WATERFRONT PARKS

Almost every child in the city has fond memories of the rides at Centreville.

Toronto’s waterfront is the city’s premier location of parks and recreation. Lake Ontario and the harbour are used by people with sailboats, powerboats and an increasing number of canoes and kayaks. People love to walk, run, rollerblade and cycle along the shore, enjoying the view, the fresh air and sunshine. More and more people are coming to live in Toronto, and increasing numbers flock to the beautiful waterfront park system.

Parks now stretch along the water’s edge from Etobicoke’s lakefront in the west to Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough. Linking them is the Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail. Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Street Spit and the 500-acre proposed park in the Port Lands skirt the shores of the outer harbour.

The inner harbour is surrounded by parks that are either completed or in the planning stages. The Toronto Music Garden is like a jewel box. HTO Park opened in 2007 to acclaim. Harbourfront and its facilities provide leading cultural attractions for the city. Ireland Park is located on the Western Gap in a spectacular but hidden location tucked behind the Canada Malting silos.

New parks are still being built around the harbour like the recently opened HTO Park.

The Music Garden, just a few hundred metres from the airport approach.

Across the bay, Toronto Island Park has long been considered the most important park in Toronto’s park system. It is 569 acres of grass, trees and public facilities. The park is surrounded by water and beautiful views. What could be more magnificent?

Yet adjacent to the park, behind a ten-foot high chain-link fence, is the island airport, occupying 215 acres, about one-third of the island. The airport sits in the centre of the city’s waterfront park system, polluting the air, creating traffic and destroying the calm, natural environment along the shores of Lake Ontario.

The tragedy is that it is totally unnecessary for Toronto’s waterfront to be ruined by an inadequate airport. Two underutilized international airports are nearby: Pearson and the Munro Airport in Hamilton. Both of those airports draw from a larger area and have the passengers, facilities and connecting flights to fill planes.

Think for a moment how different the waterfront would be if there were no island airport.

Waterfront parks are a source of relaxing for many Torontonians and tourists.

• This is the most beautiful undeveloped land in the Toronto region. It looks west into Humber Bay and east into Toronto Harbour. In the distance along the horizon is the spectacular Toronto skyline.
  
  
• This land could be the location of exciting architectural projects, such as an Aboriginal People’s cultural centre that would draw people to Toronto from around the world.
  

  The city side airport terminal and taxi area are a short distance from a kid's park and community centre.

  
  
• There are great natural features. To the west, along Humber Bay, is the best beach in the Greater Toronto Area. At present this beach cannot be used because it is airport property.
  
  
• Opening up the lands now occupied by the airport as public space would give the public ferry access across the Western Gap to the Toronto Island Park, connecting the city to the island. It would also help to connect the western beaches, through the island, to the eastern beaches, giving Toronto the most magnificent waterfront in North America.

What as once Toronto's favorite beach at Hanlan's Point is now closed to the public because of the Island Airport.

If the airport remains and expands according to the plans of Porter Airlines, it will degrade the waterfront parks from Scarborough to Etobicoke. If it closes we will have a waterfront that is the envy of every city in the world.