If you take a stroll along Toronto’s Queen’s Quay waterfront on a Sunday afternoon, you may notice a unique array of vessels and what appear to be toys on the water. Tucked away in a small nook between a condo and HTO park, people race by in giant inflatable balls, a paddleboard-meets-walker glides across the surface, and brave souls plunge in the chilly waters.
What looks like a fun weekend activity—and really, it is—is the result of months of clean-up and lab-focused testing efforts. Just months ago, HTO beach and the Peter Street Basin were hotbeds for E. coli, swimming restrictions, and foul-smelling garbage. That is, until Steve Mann set his sights on making it swimmable.
“It didn’t even look like a body of water. It just looked like a big pile of garbage,” says Mann, a professor in computer engineering at the University of Toronto. “The stench was so bad that people didn’t want to go anywhere near it.”
He came across the spot while looking for an accessible place to swim in the city. Mann, who has a back injury, swam for years at Ontario Place’s West Island as a rehab strategy. When the province barred access to the waters to pave the way for a new spa, he needed a new place to go.
In Mann’s eyes, the basin was the perfect location to clean. The spot is right downtown, hyper-concentrated, and most importantly, HTO Beach is the only truly accessible beach in the city.
“I was thinking, Okay, let’s take an area that’s already close to swimmable, but for the pollution, and focus our efforts to clean it up,’” says Mann. “We’ve been able to make a big difference going from really dirty to swimmable.”
Mann enlisted the help of volunteers, including many of his students, to lead the initiative. The waters were littered with trash, dead animals, tree branches and more.
Aptly referring to it as “teach beach,” Mann uses the project as a learning opportunity to test out new technologies and inventions. His students have not only picked up shovels and nets to scoop up the garbage, they’ve also taken part in building various autonomous cleaning machines, including robot submarines.
Months and many bags trash bags down the line, the proof of success is in the water quality. Toronto has strict standards for safe water, requiring that E. coli levels sit under 100 per mL. Current levels—which Mann has had tested at UofT since the beginning—are between seven to 10 E. coli per 100 mL.
“Not only does the water look crystal clear, it actually is clean,” says Mann.
He now regularly swims in the basin alongside students, fellow members of Toronto swim club SwimOP, and even random passersby.
Mann expects the initiative to be a long-term operation, but intends to keep his clean-up efforts focused on this specific section of the lake so he can continue to have the same success.
“My vision is that the ‘cottage for people without cottages’ should be right downtown,” he says. “Why not swim and paddle right in the heart of the city close to where you live?”
Volunteers can join Mann and the team on Sundays at 2 p.m. at the Peter Street Basin.
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