Cleaning Up after Toronto's Caribana Parade

Scavengers spend Sunday morning sorting through the remains of Toronto’s Caribana parade.

On Sunday Aug 3^rd at 9:30 am the entire west Toronto lake shore (a green space bisected by a bike path between Exhibition Stadium and Sunnyside Pavilion) was strewn with ALL MANNER of garbage! It was like the park had a 'hang over'; the desultory scene evidenced a wild party. Toronto’s Caribana revelers must have stayed late into the evening. And then in the morning an army of garbage pickers created a real mess as they overturned trash cans and combed through heaps of rubbish on a quest for recyclable beer and wine bottles.

Although the Caribana parade has struggled with its finances in the past, organizers believed this year's event would turn a profit – it must have. I know the island flavoured festival received increased funding this year because there were more sponsors – gun violence, and severe traffic jams due to critical lack of planning blemished the corporate politics of the previous Caribana parades.

Official reports are that tourists who come to Toronto for the gigantic celebration pump almost $300 million into the local economy. There sure do make a lot of unusual garbage.

Among the white shopping bags and Styrofoam containers, there were lots of crazy costume remnants and cool signage, unusual colored fabrics and sticks and broken lawn chairs. I saw an inflatable pool, a bent unicycle, and lots of single shoes and sandals - it must have been quite a party. You couldn't rent this stuff at a Toronto party rentals store... it had to come from home.

Black garbage bags filled with fried rice were split open and some of these bags looked like they’d been stepped on a thousand times – I'm sure a food tent had been erected in the vicinity.

Hundreds of green coconuts were lying open twenty feet away – this was no doubt the remains of an all natural fruit drink stand.

Farther up the path the lawn was absolutely overflowing with debris and the wind was pushing it everywhere – the nearby garbage cans had been turned on their sides. It’s quite obvious that scavengers picked through every single garbage can in their unquenchable thirst for recyclable beer and wine bottles. And I spotted a few stubbies and some questionable foreign beers that had been left behind by the experts.

Dumpdiggers would like you to imagine the Brock St. beer store, at 10:55 am on Sunday morning. That place must have been jammed with people returning thousands of beer and wine bottles.

This Toronto City Worker wouldn't stop to pose for photos. Apparently the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller specifically asked today’s clean-up crew not to allow themselves to be captured in photos or to make any comments to the media. I merely asked her about the different types of scavengers about, and I could see that see wanted to tell me something… I asked some more questions and came to learn there were indeed whole families here picking bottles a few hours earlier, and these were followed by a more degenerate sort who harvested food and other amenities.

Which brings us to Mr X.

At 9:45 am I ran into this hero – a wise old man with the metal detector.

Dumpdiggers hoped to celebrate the presence of this high tech smart guy and write about his wisdom in every detail, but that wasn’t going to happen – when he heard the words ‘Dumpdiggers’ and ‘blog’ he practically ran to his bicycle.

Here is the absolute smartest scavenger of the day, but he definitely didn’t want his picture taken or his story shared. He refused any insight into his genius.

So I can only imagine his routine. He carries a screwdriver as a simple probe and swings his coil over the chlorophyll, listening for the tell tale signs of a lost diamond earring or a gold ring. And coins; I’ll bet he finds lots of fresh nickels, dimes and quarters.

Here’s a question; would the device he’s carrying pick up the signal of a Canadian loonie? I don’t know. What are loonies made of again? I bet it would detect a toonie though as I'm sure that has nickel in it...? right? What are the exact metallurgical compositions of Canadian One and Two Dollar coins? Anybody - reply in the comment box. I wonder how much money he would make in pocket change alone? Dumpdiggers hopes this shy metal detectorist makes more money than the bottle pickers.

How To Find Old Dumps #3

Of the six different types of dumps mentioned in How To Find Old Dumps #1, the most common example is the farm dump, and that’s because every farm had one (and sometimes two).

Farm dumps are not good digging. Like the miserable poverty of the first settlers, these dumps are filled with hard work and offer very poor returns. Most farm dumps are small - they were used infrequently, sometimes seasonally, by just one or two families over long periods of time.

The average farm dump is born from the land owner’s natural instinct to protect his fields from soil erosion... and he had to dump his broken junk and rubbish somewhere.

In many cases, right after the original settler cleared the land, the homesteaders noticed wide areas of soil erosion at the sides of their new fields. Where tree roots had once held firm the forest floor, now small creeks made large gullys in the loose top soil of inclined planes - esp after the snow melt in the spring. To minimize the loss of precious top soil throughout the year, the farmer damed the gulch with whatever was most handy.

Unfortunately for us modern Dumpdiggers, rocks, dead animals and tree stumps were a lot handier than household garbage. And let’s remember that early farms didn’t make a lot of garbage - much of the family's rubbish was light industrial material. For example the oldest son of the farmer would almost always drive his father’s obsolete farm equipment to the site and abandon the implements where he thought they could do the most good in the generations old battle to stem the creeks.

Farm Dumps are often full of old equipment which can present a serious challenge to diggers working with shovels alone. It’s recommended that diggers carry a length of chain, and have a vehicle ready to drag out any old plows and logs that might otherwise impede productive digging.

That being said, Dumpdiggers will sometimes find a pocket of absolute joy in a farm dump. One hundred and fifty years ago, the logic was simple – the farmer waited until he had a wagon load of rubbish like tobacco tins, empty grease cans, horse liniment bottles, and maybe some worn out leather harnesses and broken tools. This junk had been taking up space in his barn. When a calf got sick (and needed to be separated from the herd), or when the farm family got a new tractor, or when the son took over from his father, there was a binge cleaning – a wagon load of not so easily burned trash was dumped somewhere on the farm.

The goody veins found in farm dumps have been known to contain assorted ointments and cream tins, grease cans, horse liniment bottles and other assorted medicines, milks, sodas, beer and whiskey bottles, and broken tools – unfortunately these treasures are often protected by heavy iron farm implements, metal spools, all manner of wire, old cars, rocks, and more rocks.

How To Find The Farm Dump?
When probing for a farm dump, search the most obvious inclines near the back of the barn first. If there's a water course at the base of an inclined field, but out of sight from the road, then there is probably a dump in the vicinity. Most often the best dump is the closest, most convenient , and somewhere along 'a wagon friendly route' where a small ravine threatens the crops.

Freshly plowed fields – the secret of using aerial photos to detail historic farms sites.

Finding the farm dump is harder when the farm itself has entirely disappeared, but freshly plowed fields will still show the fence rows and the wagon trails along with the foundations of the house and barn.