The Story That Called Me from the Waterfront

Yesterday, I was walking along Toronto’s waterfront when a gathering interrupted the ordinary rhythm of the harbour.

Before I could see the crowd clearly, I heard it: voices rising above the sounds of the street. Then the signs came into view.

“No More Jets.”

“Protect Our Waterfront.”

Some people had gathered on land. Others had approached by kayak and sailboat. Families stood beside longtime waterfront residents, environmental advocates, and people who seemed simply curious about what was happening. What had originally been planned as a protest against proposals to expand Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport had taken on a different character following the federal government's decision two days earlier not to proceed with the proposed expansion. Yet the gathering remained a visible reminder that the future of Toronto's waterfront continues to matter deeply to many people.

As I stood among the voices, placards, aircraft, water, and islands, an unexpected literary memory returned to me: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

The connection may seem strange. What could a novel published more than three centuries ago have to say about an airport debate in contemporary Toronto?

Yet the longer I watched, the more I felt that the people gathered at the waterfront and those who support the airport’s expansion may be living inside two different readings of the same old story.

Rather than telling either side what to think, I would like to invite both to reconsider that story with me.

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Did Robinson Conquer the Island?

Robinson Crusoe is often remembered as a celebration of human resourcefulness.

After surviving a shipwreck, Robinson finds himself alone on an island. He retrieves tools and supplies from the wreck, builds a shelter, cultivates grain, raises goats, makes furniture and pottery, stores food, and imposes order upon an unfamiliar landscape.

He measures. He names. He fences. He records. He transforms.

In the most familiar reading of the novel, Robinson is a hero of civilization. Nature appears chaotic, silent, and without purpose until the human mind imposes order upon it. The island becomes valuable because Robinson works upon it.

This interpretation has shaped far more than literary history. It reflects a powerful idea that still surrounds us: progress means turning possibility into productivity.

If land can be developed, why leave it untouched?

If technology can increase capacity, why limit it?

If an airport can carry more passengers, create more connections, and serve a growing city, why should it remain small?

From this perspective, Robinson’s achievement is not merely survival. It is development. He takes what appears wild and makes it useful.

Perhaps this is one reading of the waterfront debate: human intelligence should not fear transformation. Cities have always changed their landscapes. Toronto itself was built through construction, reclamation, engineering, and ambition.

But there is another way to read Defoe’s novel.

Robinson may organize parts of the island, but he never truly controls it.

The sea determines his fate before he even reaches the shore. A storm destroys the ship that carried him. The seasons decide when his crops will grow. Illness reminds him that his own body remains subject to forces beyond his command. An earthquake shakes the ground beneath the shelter he believed was secure.

His greatest achievements arise from keen observation and adaptability. From this perspective, he thrives not simply by forcing nature to conform to him, but by learning to align himself with its rhythms over time.

He does not command the rain; he prepares for it.

He does not defeat the seasons; he studies them.

He does not master the sea; he waits for conditions the sea allows.

In this second reading, Robinson is not the conqueror of nature. He is a man slowly discovering that he lives inside it.

Which Reading Belongs to Our Time?

Perhaps the debate at the waterfront is not only about jets, runways, noise, passenger numbers, or economic growth.

Perhaps it is also about which version of Robinson Crusoe we believe.

One version tells us that civilization advances by transforming whatever human ingenuity is capable of transforming.

The other reminds us that intelligence may also mean recognizing limits.

Toronto needs development. It also needs memory, restraint, and places that are not valued only by the number of people, machines, or dollars they can accommodate.

The city exists because earlier generations altered the landscape. But its identity also depends on the lake, the islands, the ravines, the birds, the beaches, and the fragments of nature that survived those alterations.

The difficult question is not whether humanity should ever change nature. We have always done so.

The more demanding question is whether every possible change should be made.

Yesterday, the people carrying signs along the waterfront offered one answer. Those who believe a larger airport would benefit Toronto offer another.

Instead of ending this story by declaring one side victorious, I would rather invite both sides into a conversation that slogans and policy statements cannot complete.

Read Robinson Crusoe again.

Read it not simply as an adventure story, but as a story about ownership, survival, fear, ambition, dependence, and the human desire to turn the world into an extension of ourselves.

Then ask which Robinson our century needs most.

The man who believed that progress meant bringing the island under his control?

Or the man who survived only after realizing that the island was never truly his?

Some stories are too important to end with a verdict. They deserve another reading—and another conversation.

YF, July 27, 2026