630 km² of city, and a lakefront it's still rebuilding

Toronto's Waterfront

A former industrial shipping and rail strip along Lake Ontario, being rebuilt piece by piece into parks, beaches — including a pink-umbrella "urban beach" — and public space.

Toronto's Harbourfront and waterfront seen from above — Toronto Harbourfront — Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons licensed

For most of the 20th century, Toronto's Lake Ontario shoreline was industrial and inaccessible — rail yards, warehouses and shipping infrastructure, not parkland. What exists today is the product of a decades-long, still-ongoing revitalization.

Harbourfront Centre

A cultural and recreational precinct along the central waterfront, developed starting in the 1970s on former industrial and port land. It now hosts year-round festivals, an outdoor skating rink in winter, art studios, a theatre, and direct water access — the anchor of Toronto's public waterfront identity.

Sugar Beach

An artificial "urban beach" opened in 2010 on the site of a former parking lot next to the still-operating Redpath Sugar refinery (the source of its name and its sugar-white sand). It's known for its rows of oversized pink umbrellas and is one of the clearest symbols of the waterfront's shift from industrial to public space — a functioning beach with real sand, a stone's throw from downtown office towers.

The Toronto Islands

Covered in more depth in our parks guide — a car-free archipelago just offshore, reachable by ferry, and the best vantage point in the city for looking back at the skyline it fronts.

An ongoing project

Waterfront Toronto, the tri-government agency overseeing the revitalization, continues major projects along the eastern waterfront, including flood protection and new parkland in the Port Lands — one of the largest urban land redevelopment projects underway anywhere in North America.

Sources

Continue reading

Toronto Parks & Green Space

A car-free island park in Lake Ontario, a 400-acre park with an endangered oak savannah, and a converted…

The 1976 Canada Cup

The first tournament to put NHL professionals against the Soviets and Europe's best crowned Canada champion —…

The Princes' Gates

Built in 1927 for Canada's diamond jubilee of Confederation and opened by two visiting British princes, the…

John Graves Simcoe

Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor founded York in 1793 as a defensible, temporary capital, choosing…

Browse all Toronto Guide topics → Browse the slang dictionary → Read the history of Toronto slang →