"Spadina is a
strange word. Say it. Spa-die-nah. Now repeat it a few times. You’ll soon wonder how we use it in
conversation without pausing in curiosity. Yet we say ‘Spadina’
easily, and it means ‘Toronto’ just as much as the Ojibway word it’s derived from, Ishapadenah (the
word has various spellings), which means ‘
hill’ or ‘
rise in the land.’ To get a perfect
view of the
street,
climb the Baldwin
Steps at Davenport, stand next to Casa Loma and
look south over Toronto and the southern,
downhill length of Spadina... to its glittery, skyscaper
end. It looks as if somebody cleared a
wide swath of
land through Toronto to make the
street the ‘spine of Toronto’ as the late
writer Matt Cohen called it and, in a way, that’s true."
Shawn Micallef,
Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, with illustrations by Marlena Zuber, Toronto: Coach House Books, Eye Weekly, 2010, 152.
