One place I like to go when I need to scratch my photographic itch is Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Street Spit. It meshes nicely with my personal mandate to document “this made-up world of ours.” It illustrates how our world is flipping upside down. Typically, we think of ourselves as occupying the natural world. We live on top of it. It supports us. But the longer we live in this world, the more we lay down an unnatural foundation which supports an occupying natural world. The Leslie Street Spit is a breakwater more than 5 kilometres long composed entirely of material dredged from the Toronto harbour and from surplus fill. Some of its shoreline has been exposed for nearly 60 years, now, worn smooth by the waves of Lake Ontario. Ecosystems have risen up from rubble. We tend to take it for granted, but it really is a bizarre landscape.
