The Island Airport, once part of the park, now surrounded by recreational usage on all sides.

The Island Airport site has had a unique history. The spine of what is now Toronto Island was a natural site, used by the Mississaugas of the New Credit for fishing and recreation. It was known as a “healing place” with its fresh lake breezes.
The Island was a peninsula until a storm in 1858 cut through its eastern connection to the mainland. When Europeans supplanted First Nations people, Hanlan’s Point was developed as a summer residential community. Soon it became an amusement park with hotels and a baseball stadium.

From the beginning of the twentieth century, well into the 1930’s, Hanlan’s Point was the principal summer recreation destination for most Torontonians — Toronto's Coney Island. It was named after the family of Ned Hanlan, the championship rower and Canada’s most famous athlete of his era.

The parks on the Waterfront are used for many different recreational and cultural activities.

Ned Hanlan was elected to Toronto City Council after his sporting days were over, and in his retirement operated one of the better hotels at the point. An impressive statue of Ned Hanlan has been recently relocated from obscurity at the CNE grounds the Hanlan's ferry docks on the Island.

Over an extended period of time, infill was added to both the mainland and the Island Park, shrinking Toronto Bay. The fortunes of the amusement park waxed and waned but never recovered when the baseball stadium relocated to the mainland.

In 1937, after a long political debate, the residential community site at Hanlan’s Point was destroyed, and fill was dredged from the bottom of the bay to create the land for the Island Airport.

Little Norway Park is a stone's throw from the Island Airport.

The new airport was a failure virtually from the beginning. Another new airport opened the same year in a farmer's field in the small town of Malton just outside of Toronto. It evolved into the present day Pearson International Airport a highly successful airport with over 30 million passengers a year.

Meanwhile, the Island airport, with its very short runways, fog days, and difficult access, languished. It was used by the Royal Norwegian Air Force during the Second World War as a training base for a short period of time. After the war it was used as a flight school and an airport for small private aircraft. Different commercial airline companies attempted to establish passenger service out of the Island Airport but with little success.

The Martin Goodman trail. Currently there is a plan to close the south lanes of Queens Quay for cycling and pedestrians.

In October 2006 Porter Airlines established passenger service using the island as its hub airport. Judging from past history it seems unlikely that Porter can be a success in the long term.

Throughout its entire history, the airport lands have been publicly owned by the city, the Toronto Port Authority (formerly called the Toronto Harbour Commission) and the federal government. The City’s Official Plan designates the site as “Public Open Space” and it currently carries the “G” zoning designation, restricting it to parks, recreation and cultural activities.

Thousands enjoy Toronto's beaches.

The airport is operating under a site-specific exemption to the city’s official land use designation. It is truly “an airport in a park.”

A bird sanctuary is within 100 metres of the end of the Island Airport's busiest runway.