Wednesday, 8 April 2026 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika Category/Kategorie: GeneralReading Time: 4minutes
The Beaches (also known as “the Beach”) is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is so named because of its four beaches situated on Lake Ontario. It is located east of downtown within the “Old” City of Toronto. The approximate boundaries of the neighbourhood are from Victoria Park Avenue on the east to Kingston Road on the north, along Dundas Street to Coxwell Avenue on the west, south to Lake Ontario. The Beaches is part of the east-central district of Toronto.
The commercial district of Queen Street East lies at the heart of the Beaches community. It is characterized by a large number of independent speciality stores. The stores along Queen are known to change tenants quite often causing the streetscape to change from year to year, sometimes drastically.
The side streets are mostly lined with semi-detached and large-scale Victorian, Edwardian, and new-style houses. There are also low-rise apartment buildings and a few row-houses. Controversy has risen in recent years over new development in the neighbourhood that is changing the traditional aesthetic, with denser housing causing some residents to protect the traditional cottage-like appearance of the homes with heritage designations for some streets.
There is an extensive park system along the Waterfront (with Kew Gardens being the only one that extends up to Queen Street) as well as a parks that follow a ravine (partially buried) that bisects the neighbourhood from North to South at Glen Manor Road. Kingston Road is a four-lane road along the northern section of the neighbourhood. Woodbine Avenue is a five-lane road originating from Lake Shore Boulevard at the Lake Ontario shoreline, running north. It is primarily residential.
The beach itself is a single uninterrupted stretch of sandy shoreline bounded by the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant (locally known as the water works) to the east and Woodbine Beach Park (a small peninsula in Lake Ontario) to the west. A long boardwalk runs along most of its length with a portion of the Martin Goodman Trail bike path running parallel. Although it is continuous, there are four names which correspond each to approximately one quarter of the length of the beach (from east to west): Balmy Beach, Scarboro Beach, Kew Beach and Woodbine Beach. Woodbine Beach and Kew-Balmy Beach are Blue Flag certified for cleanliness and are suitable for swimming. The park and beach areas of the neighbourhood are known to be animal friendly and offer both on and off-leash dog parks. The neighbourhood also serves as a home to Toronto wildlife. Most recently, Woodbine Beach has become a home to a family of red foxes that have made their den underneath the boardwalk.
