Re-bar dunes

Re-bar dunes, originally uploaded by Gavatron.

From a paper I wrote for an upcoming publication on Trash Animals, discussing the relationship between the environmental history of the Leslie Street Spit & Ring-billed Gulls:

“Created from the urban tailings of the city’s growth during the last half-century, the Leslie Street Spit was originally intended by the Toronto Harbor Commission to act as a breakwater for an improved Outer Harbor. Known then as the Eastern Headland, the Spit was terraformed with the “sandy dredged spoil” from the bottom of the Outer Harbor and “fill” (vernacular for waste) from the city’s construction sites. As you walk along the Spit today, in between the fields of goldenrod (Solidago sp.) and coppices of Poplar (Populus sp.), you can still find evidence of these origins emerge from the cairns of discarded concrete and dunes made of re-bar.”