On a typical weekday, the PATH moves at office-hour speed. Thousands of workers pass through the underground corridors, heading to meetings, picking up lunch, cutting between towers, while tourists follow signposted routes to attractions like the Eaton Centre and the Hockey Hall of Fame.
During these times, you may see guided tours run by companies such as Top Dog Tours, which take the curious through the PATH to show them the architectural highlights, give a sense of the network’s history, and an appreciation for how large and intricate it is.
Outside the 9-to-5 rush, though, Toronto’s underground city has traditionally felt almost deserted. The network of more than 30 kilometres connecting 75 buildings — from the Atrium near Yonge and Dundas to the waterfront — can be eerily quiet on evenings or weekends.
Increasingly, that’s beginning to change.
For nearly two years, Adam Chen and Kai Xie have organized an early Saturday morning walk through the PATH called Mindful Miles as part of their Happy Town project, which aims to bring people together through meetups and interactive activities.
Over roughly 10,000 steps, the walks give participants time to relax, explore the connected buildings and develop friendships in an age when many people say they feel increasingly disconnected from one another.
The walks started in June 2024 and have strengthened Chen and Xie’s own friendship. Chen had done similar walks while living abroad.
“It was my favourite part of the week. We didn’t have one here, so I decided to go ahead and start my own.
“I really like getting to know new people, but sometimes it’s difficult to do it in the city. Everyone’s so busy. Hosting something easy and free every week made that possible.”
If you go, just don’t talk about your work life, sell your latest business idea or try to hit on others.
Participants appreciate having a relaxed, agenda-less space. “I find that really fosters connections in a way that keeps me wanting to do it every week,” Chen said. “I’ve seen people start dating, because they gotten to know each other over several months.”
Uses such as these walks align with visions city planners had for the future PATH in a late-1960s report titled On Foot Downtown. It recommended the creation of enclosed spaces where people could shut out outdoor noise, pollution and traffic. Instead, users would enjoy attractive, climate-controlled areas offering opportunities for activities that gave them a sense of being part of a large city.
Within a few years, the PATH started to be stitched together. As the number of underground connections increased, the city’s planning and development commissioner worried Toronto might become a “city of moles” who lived underground, a fear echoed by store employees and others who used the spaces.
But mole-like behaviour can have its advantages.
The walking meetups have grown from between five to 10 people to as many as 35 walking along, attracting a wide age range. Activities during these treks have included stops to perform mindfulness exercises, which has occasionally puzzled security. “We were in a food court, just sitting there,” Chen recalls. “It was kind of a funny encounter where everyone was sitting in complete meditative silence. The security guard was like, ‘you guys have to leave.’”
A member of the group explained what they doing, and indicated they’d move on in five minutes, which the guard accepted. They later found another food court where nobody cared about their presence
Chen has encountered other groups hanging out in the PATH, such as one who had been playing a card game from the makers of Magic for several years in food courts. Another group involved Chinese language discussions and exchange that alternated between Union Station and the non-PATH Aura building.
“There are people around who are trying to navigate it and figure it out.”
Chen hopes to foster more relations with the buildings, including the condo tower he lives in just off the PATH, to show them that using them for community building activities is beneficial to landlords and the public.
You can see signs of efforts in this direction. Newer sections of the PATH, such as Simcoe Place, have food courts featuring longer communal tables, as well as more plug outlets and USB ports.
During my own off-hour wanderings, I’ve seen many people take advantage of these elements to quietly work on their laptops, with only the hum of a floor cleaner as background noise.
The PATH offers me with a comfortable space to take long evening walks as this winter has made it too miserable to wander outside. Though people are around, it feels like my own private playground, where I always discover something new or curious to look at. Even my cultural needs are served—whenever I visit the TD Gallery of Indigenous Art or stare at the exhibits from the Hockey Hall of Fame on street level at Brookfield Place, I feel like I’m enjoying my own secret nighttime museum.
Other cities have shown the possibilities of how their underground networks can be used to bring the public together, such as Montreal’s version of Nuit Blanche (though one imagines the bureaucratic and security hassles that would be involved).
Ultimately, Chen wishes the PATH could be considered like a park, especially during winter, where people could hang out. “We’re in a connection crisis right now, and a simple solution is to give people places to connect. I think that means not only physical space but people creating the environment for that space.”
“I just hope we can create our own version of whatever loving the winter is here and optimizing winter for connection.”
