Welcome to Toronto's The Beach neighborhood. Located on the east side of "Old Toronto", it fits inside the boundaries of Kingston Road, Victoria Park Ave., Woodbine Ave., and Lake Ontario. Originally heavily wooded and spotted with homes, the area's popularity grew in the 1900's and land was appropriated for parks, boardwalks, and public gardens.
If you've got the time and the energy, this tour is made for walking. You'll find beautiful historic neighborhoods, heritage buildings, and an opportunity to see how history always finds a way into contemporary life. And of course we can't leave out the actual beach.
Take time to check out the famous Leuty Lifeguard Station, or the R.C. Harris Water Treatment facility - the setting for numerous films and the famous Michael Ondaatje novel, In the Skin of a Lion. Finish off a the local pub for some food on one of Toronto's best outdoor patios. A camera's not a bad idea either.
To read more about Toronto's well-storied waterfront be sure to check out The Beach: An Illustrated History From the Lake to Kingston Road by Glenn and Jean Cochrane and Along the Shore by Jane Fairburn. Both construct a brilliant context for this exciting walkabout.
Other Tours to Consider:
Built in 1905, Station 227, or The Kew Beach Fire Hall, was originally called The Toronto Dire Department Station 17. It was constructed in the Amsterdam style, with stepped roof and 80 ft. tower - a common feature to hang hoses from post-use.The clock was added to the tower years later.
A pub you say? Why yes. Housed in what once was the The Beaches branch of the Bank of Toronto, Lion on the Beach boasts The Beaches most popular outdoor patios, and is a perfect stop during your Waterfront Tours of Toronto.
A preserved heritage site and one of the original cottages in The Beaches, Inglenook is now a privately owned - and significanly restored - residence. It was originally built around 1900, and over the years changed numerous hands. It was also nearly slated for demolition until the community stepped forward and had the site (and its neighbouring 79 Waverly Rd) designated a protected heritate site.
Serving the community since 1916, and one of three Toronto branches to receive grant funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Beaches Library exhibits a Tudor-style interior, with a 1,000 sq. ft. addition from renovations in 2004. It is also a protected heritage site for the City of Toronto.
The Fox opened in 1914 as the 'Pastime Theatre', built and owned by Arthur Brooks Webster. After less than a year, the name was changed to the 'Prince Edward', the name it would use until 1937, when it was changed to the Fox Theatre. A stained glass panel with the Prince Edward name, over the doorway from the lobby, remains from the Prince Edward period. It is the second-oldest movie cinema in Toronto, after the Revue Cinema opened in 1912.
Kew Gardens is a large park in The Beach neighborhood of Toronto. Once a private garden owned by Joseph Williams in the 1850's, it was developed by Williams into a public tourist destination, with several recreational facilities and easy access via streecar.
Built in 1902 for Kew Williams, whose father - Joseph Williams - owned Kew Gardens, the Gardener's Cottage has been a family home, residence for gardener's, and now a venue to host art shows and community events. One of the most commonly visited places at the gardens, and in The Beaches.
The Leuty Lifeguard station is one of the last remainings structures south of The Beach boardwalk. Built in 1920 on the side of "old" City of Toronto it is said to have played a role in saving over 6,000 lives during its occupation along Kew Beach.
A bookend to Toronto's popular The Beaches neighborhood, the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant functions as both crucial infrastructure and historic landmark. Constructed in 1906 on the original site of Victoria Park (a popular amusement park at the time), the plant is a cathedral of art deco architecture and surprisingly opulant on the inside as well.
Enrich your experience by reading books about the places on your tour!
Along the Shore examines the Toronto waterfront, past and present, through the lens of four lakefront communities and districts ? the Scarborough shore (including the Bluffs), the Beach, the Island, and the Lakeshore (New Toronto, Mimico, Humber Bay, and Long Branch). Each retains a direct and immediate connection with Lake Ontario and the natural world.
In this rare combination of history and memoir, Lorraine O'Donnell Williams details life within Toronto's Beach community in the 1930s and '40s from the vantage point of her front verandah, which abutted the boardwalk. Her extensive research has uncovered numerous hidden facets of the heritage of this exceptional neighbourhood, including the stories of what was in its time one of North America's most remarkable amusement parks, the popular dance hall, and how the area was transformed from cottage to urban living.
Drained by a half-dozen major watersheds, cut by a network of deep ravines and fronting on a Great Lake, Toronto is a city dominated by water. Recently, the trend of fettering Toronto?s water and putting it underground has been countered by persistent citizen-led efforts to recall and restore the city?s surface water.
In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life.
In Margaret Avison?s new poems, little pleasures are bound up with larger ones. Her slightest subjects ? beloved Toronto parks with their population of oaks, firs, squirrels, dogs, kids, even ants, and the minutest sighs of her contemporary urban soundscape ? all have their being within an immense composition that calls and hauls us to a largeness, a category-breaking ?always unthinkable? beyond.
On December 22, 2022 as eastern Canadians were getting ready for the holidays, a bizarre weather system brought crippling freezing rain to central and eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Over 300,000 people lost power in Toronto alone and 70,000 were still without it on Christmas morning. Officials estimate that 40% of power lines in the GTA were affected and more than 20% of Toronto?s tree canopy was destroyed.
Glenn and Jean Cochrane have lived in Toronto?s Beach area for thirty-eight years ? which sounds like a lifetime but really leaves them as a relative newcomers. Like many of the area?s residents, the Cochranes are convinced that once someone moves to the Beach, they?ll never leave.
