The Path

A corridor in the Path approaching King subway station

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The Path is a labyrinth of walkways underlying more than 20 blocks of downtown Toronto. I had passed through short segments of it before, but was never aware of its extensiveness until one Saturday afternoon a year ago when djjo and I went that way to avoid emerging into the frigid winter air. I was fascinated by this underground world in which one could disappear or get lost, probably even survive for a time. I wonder how the city manages to keep homeless people from squatting in these comfortable bowels of the city.

My first journey through the Path started fueling my imagination. It is a metaphor for cyberspace or the subconscious. In the basement of the city, people can walk for miles without ever crossing a busy street. But it's far more than a network of tunnels. It's also a continuous subterranean plaza. Much of the Path lies beneath Bay Street, Canada's counterpart for Wall Street. More than a million people work in the office towers rising high above this maze. The two worlds are invisible to one another, but the masses transfer back and forth. All those workers must go somewhere for lunch. Under practically every building there is a food court. Strung between them are rows of stores where you can buy practically anything.

One weekends, the financial district becomes nearly deserted. That one million people drive, cycle or ride the subway, bus or train to the suburbs or outlying cities like Guelph and Hamilton. Then all the stores close and the Path becomes eerily silent.

Marian and I went there yesterday. We walked all the way from Union Station to the Bay department store, a distance of about six blocks, underground. It was not quite as empty as the time Danny and I followed that route. Small groups of people moved mostly north, perhaps leaving an event at the convention centre. Pairs of lovers walked holding hands. Trios or small gaggles of university students travelled uncertainly. A cleaning woman stood outside the front of a darkened store chatting with a friend whose toddler screamed to be let into a nearby playroom full of balls and bright toys, the door locked.

Maps of the network are posted at intervals, but you have to know where to look for them. The problem is, none of them show "you are here." They're detailed with the names of buildings, but none of these names are evident near the signs. So you have to know where you are in order to figure out where you're going. If you don't, you have to go find out, then come back and look at the map again.

A major route through the Bay-Adelaide Centre seems to hit a dead end. Danny and I got sidetracked there last year, ended up having to retrace our steps a couple blocks and go around. Yesterday Marian and I tried to penetrate it from the other direction, but hit another dead end. It's easy to get lost, but you can always find stairs ascending to the light of day and escape from this puzzling world.

I took a whole series of photos of the underground corridor. I attached my camera to the tripod ti take pictures without a flash in the low light. I would plunk my collapsed tripod down rather than opening it up each time, so most of the images were taken from a height of 18 inches above the floor. It seems appropriate in an upside-down city. This series of photos is intended to help me design Tendril's cyberworld, which after all was inspired by Alice's Looking-Glass.