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36-410: Its common name is technically incorrect, since it is not truly a spit , but Torontonians almost never use the official name. The road running along the peninsula is a southern extension of Leslie Street , hence the popular nickname. The Canadian musical group Leslie Spit Treeo , prominent in the 1990s, took its name from Leslie Street Spit. The Spit is a man-made landfill that began in the 1950s when

72-412: A salt marsh is likely to develop. Wave refraction can occur at the end of a spit, carrying sediment around the end to form a hook or recurved spit. Refraction in multiple directions may create a complex spit. Waves that arrive in a direction other than obliquely along the spit will halt the growth of the spit, shorten it, or eventually destroy it entirely. The sediments that make up spits come from

108-453: A bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight . There are various ways in which bays can form. The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics . As the super-continent Pangaea broke up along curved and indented fault lines, the continents moved apart and left large bays; these include

144-624: A clubhouse and dock. The members also consider themselves stewards of the spit. They are off grid and use solar power. In 1985, the TRCA announced that the northern portion of the Spit was designated as an environmentally sensitive area and that future plans would accommodate both recreational and naturalist groups. Because it was newly created land, it was owned by the Crown and held by the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). The land set aside for

180-419: A section of headland where the turn is greater than 30 degrees. The spit will continue out into the sea until water pressure (e.g. from a river) becomes too great to allow the sand to deposit. Vegetation may then start to grow on the spit, and the spit may become stable and often fertile. A spit may be considered a special form of a shoal . As spits grow, the water behind them is sheltered from wind and waves, and

216-436: A variety of sources including rivers and eroding bluffs, and changes there can have a major effect on spits and other coastal landforms. Activities such as logging and farming upstream can increase the sediment load of rivers, which may hurt the intertidal environments around spits by smothering delicate habitats. Roads or bulkheads built along bluffs can drastically reduce the volume of sediment eroded, so that not enough material

252-543: Is an elongated bay formed by glacial action. The term embayment is also used for related features , such as extinct bays or freshwater environments. A bay can be the estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay , an estuary of the Susquehanna River . Bays may also be nested within each other; for example, James Bay is an arm of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada . Some large bays, such as

288-443: Is being pushed along to maintain the spit. If the supply of sediment is interrupted the sand at the neck (landward end) of the spit may be moved towards the head, eventually creating an island. If the supply is not interrupted, and the spit is not breached by the sea (or, if across an estuary, the river), the spit may become a bar , with both ends joined to land, and form a lagoon behind the bar. If an island lies offshore near where

324-472: Is open. 43°37′4″N 79°20′33″W  /  43.61778°N 79.34250°W  / 43.61778; -79.34250 Spit (landform) A spit ( cognate with the word for a rotisserie bar) or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove's headlands , by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting

360-579: The Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, have varied marine geology . The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of winds and blocks waves . Bays may have as wide a variety of shoreline characteristics as other shorelines. In some cases, bays have beaches , which "are usually characterized by a steep upper foreshore with a broad, flat fronting terrace". Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided easy access to marine resources like fisheries . Later they were important in

396-547: The Chumash Native American prehistorical settlement on the Morro Bay is one such location. Embayment A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean , a lake , or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf , sea , sound , or bight . A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord

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432-757: The Toronto Harbour Commission began a project to create a breakwater for Toronto's Outer Harbour. It was part of a plan to expand the capacity of the harbour in anticipation of an expected increase in shipping traffic on the Great Lakes after the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. However, owing to the containerization revolution of the 1960s, cargo traffic began to shift to East Coast ports, and shipping volumes in Toronto fell by almost half between 1969 and 1973. Thus,

468-534: The Canadian partners of BirdLife International . Peninsula D has also become the site of a comprehensive bird research station, run by the TRCA. The Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station operates seven days a week during spring and fall migration, and runs other projects within the Greater Toronto Area throughout the rest of the year. Visitors to the station are welcome on weekends when the park

504-580: The Croatian island of Brač , is formed by Adriatic currents flowing east and west through the Hvar Channel , along the southern side of the island. The spit bends slightly west or east, changing its direction gradually, depending on the conditions of the tides and weather. Since prehistory humans have chosen certain spit formations as sites for human habitation. In some cases, these sites have been chosen for proximity to marine resource exploitation ;

540-624: The Leslie Street Spit. More than 300 species of birds have been identified, 45 of which breed on the headland. Among the birds that may be observed on the headland are the ring-billed gull , the black-crowned night-heron , the double-crested cormorant , the common tern , the Caspian tern , and the herring gull . Owing to the Leslie Street Spit's importance to so many bird species, it has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by Nature Canada and Bird Studies Canada which are

576-667: The Spit consists of three embayments . These were designed to hold dredged material from the Inner Harbour and the Keating Channel. The first embayment has now been filled. It has been capped with clean fill and is being restored by the TRCA as a marsh . The remaining two embayments have about 50 years' capacity remaining. Between the Port Lands and the Spit lies the Outer Harbour. Part of this body of water

612-435: The Spit has been designated as Tommy Thompson Park, named after a former Toronto Parks Commissioner, and managed by the TRCA. The southern half is still an active landfill for clean debris, managed by PortsToronto. Eventually the entire Spit will become parkland. The Tommy Tompson Park Pedestrian Bridge has been reopened for public use following a complete rebuild by PortsToronto. Quite a number of bird species are found on

648-631: The Spit's embayments. In the early 1970s, the Spit was one of up to a dozen landfill parks across the Toronto-area shoreline planned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA, but then known as the Metropolitan Toronto Regional Conservation Authority). It began as a long, slender finger of bare land stretching out into the lake, and developed several lobes enclosing small bays. It

684-499: The TRCA launched a new planning process for the Spit as the organization acknowledged that the 1976 plan was "no longer appropriate". There was significant lobbying by sailing and naturalist groups, however, the Spit was becoming naturalized with little interference. However in 1976 the Aquatic Park Sailing Club was formed on one of the embayments. It is still operating today with mooring balls for 100 sailboats and

720-484: The Toronto Harbour Commission. However, by the summer of 1974, the Toronto Harbour Commission was providing bus service to the Spit on Sunday afternoons. The Spit is open to the public from 5:30 am. to 9:00 p.m. on weekends and statutory holidays (with the exception of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day), and from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekdays. It is closed during

756-448: The beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach. These currents are caused by the same waves that cause the drift. Where the direction of the shore inland re-enters , or changes direction, for example at a headland , the longshore current spreads out or dissipates. No longer able to carry

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792-731: The coast changes direction, and the spit continues to grow until it connects the island to the mainland, it is called a tombolo . The end of a spit attached to land is called the proximal end, and the end jutting out into water is called the distal end. There is debate as to the longest spit in the world, with both the Arabat Spit in the Sea of Azov and the Younghusband Peninsula in South Australia approximately 110 kilometres (68 mi) long. Alternatively, with

828-505: The day on weekdays owing to the ongoing construction of the spit, conducted by PortsToronto. The Leslie Street Spit is a car-free area when the park is open, with strictly controlled vehicle access to the mooring area when the park is closed. The Spit is also pet-free to enforce the safety of this habitat under rejuvenation. The Spit's outermost end is known as Vicki Keith Point, after a famous Canadian swimmer. There has been an automated lighthouse there since 1974. The northern half of

864-527: The development of sea trade as the safe anchorage they provide encouraged their selection as ports . The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in the coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as

900-464: The full load, much of the sediment is dropped. This is called deposition. This submerged bar of sediment allows longshore drift or littoral drift to continue to transport sediment in the direction the waves are breaking, forming an above-water spit. Without the complementary process of littoral drift, the bar would not build above the surface of the waves becoming a spit and would instead be leveled off underwater. Spits occur when longshore drift reaches

936-703: The mainland. The Curonian Spit , off the coast of Lithuania and Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia , separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea ; it is 98 km long (61 mi). In a similar fashion, the Vistula Spit separates the Vistula Lagoon from the Gdańsk Bay off the coast of Poland . Zlatni Rat , a popular pebble beach jutting southward from the harbor town of Bol , on

972-671: The natural closing of the Roanoke inlet in 1811, Bodie Island in North Carolina may qualify as the longest, also measuring in at approximately 70 miles (110 km) to the peninsula's terminus at the Oregon Inlet . The longest spit in a freshwater body of water is Long Point, Ontario , which extends approximately 32 km (20 mi) into Lake Erie . Farewell Spit in New Zealand , at 32 km (20 mi), in

1008-466: The need for an outer harbour never arose, and all cargo ships calling at Toronto still use the Inner Harbour , while the Outer Harbour sees only pleasure boat traffic. The spit is a man-made successor of a natural sand bar / peninsula that existed to the north before infilling of Port Lands and connected to Toronto Islands before 1858. While the original need for the landform was eliminated,

1044-681: The north-west area of South Island , is believed to be caused by the strong prevailing winds and currents, bringing sand eroded from the Southern Alps of the South Island and depositing these into Golden Bay . A well-known spit in the UK is Spurn Point at the Humber ; it is approximately 4.8 km (3.0 mi) long. Another is Chesil Beach in the UK, which connects the Isle of Portland to

1080-473: The park was transferred to the TRCA in 1984. However, the MNR retains ownership of the active landfill portion of the spit. The Leslie Street Spit's evolution into an urban wilderness was never in the city's plans. The spit's status as such was secured by a number of organizations, with the citizens' advocacy group known as Friends of the Spit at the forefront of advocacy to naturalize the site. The inner part of

1116-419: The site continued to receive excavation and construction waste from the building of Toronto's subways, office towers and other large projects. In the late 1970s, dredgeate from the nearby Keating Channel was also dumped on the emerging spit, which was seen as a better solution than dumping the polluted material into open water. Dredging is an ongoing process and PortsToronto continues to dump silt and mud in

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1152-421: The terms of reference for the consultants: "to produce an active water-oriented recreation concept featuring major boating, swimming and aquatic facilities" and noted that only 20 acres of the 250 acres under study were set aside for naturalized areas. The Master Plan was criticized by several groups and in the end, governments were not prepared to fund the high cost on a relatively controversial proposal. In 1984,

1188-554: Was eventually colonized by a variety of plant life. The provincial government gave the TRCA the mandate to develop parks, beaches and recreation areas along the waterfront from Mississauga to Ajax. This was referred to as the Metro Waterfront Plan and excluded only the area between Leslie St. and Dufferin St. (roughly the eastern harbour to Ontario Place in the west). Even at this early stage, there were reports that there

1224-611: Was little coordination between TRCA (a joint Metro Toronto - provincial body), the City's planning department and the federal Harbour Commission. From this period until 1985, the proposed public area on the Spit was referred to as the Aquatic Park. Public discussions on the future of the site were held in June 1974 and proposed uses included mooring for over 500 boats, along with bicycling, picnicking and fishing facilities. A Master Plan

1260-422: Was once the edge of a marsh that was part of Ashbridge's Bay . In 1929s, construction of a breakwater (called an "endikement" by official park documentation) on the eastern side of the embayments began. The breakwater is designed protects the embayments and also deflects substantial sediment from the Inner Harbour. As late as 1973, there was no formal access to the Spit, although visits could be arranged with

1296-516: Was prepared for the TRCA and the details were publicized in March 1976. The consultants' report proposed significant development, including expanded marinas (now mooring for 1,500 boats), an amphitheatre, a water ski area and a hotel. Former City of Toronto councillor Colin Vaughan portrayed the consultation process as narrowly focused in a February 1977 article. Vaughan cited the following language from

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