Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst, authors of The Sun and the Serpent, dowsed ley lines in the Glastonbury and Cornwall area finding numerous sacred sites that sprang up centuries ago, along the often-interwoven underground energy currents they termed the Mary and Michael lines. In this century, the long-buried Taddle Creek was influential in the creation of an 11-circuit classical labyrinth here in Toronto, Canada. The lost Taddle Creek appears on a sketch in the city archives in 1797, of the Macauley estate in what is now downtown Toronto.
In 1984 the architects (Thom Partnership and Landscape Architects Fleming, Corban McCarthy) were commissioned to make meaning of a parched, leftover plot of public land enclosed by the Church of the Holy Trinity, the back door of the Eaton Centre and the Bell Trinity building.
They acted upon a whisper from the Taddle Creek, creating a water fountain and basin. Trinity Square Park, also featured three gates leading to a sunken square of lawn.
Sixteen years later, members of the Labyrinth Community Network of Ontario (LCNO) also heard that whisper. They requested a meeting with Susan Richardson, the Toronto director of special projects, asking for a site for a public labyrinth. Trinity Square Park readily sprang to mind. The grass was crisscrossed with unsightly worn paths of short cuts through the square. So fitting was this site, it was as if the labyrinth at Trinity Square Park was the reason for the design and its finishing touch.
Records were deep in the archives, collective memories didn’t stretch that far back, but LCNO proceeded as if the Taddle did once flow beneath the labyrinth site. The Taddle had been severed for a subway line. Streetcar tracks including granite setts were torn up. LCNO obtained seven of the setts as a symbolic link and the landscape architect, Michael Prescutti of MEP Design, laid them into the entrance.
Taddle Creek is located on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. The Toronto Public Labyrinth still serves to nourish the people who come to it, as the creek would have nourished those early peoples.
Throughout the pandemic, a homeless encampment surrounded the stone labyrinth. Tents were not placed on the labyrinth and the occasional solitary walker was respected. Members of LCNO helped the adjacent church with sandwiches and knew the labyrinth was emanating spiritual energy to them. Labyrinths, like creeks, quench the thirst of those who feel parched and dry. The stream flows beneath the labyrinth no more, but when you stand at the heart of the labyrinth listen for it, feel it, join the conversation?
Published in Pathways 2021 a UK periodical distributed by the Labyrinth Society.
Jo Ann Stevenson, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: info@labyrinthnetwork.ca
Website: www.labyrinthnetwork.ca
