TODMORDEN ALIGNMENT

Looking north, May 2008

Along the Todmorden Mills stretch of the Don River, nestled into a wedge of infrastructure formed by the CPR Don Valley rail bridge and the DVP/Bayview Extension interchange, one will find the site in question. This particular ruin, it should be said, is not of the concrete variety, but rather of that other "compatible" material which constitutes our locally preferred reinforced compound: steel. Nevertheless, this is, perhaps, Toronto's most unusual ruined site, for here, overlooking the river from a steep embankment, hundreds of metal highway barriers have been stuck into the ground for, seemingly, no apparent reason.

The overall impression one gets from this oddity is decidedly megalithic, with the site spread out like a miniature Carnac, running roughly 100 meters along the incline with its corrugated menhirs placed haphazardly throughout; all thrust into the earth at various depths and angles, some standing vertically, 2 to 3 feet high, others barely breaking the surface of the soil, or jutting perpendicular from the hillside. As such, the other impression one is likely to get from this site is that of a mass of toppled grave markers in some long abandoned burial ground. Of course, the location and materials involved would tend to preclude any such fanciful interpretations, but if we look to the relevant toponymy, one can't help but be struck by certain curious correlations.


Additional views from 2008

"Todmorden," to begin with, harkens to a village in northern England straddling the traditional border between Yorkshire and Lancashire, just as the present Todmorden Mills sits in the historic borderlands between the old township of East York and the old city of Toronto. The ultimate origin of this name is somewhat obscure. The Oxford Names Companion has it fittingly translated as "boundary valley of a man called Totta" (tracing back from the earlier Tottemerden, an apparent construct of the Old English Totta + maere + denu). However, a persistent folk etymology would have the translation coming closer to something like "a woods" or "valley of death," taking the first two syllables from separate linguistic strains to express the same morbid concept twice (Germanic/Old English todt/toth + the Latin/Old French mort). In fact, this theory finds some support in the existence of a local feature known variously as Blackheath Circle, Blackheath Barrow, or Roman Barrow — another megalithic site in the form of an ancient ring cairn which, by all archaeological accounts, served as the venue for sundry prehistoric funerary rites (interestingly, this cairn also seems to be unique in its isolation from any other known ritual sites or settlements of like vintage in the area). Meanwhile, our local Todmorden's deathly connotations are vaguely bolstered by the adjacent commencement of Mortimer Avenue — a name of probable Norman French ancestry, combining morte + mer to equal "dead water" or "waters of death" — and how strangely synchronous that we should have this potentially fatal site right next to a major river.

As seen in April, 2017

Of course, this is all highly conjectural, if not flatly coincidental. "Todmorden" was merely the home village of one of the mill's proprietors, most will argue. "Mortimer" was simply the name of some early settler, local land owner, or other notable resident. But then there's still the ruins. How to account for them? And how to account for all the others we have yet to define? It's hard to say. But let us attempt to account for as much as we can, and begin our investigations in earnest by putting this conjectural approach into practice just a little further to the north.