It was a naturalist’s dream as they took a stroll along the Otonabee River Sunday morning.

About 40 people, including members of the Peterborough Field Naturalists (PFN), began about a two-kilometre trek from the Silver Bean Café at Millenium Park to explore and discuss mixed land-uses along the river.

It continued along the Millenium Trail, across the Hunter St. Bridge, through East City and across a rail bridge, lasting about two hours.

It was one of four neighbourhood walks sponsored by the city’s Municipal Heritage Committee (MHC), Peterborough’s Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (PACAC), throughout the city over the weekend and partnered with the PFN to celebrate the life of the late Jane Jacobs, an American-born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay.

It was named Jane’s Walk in celebration of her birthday May 4 and it was the second year Peterborough was involved. More than 30 cities across Canada and 70 internationally were scheduled to take part. There were also walks locally through Jackson Park, downtown on a brickwork tour and through the Auburn neighbourhood.

MHC/PACAC chair Chris Gooderham, who ran the Sunday morning walk with PFN’s Gina Varrin and ecologist Mike McMurtry, said Jacobs was the foremost urban thinker of the time and encouraged people to familiarize themselves with the places where they lived, worked and played, believing in the importance of local residents having input on how their neighbourhoods developed.

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Jacobs’s best-selling book The Death and Life of Great American Cities which introduced her groundbreaking ideas of how cities functioned, evolved and failed.

Her simple yet revolutionary idea that dense, mixed use neighborhoods were the key to the health and survival of a city has become a model for generations of architects, planners, politicians and activists, said Gooderham.

She was quoted from her book as saying: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Those who engaged in the weekend walks, including the Sunday morning adventure around the river, got a sense of what she was talking about.

The walk showed how the Otonabee River shaped the city and how its citizens will shape its shoreline in the future.

Conversations ranged from natural history interpretation, to issues around shoreline development, the Little Lake Master Plan, and the abundant recreational opportunities available in Peterborough and the Kawarthas via the river.

Regarding history, the walk revealed a historic site, a portage to Chemong Lake, and how the Hunter St. Bridge connected what was Peterborough to then Ashburnham or East City and bridge Shamrock inlays symbolized Irish settlement.

People saw higher residential density on one side, lower on the other and a variety of birds, water fowl and trees, from willows, maples and black locust to ash and bass wood.

It was revealed how the Lions Club was once the site of a brewery and a park behind baseball diamond Riverside Park was a fill. A neighbourhood tour of Engleburn Pl. and Ave. on the East City side revealed historic homes and a sense of pedestrian traffic.

via Naturalists lead tour of city’s waterfront – Peterborough Examiner – Ontario, CA.