" [Laura's death in The Blind Assassin] also takes place only a few blocks west and south of the street on the edge of Leaside where Margaret Atwood herself discovered the power of ravines. In 1948, when she was nine, her family settled near the southeastern corner of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. At the end of the street behind her house, a footbridge led toward a patch of the peculiar ravine wildness that defines Toronto, especially for children. As Rosemary Sullivan says in her book The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out, "Margaret could climb down through dense underbrush into the Moore Park Ravine, which snaked through the east side of the city" -- and connected directly with what may now become famous as the setting of Laura's death. Sullivan quotes Atwood's note on the ravines, written years later: "To go down into them is to go down into sleep, away from the conscious electrified life of the houses. The ravines are darker, even in the day."

- robert fulford
http://www.robertfulford.com/Ravines.html