York Tunnel!

[sabotabby]

It's miserable in my fair city and everyone is depressed. I, for one, am horrifically ill and dragging my sorry, hacking corpse to work everyday through -30°C weather as I have an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation. The coldest winter in the history of ever shows no signs of abating, and there's little to rejoice about.

Until. The York Tunnel. Otherwise known as the best thing to happen to Toronto since the IKEA monkey. This has made everyone's day.

Short version for those who don't like paywalls: a conservation officer stumbled upon a sophisticated tunnel near York University and the future site of the PanAm Games. Some people lost their shit because TURRISM!; others suggested drugs or sneaking into the PanAm Games for free, still others hailed it as the closest we've gotten to a subway line since they decided to put a university up in the middle of nowhere with no decent transit to it. The cops, remarkably, seem to have maintained cool heads about the whole thing, leading to one of the funnier tweets I've seen in awhile:

Chris Boddy        ✔ @TPSChrisBoddy

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If you built a tunnel near the Rexall Centre in #Toronto give us a call, k? 416-808-2222

They found a rosary and a Remembrance Day poppy down there too, meaning that if it is terrorism, it's likely the "gunpowder, treason, and plot" type of terrorism. But it's probably not terrorism.

What is it? The Beaverton (our national equivalent of the Onion), hailed it as an "extended metaphor for student debt."

Twitter was on the case:



A friend of mine suggested this explanation:


Anyway, whoever built this thing, it's cold outside and we're all pent up and we're very bored, and there's nothing we like more than a really weird mystery. I for one welcome our new subterranean overlords!

Comments

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

For some reason it reminds of the Ong's Hat hoax and wish it had some crazy quantum weird spooky shit with experimenters and time travel with it.

It is pretty damn cool. :)

[sabotabby]

I would totally go in and see if I could travel through time, but they filled it in. :(

[sacramentalist.livejournal.com]

I totally want a secret tunnel. For reasons.

[sabotabby]

Me too. For reasons.

[sacramentalist.livejournal.com]

I've had this song stuck in my head all night as a result of this:

Two lovers, forbidden from one another
A war divides their people
And a mountain divides them apart
Built a path to be together

...Yeah, and I forget the next couple of lines, but then it goes...

Secret tunnel!
Secret tunnel!
Through the mountain!
Secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel! Yeah!

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

That is fascinating.

[sabotabby]

Right? Love it.

[ironed_orchid]

The Beaverton article is wonderful.

[sabotabby]

The Beaverton is great. Better than the Onion, imo.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

It's those Inner-Terrestrials (who took a wrong turn) again.
They usually hang out at the bottoms of the seven seas (where they grow Mariana) but sometimes they pop up where you'd least expect them to and why not in Toronto? It's cold (or so I hear), it's distant, they can have all the attention any Inner-Terrestrial needs in a lifespan. Then, they go back to where they came from and the tunnel will disappear. You'll see!

[sabotabby]

Toronto is absolutely where we'd expect them. This city is weird.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I actually wouldn't doubt that some desperate students built it. Rent prices are ridiculously high.

[sabotabby]

Still better than campus housing!

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

It is an awesome story.

Perhaps it's part of an escape tunnel from a prison yet to be built, that has fallen through a wormhole in time.

[sabotabby]

I like the way you think.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I love the York tunnel as well and I agree with your estimation of it's awesome being equal to the IKEA monkey.

[sabotabby]

And of course there's the theory that it's where the IKEA monkey has been hiding out.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

If it's part of a prison tunnel then that means someone gas a good head on where Stepho wants to build his next mega profit prison.

[sabotabby]

It would certainly make the school-to-prison pipeline more efficient!

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

The tunnel we built back in BC (120' long! Four exits!) was for Airsoft, so I pretty much assumed that, this tunnel being in the middle of the nowhere in the woods, that that was what this one was built for as well. Shame they filled it in again. I predict that once the snow melts, there will be a lot of 6mm plastic bb's in the vicinity, lol.

[sabotabby]

It seems a waste of an entertaining tunnel! Plus, as many have pointed out, it's the most progress we've seen on the subway extension.