Well, it just so happened in a recent outing to Toronto that Asher decided to take a crack at analyzing a city map for drains near our then-location. She saw what seemed a likely candidate, and we elected to go out and check it out. Once at North Park, the area Asher had chosen as the location of the theoretical drain, we split up into two groups with radio contact and went in opposite directions in search of adventure (what else?).
We walked and walked and walked (oh what a ways we walked!) until we lost radio contact with the other group. My group, consisting of myself, Asher, Dain Bramaged and Static, soon validated Asher's theory when we came across a big old seven-foot RCP with a barred entrance and a rather high watertable. We decided to try to build a little island in front of the entrance so as to properly examine the feasibility of entering that way, and while Asher and the others heaved rocks and large concrete bricks that were lying around into the water, I made my way back the way we'd come to try to reestablish radio contact with Sema4, HyperViper, and Grebin. Once I could talk to them again, they let me know that they'd found a huge drain (about eight feet) but it was very secure, and they would come back to meet me. Once we met, we decided to go see what Dain, Asher and Static had accomplished at our drain rather than spend a lot of time and energy trying to access the other one. It's nice to have options.
On our way back, I was overjoyed to learn that Static had managed to strongarm the bars far enough apart for entry, which was by way of a handy new shopping cart island. Once we had all met at the drain's mouth we related the story of the drain Sema4's group had found, then we poured into this one.

The first thing that struck me was that it was even bigger than it had looked -- finding a drain this size in Barrie was a rare thing, except for the occasional downstream end of a storm network, which usually only ran for a few hundred feet; this one went for as far as we could see. Not bad for the first Toronto drain we discovered on our own!
Our initial progress was slow, since Grebin and I both had to change the batteries in our flashlights, but eventually everyone caught up with everyone else at the first chamber. By this point the tunnel had turned into a corrugated metal pipe with a concrete bottom and multiple skinny calcium stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The first chamber had a high ceiling and two nifty RCP's running out from it. We took the larger of the two (the only one you could still stand in) and made our way down the pipe, which was fairly average aside from its size and one spot where it seemed like a pipe was actually pouring in a small amount of sanitary. Static climbed up into this pipe and seemed to confirm it -- either there was a leak upstream, there'd been a recent storm forcing that pipe to act as a CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow, where heavy rainfall can lead to the undesirable event of sanitary pouring into storm sewers to avert overflow) or, for some reason, the city was actually running sanitary into this drain, even though it went through an open stream downstream. Hm. Mind you, we only found this pipe after we'd finished with the drain, on our way back to the upstream entrance, otherwise we might have reevaluated the idea of following this drain to the exit. As it was, we followed it upstream to where it became a deeper box culvert and led to the heavily-barred entrance which we couldn't escape through for the life of us -- which was frustrating to say the least, since not ten feet upstream was the entrance to another drain continuing up the river. Oh well, such things can wait for a return visit.
We embarked on the lengthy walk back to the entrance -- distances are hard to judge underground, with no real context to determine how far you came, but we were walking for quite some time. The general consensus was that, even without presenting any particularly new and fascinating features beyond the architecture changes, this drain was one of the best we've found. The naming process was extensive and many suggestions were put out but finally we settled for a simple one, although the bubbles left by Grebin's shoes as he walked after exiting the drain led to the amusing suggestion of "Squeaky Clean". However, since we didn't know if this was caused by actual detergent or shampoo from a sanitary input or just phosphates in the Toronto snow, it was ousted in favour of North Park.
All in all, a nifty drain. Now you must bask in the North Park photo gallery.

-Snee