The Toronto Islands are a chain of 15 small islands in Lake Ontario, south of mainland Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Comprising the only group of islands in the western part of Lake Ontario, the Toronto Islands are located just offshore from the city's downtown area, provide shelter for Toronto Harbour, and separate Toronto from the rest of Lake Ontario. The islands are home to the Toronto Island Park, the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, several private yacht clubs and restaurants, a public marina, Centreville Amusement Park, a year-round residential neighbourhood, and several public beaches. The island community is the largest urban car-free community in North America. Public ferries operate year-round from Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, and privately operated water taxis operate from May to September. A pedestrian tunnel connects the mainland to the airport (which is a secure area, from which the parks and other parts of the islands are not accessible).
The Toronto Islands are a popular tourist and recreational destination. Bicycles are accommodated on the ferries at no charge and can be rented at Centre Island and Ward's Island, and since 2025 Bike Share Toronto has stands on the islands. Canoes, kayaks, paddle boats and stand-up paddle boards are also available for rental from May to September. A disc golf course exists on the island. The main beach is along the south shore of Centre Island, and the beach on the west shore of Centre at Hanlan's Point is clothing-optional and the historic site of Canada's first Gay Pride. There is ample parkland suitable for picnicking, several playgrounds, water play areas and several gardens. During the winter months people reach the lagoons and Toronto Harbour from the islands for ice skating when conditions permit.
List of islands IslandAreaPopulation (2016)NotesCentre Island403Middle Island0Muggs Island0Algonquin Island217Olympic Island0South Island0Snake Island0RCYC Island0Forestry Island0South Chippewa Island0North Chippewa Island0Senator Frank Patrick O'Connor Island0(Unnamed)0Sometimes called Hanlan's Island(Unnamed)0Surrounds the Setting Basin(Unnamed)0Sometimes called Duckling Island
History
The Toronto Islands were not originally islands but rather a series of sand-bars originating from the deposition of sand from the Scarborough Bluffs, pushed by Lake Ontario currents.
Prior to European colonization, the group of islands (then peninsula) and sandbars was considered a place of healing, leisure, and relaxation by Indigenous peoples. The then peninsula was called or "Island of Hiawatha" or "Menecing," meaning "On the Island" in Ojibwe.Feathers, Sacred. "University of Toronto Press." Toronto, Ontario (1987). "The Mississaugas brought their sick to the peninsula to recover in its healthful atmosphere."
To the descendants of the Ojibwa, now the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Toronto Islands are sacred land. According to British Crown records, Treaty 13, often referred to as the Toronto Purchase of 1787 and 1805, included the Islands and compensated the Mississaugas with "goods including rifle flints, 24 brass kettles, 120 mirrors, 24 laced hats and 96 gallons of rum valued at for the sale of Toronto." The Mississaugas, in a land claim settlement process started in 1986, claimed that the Islands, along with other lands, were never included in the agreement and that the compensation was inadequate. In 2010, a settlement was reached which resulted in a payment to the Mississaugas from the Government of Canada. In return, the Mississaugas relinquished their claim to the Islands and other lands in the area.
The peninsula and surrounding sand bars that now form the Toronto Islands were surveyed in 1792 by Lieutenant Joseph Bouchette of the Royal Navy. D.W. Smith's Gazetteer recorded in 1813 that "the long beach or peninsula, which affords a most delightful ride, is considered so healthy by the Indians that they resort to it whenever indisposed". Many Indigenous communities were located between the peninsula's base and the Don River.
During the 1790s, the British built the first buildings on the island. The Gibraltar Point Blockhouse and storage structures were built at Gibraltar Point in 1794. The garrison was known as the Blockhouse Bay garrison, and it supported the garrison on the mainland. By 1800, another blockhouse and a guard house were built. These were destroyed in the Battle of York. Another garrison was built, but it was abandoned by 1823 and demolished in 1833.
The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse was constructed at Gibraltar Point, the south-western extremity of the peninsula in 1809. It is perhaps best known for the demise of its first keeper, German-born John Paul Radelmüller, whose alleged 1815 murder by soldiers from Fort York forms the basis of Toronto's most enduring ghost story. Although the precise circumstances of his death remain a mystery, recent research has verified many aspects of the popular legend. The two soldiers charged with but ultimately acquitted of Radelmüller's murder were John Henry and John Blueman, both of the Glengarry Light Infantry.
The peninsula was first cut off from the mainland to the east by a storm in 1852, but a breakwater was built and the channel was filled in by silt. However, on April 13, 1858, the peninsula became an island permanently by a violent storm that cut a wide channel. The same storm destroyed two hotels on the island.
After the peninsula became an island, the Hanlan family were among the first year-round inhabitants, settling at Gibraltar Point in 1862. In 1867, the City of Toronto acquired the Islands from the federal government, and the land was divided into lots, allowing seasonal cottages, outdoor amusement areas and summer resort hotels to be built. The west side of the island became a destination for the people of Toronto and the first summer cottage community was built there. In 1878, a hotel was built by John Hanlan at the north-west tip of the island and soon after the area became known as Hanlan's Point. The family built Hanlan's Point Amusement Park in the 1880s. John's son, Edward "Ned" Hanlan, earned international recognition as a rower before taking over his father's business. Other notable families on the Islands included the Durnans (James Durnan was the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse keeper in 1832) and the Wards (David Ward settled on the eastern end in 1830).
At the same time as Hanlan's Point was developing as a summer suburb of Toronto, developments were going on elsewhere on the Islands. Along the lakefront of Centre Island, large Victorian summer homes were built by Toronto's leading families looking for refuge from the summer heat and drawn by the prestigious Royal Canadian Yacht Club, which had moved to a location on the harbour side of RCYC Island in 1881. By contrast, the Ward's Island community began in the 1880s as a tent community. William E. Ward built the Ward's Hotel and a few houses and rented tents to visitors.
The records of the School Board indicate that a one-room school existed on donated land near the Gibraltar Lighthouse in approximately 1888 but it was not necessarily open every day, particularly in winter. The school became permanent in 1896, though still with a single teacher. After it burned down a new school was built; there were 52 students in 1909 and 630 by 1954. As of 2018, the Island Public/Natural Science School operates classes for Junior Kindergarten to grade 6, a residential natural science program (which began in 1960) for visiting grade 5 and 6 students and a day care centre for children ages 2–5.
In 1899, there was a colony of eight summer tenants on Ward's Island paying $10 rent for the season. By 1913, the number of tents pitched had increased to the point where the city felt it necessary to organize the community into streets, and the tents eventually evolved into a seasonal cottage community.
In 1894, a land reclamation project by the Toronto Ferry Company created space to expand the Hanlan's Point Amusement Park at Hanlan's Point. In 1897, the Hanlan's Point Stadium was built alongside the amusement park for the Toronto Maple Leaf baseball team. The stadium was rebuilt several times over the years, and in 1914, Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run into the waters of Lake Ontario from this stadium. In the 1920s, the Maple Leaf team moved to a new stadium on the mainland. In 1926, the Toronto Transit Commission purchased the privately run ferry system along with the amusement park, most of the rides were shut down that year.
From 1915 to 1916, a temporary wooden hangarSee image at Aviation Technomuses was built at the beach by the Curtiss Flying School. This floatplane aerodrome was used for flight training for World War I.
In 1937, construction started on a new airport on the site of the park and stadium. The construction of the airport led to the demolition of the stadium and the remainder of the amusement park while the land reclamation connected Hanlan's Point and the Western Sandbar by infilling Hanlan's Lagoon. This meant that the cottage community along the Western Sandbar at Hanlan's Point needed to be relocated. The residents were given the choice of either moving their cottages further south at Hanlan's Point or resettling on Algonquin Island. Originally, Algonquin Island was simply a sandbar known as Sunfish Island that was expanded by land reclamation operations. In 1938, streets were laid out to accommodate 31 cottages that were moved by barge from Hanlan's Point.
The airport opened in 1939, formally named the Port George VI Island Airport, after the reigning monarch of the time. During the first few years of the Second World War, expatriate Norwegian (RNAF) pilots-in-training used the Toronto Island Airport as a training field for both fighter and bomber pilots. Several accidents, including one where a pilot under instruction clipped the funnel and mast of the island ferry boat Sam McBride and crashed, led to the training school being moved north to Muskoka, Ontario. A park on the mainland called Little Norway Park commemorates this period.
In 1947, Toronto City Council approved the year-round occupancy of the Islands to help cope with housing shortages after World War Two, an emergency measure meant to expire in 1968. At its peak in the 1950s, the Island residential community extended from Ward's Island to Hanlan's Point and was made up of some 630 cottages and homes, in addition to amenities including a movie theatre, a bowling alley, stores, hotels, and dance halls. Not long after its creation in 1953, Metropolitan Toronto Council undertook to remove the community and replace it with public parkland. The construction of the Gardiner Expressway had removed many acres of recreational land along the Toronto waterfront, and the Islands lands were to replace the acreage. In 1955, after the city had transferred the lands to Metropolitan Toronto ("Metro"), the new Metro Parks Department started to demolish homes and cottages whose leases had expired or whose leaseholders had surrendered. In 1959, the Metro Parks Department opened Far Enough Farm, and in 1967 opened the Centreville Amusement Park, along with a new public marina. In 1971, Metro Parks opened a new ferry terminal at the foot of Bay Street. Unlike the previous terminal, no waiting room was provided.