Toronto’s waterfront resort era

The sweltering days of mid-summer have come again early this year, and Torontonians are flocking to the city’s waterfront trails, parks, and numerous blue flag beaches in record numbers.

This renewed interest and activity at the shore is encouraging, and harkens back to the days in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when tens of thousands of Torontonians routinely traded the heat and grime of the city for a day, a week, or an entire summer at the waters edge.

During this period, numerous pleasure gardens, amusements parks, hotels, and inns were erected at of near the Toronto shore, from the Rouge River in the east, to Etobicoke Creek in the west. Seasonal summer cottage and tent communities took hold around many of these early establishments, and in some districts became the forerunners to the full time communities still present along the shore today.

For more information on Toronto’s waterfront resort era, be sure to check out “Never Ending Summer: The Beaches Golden Era of Amusement Parks”, in the Beaches Living Guide, Spring & Summer Edition, 2012, (free in local stores and businesses).

This post also appears on the Along the Shore Facebook page, see: www.facebook.com/janefairburnalongtheshore

Shoot the Chutes at Scarboro Beach Amusement Park, 1907
City of Toronto Archives
William James family fonds, no. 162