Taddle Creek, dammed to create McCaul’s Pond, at the UTSG campus, 1870.
Image Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain
I once took a class in room 24 upstairs at Trinity College. I thought Disaster and Terrorism would be filled with boring old lectures about moral relativism and war, but the professor spoke of trees.
“They’ve been here before us,” he said, “and they’ll be here when we’re gone.”
I’ve always struggled to find solace in a place. I feel homesick at home and anguish when I travel. In the past few years, I’ve been thinking about what place even means to me. As the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss said, “There seems to be no place for place anymore.” The efficiency-based culture we live in, the concrete surrounding us, the commodification of natural processes, and every aspect of our daily lives strip away our interdependence with the Earth.
Right by Trinity College stands a stunning desecration: a little hill, grass lawns, and some trees. The natural landscape in Philosopher’s Walk was designed not too long ago. Buried alive beneath it is Ziibiing, Taddle Creek, the revered waters who once sustained the fish, deer, and elk stewarded by the Anishinaabe Nation. Growing colonial forces and infrastructures defiled Ki.* The river was submerged and contaminated along mid and downtown, then dammed by the University of Toronto to create McCaul’s Pond where Hart House stands today. Diasporic soils covered this stream, allowing the city to conceal the loss of a solemn place with a green chimera. It was drained because of high wastewater concentrations—and yet! The hidden waterway continues to flow underground.
When posed the question of place and its absence, an influential member of our university told me that “trees come and go.” A disheartening answer that haunts me to this day. You might not believe me when I say this, but trees can talk. When you look at a tree, what do you see? Do you notice the verdant lichens creeping along kins bark or recognize kins empathy and dedication to one another? Trees communicate through intimate networks of root systems and fungi: mycorrhizal networks help kin transport nutrients to share and warn each other of danger. Trees keep each other safe. We too have that collective power.
I’m Michelle, the senior editor of the Trinity Editorials column. As you can see, editors’ letters from our team will be published in this column, and we will follow some students’ experiences throughout the year at Trinity College in the form of monthly journal entries. My vision for this column is to meticulously explore the details of who we are and where we find ourselves situated, including readers like you. As constituents of the university community, we are the living soil that settled above the river, and it is our privilege to bear the responsibility to make amends. May our lives intertwine in solidarity like the ivy along our walls, and may our stories teach us to treat each other with kindness and dignity.
Michelle He (any pronouns)
Editorials Senior Editor 2024-2025
*Ki/Kin/Kins pronouns proposed by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and author of Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass, take inspiration from the Anishinaabemowin word “Bemaadiziiaaki,” which refers to the non-human, sacred, and spiritual beings deserving of “selfhood and kinship.” The word Ki replaces the “it” pronoun used in conventional English when referring to the non-human, thereby removing the hierarchical language that alienates humans from the world.
Taddle Creek pond in Wychwood Park, 2012.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
