energy.

With the shift in perspective from temporary to permanent residence in this country, Sikhs are caught in between two polar ends of homeland and diaspora. This thesis attempts to illuminate a third – a universal permanence free of physical barriers. This account describes a movement towards establishing a Sikh homeland that is manifested in the collective Sikh body of the world rather than in the physical land of Punjab. The turban that is the physical identity of the Sikhs in diaspora has also come to represent the rigidities of the culture, which neglect the omnipresent divinity, and sacredness of every place. In its form and content, this thesis is engaged in “unfolding of the turban” to open it to the new worlds it is now a part of, to create a new beginning as a human body unfolds upon death into its five primal elements on the verge of reviviscence. Sikhs worldwide are aware of their need to convert diaspora back into a homeland, to fight against restrictions that hinder the completion of rituals of life and death. The unraveling of the turban into an undulating path allows for a new perspective on permanence for the Sikhs in foreign lands. Unfolded into a form of the meandering river, the turban also represents the eternally flowing waters. The silent sacredness of the water indistinctly exists in Toronto. Behind the towering city, the Don River often flows quietly, leading a life parallel to that of the River Ganges and the River Sutlej. This once pastoral valley that sustained villages and nature is now discarded, in post-industrial despair. Trapped within these modern city confines, the river still secretly retains the power to transfigure souls, but its powers of reviviscence remain unidentified and unused due to restrictive cremation bylaws. This thesis attempts to create for the Sikhs an essential funeral landscape, whose icons may be read through an anamorphic lens of Sikh culture, while providing for all an opportunity to engage the forgotten river, and its energy.