If you head south from our west side stomping grounds, and follow the Trillium Line MUP as far as Prince of Wales … or drive south on Prince of Wales til just after the NCC Dows Lake parking lot … there is the entrance to the site of the former Sir John Carling Bldg. Opposite that, there is a gravel path going into the arboretum, on a slope that faces the OTrain cut and the back of the DND sea cadet properties.
There you will find the magnolia grove:

Provided the rain didn’t ruin them, or the frost and snow kill them off, the grove of trees is approaching maximum bloom state.

And we don’t even have to go as far south as Virginia or Georgia.

I gather Westboro Comm Assoc once encouraged locals to plant magnolias, as a sort of theme tree for the neighbourhood. Such a theme would never approach monoculture so its one I like.

I do have some frustration that the city shows no interest in beauty or “finishing” its projects with anything beyond minimal landscaping. And if that landscaping doesn’t thrive (often due to minimal effort and we have the lowest topsoil requirements for planting trees of any major city I know of…) it certainly doesn’t get replaced. What little landscaping we do install certainly isn’t installed along busy public transit routes like the Trillium Line. We did have some success in getting the city to actually plant some hardwoods along the Trillium MUP. I wonder what, if anything, will be installed along the Confederation Line. Construction to date sees a lot of greenery removed, and the exposed wire “fences” along the transitway cut (to hold back the exposed stone trench faces)  is … ahhh … a tad bleak.