70Challenger said:
I just got down there for the first time, it's amazing, phenomenal, incredible.

Especially when you remember what an industrial wasteland it was before. There are no words. The whole world needs to study what they've done.
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I think Toronto itself needs to study what has been done here, and replicate it elsewhere.

The majority of our Waterfront is frankly an embarrassment, and this just goes to show that people will flock to an area and make it vibrant if you build it properly from the outset. It's a shame Waterfront Toronto's mandate wasnt expanded beyond the area it's currently focused on, because just imagine just how incredible the rest of the city's waterfront would be.
 
Amare said:
I think Toronto itself needs to study what has been done here, and replicate it elsewhere.

The majority of our Waterfront is frankly an embarrassment, and this just goes to show that people will flock to an area and make it vibrant if you build it properly from the outset. It's a shame Waterfront Toronto's mandate wasnt expanded beyond the area it's currently focused on, because just imagine just how incredible the rest of the city's waterfront would be.
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I would actually argue that the waterfront is a massive success despite the mediocre architecture that populates it.
 
txlseries4 said:
Last week I was at the Biidaasige Park with my young nephew who absolutely loved playing with the sand, water, and going on the ziplines. As good as all the photos are, they don't do the area justice. It really is phenomenal.
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Agree. All my friends and family that have got back from Ookwe say the same thing. "WOW!! Ookwe is the best thing to happen to Toronto in 50 years!" And Orange, Cherry and Lemon bridge look great. And Snowy Owl park at the top of Ookwe is the icing on the cake.
 
hawc said:
Agree. All my friends and family that have got back from Ookwe say the same thing. "WOW!! Ookwe is the best thing to happen to Toronto in 50 years!" And Orange, Cherry and Lemon bridge look great. And Snowy Owl park at the top of Ookwe is the icing on the cake.
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I agree with all of the above, but I also think we should make a point of using the Anishinaabemowin word 'Biidaasige' so as not to contribute to further erasure of Indigenous culture and presence on the land.
 
I think, in many ways, Ookwemin Minising will be improved when development happens around it. You can enjoy the park and then sit at a restaurant patio or shop, etc. I'm sure festivals and such will occur more frequently with new local communities spearing much of it.

It's a big win.

As for the rest of the lakeshore. It's alright. Too many condos for my liking and the excuse that the land is expensive is no real excuse because we could have had all the land south of the Gardiner as one massive long, elaborate, park for all to enjoy.

But ah well, it's a moot point now.
 
Are there any plans or renderings of the future new munitions st bridge? Will it keep with the same design they used for Cherry,Orange and lemon?
 
This is interesting (from a branding perspective) looks like they're already starting to call it "OM' on marketing materials.

I bet that's how they refer to it internally, instead of trying to say the mouthful of hard to pronounce words.

I bet the general public would way rather start to call it "OM Park".

Screenshot 2025-08-08 at 3.01.57 PM.png
 
hawc said:
This is interesting (from a branding perspective) looks like they're already starting to call it "OM' on marketing materials.

I bet that's how they refer to it internally, instead of trying to say the mouthful of hard to pronounce words.

I bet the general public would way rather start to call it "OM Park".
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Reminds me of Karangahape Road in Auckland, which everyone just calls K-Road.
 
hawc said:
This is interesting (from a branding perspective) looks like they're already starting to call it "OM' on marketing materials.

I bet that's how they refer to it internally, instead of trying to say the mouthful of hard to pronounce words.

I bet the general public would way rather start to call it "OM Park".

View attachment 672074
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Well it's certainly easier to say. While I fully support naming things with local indigenous words, I still don't understand why they didn't anglicize the names so we could pronounce them by sounding them out like we were taught in school. If they were naming Toronto today, they'd probably use the original Tkaronto, which I think would be equally as silly.
 
slicecom said:
Well it's certainly easier to say. While I fully support naming things with local indigenous words, I still don't understand why they didn't anglicize the names so we could pronounce them by sounding them out like we were taught in school. If they were naming Toronto today, they'd probably use the original Tkaronto, which I think would be equally as silly.
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I agree in part that sometimes the indigenous names can be... difficult to pronounce, but the important part of the renaming is using the spellings that the indigenous language uses. In this case, the orthography (system of writing sounds for those unfamiliar with the term) uses the Latin alphabet without any accents/diacritics, meaning that they have to use different strategies to tell readers how words are pronounced. Ookwemin Minising is very easy to learn since teaching it requires three small changes to the spelling to "anglicize" it: 'Ook' becomes Oak, 'we' becomes way, and 'Minising' becomes Minnissing: Oak-way-min Minn-is-sing. But.... this then alludes to the word being about Oak trees, which, suffice to say, isn't the actual meaning. So, keeping the indigenous spelling both minimizes confusion of meaning AND isn't that far from how we perceive it.

Same thing is true for Biidaasige Park, which doesn't really need any changes, we don't have double-i or double-a in usual English orthography (at least not in the middle of a word, Aardvark and Radii are two that do... but not in the middle), and so you can just treat them as if they were single letters. The 'g' is unusual because in English, if it is followed by a final 'e', it's pronounced as a soft g as in cage, but in this case, it's pronounced like the 'g' in get.

And to touch on the "sounding them out part"... how do you pronounce "ough"? English already is heavily inconsistent, and some words you just have to take 30 seconds to learn how to pronounce. Which we do for MANY words of Indigenous origin already: Mississauga, Saskatchewan, Penetanguishene.

Also, it is *okay* to mispronounce an unfamiliar word, and even adjust the "correct" pronunciation based on what parts are hard to get right. I grew up in Calgary, and the FN reserve next to the city is the Tsuu T'ina Nation, which everyone pronounced as (roughly) "Soo-tee-nah" despite the accurate pronunciation being "T-soo Tin-ah". People are resilient and creative, they find ways to say things even when the spelling doesn't quite make sense.

TLDR;
Ookwemin Minisim: Pronounced "oak-WAY-min MIN-iss-sing"
Biidaasige: Pronounced "bid-AH-sih-gay"

(to be clear, I'm not calling out slicecom specifically, I'm just trying to explain why using the indigenous spelling isn't as big of a struggle as it may appear at first)
 
Silly to see people going on about the names. It took a little bit of effort for me to get the names but c’mon people, both Ookwemin Minising and Biidaasige are both very nearly pronounced phonetically. Meanwhile we’ve got Queens Quay, Strachan, Roncesvalles, and Etobicoke but we learn these one way or another and none of them are phonetic
 
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