Beltline Trail Walk Summary – October 3, 2022

October 3, 2022

Beltline Trail walk on October 3, 2022 with sculpture of horse.

It was a perfect Fall day to traverse the Kay Gardner Beltline Park trails and Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. With four visitors on invitation from the Seniors Hiking Club of Toronto, we departed from TTC Eglinton West (the station and its surroundings are still under ongoing construction) heading North along residential Park Hill Road, then bridging over the Allan Expressway to access the Beltline Trail. The Trail was established in 1989 and is built on what used to be the Toronto Belt Line Railway, a commuter line that opened in the 1890s to service residents of suburbia but failing to turn a profit, ultimately closed two years later. We stopped at the various newly placed historic and placqued ‘train stations’, now welcome rest stops.

At the Yonge Street overpass, we were delighted to see the statuary of the galloping black horses (by Toronto artist Robert Sprachman) back in position after several years of absence. We then looped into Mt. Pleasant Cemetery (opened in 1876 with much remarkable architecture/monuments). There are currently 168K people including many historic dignitaries, buried here. In 2020, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. We stopped at the impressive Mausoleum and its surrounding gardens then circled back to Yonge Street for a delicious patio lunch at The Bull Firkin Pub.

Thanks all the the cheerful companionship.

Rene Laukat