EAST DON RUIN

Looking over the structure, August 2012

As the Taylor Creek splits from the Don in Seton Park, so the Don splits from itself into its East and West branches. By the time each branch reaches Sheppard Avenue they are separated by a distance of some 6 kilometers. Yet, by the time each arrives at Finch Avenue they can be said to have travelled kindred territory, with the East branch heading through the vast East Don Parkland and the West branch heading through the similarly extensive West Don Parkland. That these two swathes of land, in a city brimming with unique and specific place names, should share such correspondingly nondescript monikers is somewhat notable in and of itself. That they should both contain ruins of the same strange and inexplicable variety that we've been examining thus far is certainly a noteworthy phenomena.

The East Don ruin occurs at the southern end of its respective Parkland, near Sheppard and Leslie Street, were a massive concrete structure juts out from a bend in the river, right into the middle of the stream. Stretching approximately 15 meters from the west bank, the ruin falls short of the east bank by roughly another 5 meters. A similar gap exists at the west end, as well, although the structure remains moored to land by means of a framework and sub-aquatic floor. What remains above water resembles something like a long brace, or capital "I", with two concave angular brackets at either end connected by a steeply pitched wall in between.

Should the structure have forded the river completely, a mill dam would be the most likely purpose one might assume for this ruin (and, indeed, it still may be, allowing for a change in the river's course or shape since its construction). Otherwise, one is limited only by the imagination as to its original use. Clues in the immediate toponymy are expectedly scant in this rather anonymous corner of the city. Just to the north of the ruins, however, we find Villaways Park and the odd nomenclature of its associated housing complex. While the curious sounding "Villaway" aspect turns out to be a typical street-naming convention of North York townhouse projects (one need only refer to the nearby Willoway, Briarway, Vineway, Shepway, and Creekway communities for further evidence of this), it is the specific "Villaways" of this complex — Adra, Ocra, Tomar, and Grado — which draw one's attention...though, perhaps, only to muddy the waters even further.


 Views from December, 2016

Three of the four Villaways would seem to share Iberian associations with Grado and Adra being Spainish municipalities, and Tomar being a city in central Portugal. Adra and Tomar, however, also exhibit Indian connotations with the former being an historic railway town in West Bengal and the latter being the name of a medieval dynastic clan known in the region of Delhi. Grado, meanwhile, shares a vague geographic connection with Ocra by way of the former being a small Italian fishing village situated some 50 kilometers across the Gulf of Trieste from the latter, a Slovenian plateau famously designated by Strabo as the eastern-most peak of the Alps.

Given such divergent linguistic sources, any further analysis of these name's etymologies would, at this point, seem rather futile. Nevertheless, it so happens that Spanish and Portuguese, Hindi and Bengali, Italian and Greek and Slovene (and English) all share common descent from the Indo-European family of languages and its reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots, thus allowing for some continued hypothesizing at a more primordial, if yet more uncertain level.

Starting with "Adra," we note that the first syllable *ad- is a prevalent PIE root suggesting "nearness" or "adjacency." The second syllable presents us with more varied options including: *dhragh-, *dhreg-, or *tragh- meaning "to pull" something (from which we arrive at such current words as "drag," "draw," and "traction"); *dhreu- meaning "to fall" (whence "drip," "drop," "droop," etc.); and *dhreugh- or *drem- with the first meaning "deception," the second meaning "sleep," and with both potentially relating to "dreams." Another possibility is that the name "Adra," as a whole, is a slight mutation of the root *ater- meaning "fire."

"Grado" would seem a straightforward development of the root *ghredh- meaning "to walk," "step," or otherwise "progress" (hence such progeny as "grade," "gradient," "degree," etc.). Another suspect, however, could be the proto-Germanic *grat- or *krat- meaning "to grate" or "grind" something — or, perhaps, it is even a construct of *krau- ("to hide," whence "crypt," "cryptic," and all such things) and *do- ("to give," whence "donate") suggesting a "hidden gift" of some sort.

"Ocra's" primary syllabic root *ok- or *okw- relates to "sight" or "vision" (from which we get "occular," and eventually "eye"). Combined with the aforementioned *krau- we then seem to get something "hidden from sight." However, close analogues for the second syllable also include *krei- meaning "to sift" (and hence "discriminate," "discern," etc.), and *kreuh- meaning "raw" or "bloody" (hence "crude" or "cruel").

Lastly, "Tomar" would seem to find its initial syllable in *to- or *tu- the generic demonstrative pronoun from which comes "this," "that," "those," "the," and many related others. The second syllable points to numerous candidates, the most lexically relevant of which include: *mari- meaning "young woman," "virgin," or "bride" (whence "to marry"); *marko- meaning "horse" (whence "mare"); *mer-1 relating to "dim" or "flickering light" (whence "murky," "morning," etc.); *mer-2 or *mers- relating to "trouble," "injury," or "harm" (whence "mar" and "nightmare," perhaps eventually to the point of death, as in "mortal," "morbid," etc.); *mer-3 meaning "to tie" or "bind" (whence "moor"); *merg- referring to a boundary or borderland "marker"; and *mori- a body of water (whence "marine"). That said, serious consideration must also be given to *teu(h)- with respect to the origin of "Tomar" en masse; a root meaning "swollen" or "to swell," whence the Latin tumere and the Greek tymbos from which we get such words as "tumulus," "tumour," and "tomb."

 Further views from 2012

At this juncture, we may appear somewhat overwhelmed by vague possibilities; further from any insight into these names than before we started pulling them apart. Yet such abundance might, in itself, make the case for intentional ambiguity — for a vagueness with the power to express multiple meanings simultaneously. Having this, now, to meditate on, we observe that the Villaways park and housing complex also sits across the East Don River from a certain Clarinda Park, the next nearest toponym of any apparent significance. The ONC has "Clarinda" as a literary elaboration of Clara, from the same derivation as our familiar St. Clair, and first encountered in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, an unfinished work of much byzantine polysemy itself; "cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises" and "dark conceit" to use Spenser's own words.

Little else would seem to stand out with respect to place names on any current map of the area. Indeed, one would need to consult a map of the 19th century to learn that these ruins sit directly between two bygone settlements of potentially pertinent toponymy known as Clarksville and Flynntown. In "Clark," of course, we have an English occupational name derived from a "clerk" or "cleric," which, according to the ONC, can be traced further back through French, Latin, and Greek to a derivative of kleros (recalling Clair and that previous Ionian oracle), meaning "inheritance, legacy, with reference to the priestly tribe of Levites." "Flynn," meanwhile, comes down to us from the Gaelic floinn or flann meaning "reddish" or "ruddy" and, again, we seem to have religious connotations mixed with that ever-recurrent pigment of Crothers Woods. If we now consider The Faerie Queene's unifying protagonist, Arthur (marked out earlier as a candidate "red king") or, indeed, the Redcrosse Knight — Spenser's literary embodiment of Holiness itself — we can only muse at all the ostensible implications. We might also consider that the East Don Parkland and ruins can be most immediately accessed from the west via Blue Ridge Park, while the West Don Parkland and ruins connect to the congruently placed Blue Forest Drive, out in the vicinity of Finch & Bathurst. Now, together with our Red King and Yellow Creek, we would seem to have each of the primary colours covered.