City walk Toronto — Waterfront, Canada

Toronto Waterfront: Harbourfront to Sherbourne Common

A flat four-kilometre walk along Queens Quay through the parks that won Toronto its lakeshore back: a garden built as a Bach suite, umbrella beaches, Harbourfront Centre and a glowing water channel at the end.

Duration: 1 day
Distance: 3.9 km
Difficulty: Easy
Best season: Year-round (best May–October)

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Toronto spent most of the twentieth century cut off from its own lake by rail yards, warehouses and the elevated Gardiner Expressway. The walk along Queens Quay is the story of the city taking the shore back. Since the 2015 rebuild, the road has shrunk to make room for a wide granite promenade, a streetcar right-of-way and the Martin Goodman Trail bike path, and a string of small, sharply designed parks now runs from Bathurst Street almost to the mouth of the Don.

This route walks that string west to east. It opens in the Toronto Music Garden, a garden built as a piece of Bach, then crosses the undulating WaveDecks to the yellow umbrellas of HTO Park, the galleries and stages of Harbourfront Centre, the ferry docks at the foot of Bay Street, the pink umbrellas of Sugar Beach under the Redpath refinery, and the glowing water channel of Sherbourne Common. None of it is wilderness and none of it pretends to be. What it offers is the lake at arm’s length, the islands across the harbour, and the CN Tower over your shoulder the whole way.

It is flat, free and about four kilometres long. Take it slowly on a summer evening and it becomes the best free night out in the city.

Getting there. From Union Station, take the 509 Harbourfront or 510 Spadina streetcar through the tunnel under Bay Street and ride west along Queens Quay; get off at Spadina Avenue for the Music Garden, a few minutes further west on foot. You can also walk down from Union in about 20 minutes. At the end, the 114 bus runs along Queens Quay East back toward Union, or it is a flat walk of roughly 25 minutes.

Permits & tickets. None. Every park on the route is free and open to the public. Harbourfront Centre’s outdoor events and The Power Plant gallery are generally free; some concerts and festivals are ticketed, so check the official site before you go.

Good to know:

The Martin Goodman Trail runs right beside the promenade. Cyclists move fast; look both ways before crossing it.
HTO Park and Sugar Beach are urban beaches for lounging, not swimming.
Summer is the season: Music Garden concerts, Harbourfront festivals and the weekend marketplace all cluster between June and September.
Washrooms and food are easiest at Harbourfront Centre and Queen’s Quay Terminal.

Tips & Insights for this route Planning this route? Read our practical tips before you go — 8 tips. Read the tips

Download waypoints (GPX) Points of interest in walking order — not a trail trace.

Day by day

DayDistanceAscentDescentWalking time

Day 1 Hardest dayMusic Garden to Sherbourne Common

Distance3.9 kmAscentNot recordedDescentNot recordedWalking timeNot recorded

Day 1

Music Garden to Sherbourne Common

Queens Quay W at Spadina Ave → Sherbourne Common 3.9 km

Navigate this day Print day

From the Toronto Music Garden near Spadina Avenue east past HTO Park, Harbourfront Centre and the ferry docks to Sugar Beach and Sherbourne Common.

Segments

Toronto Music Garden 0.5 km Map

Queens Quay W at Spadina Ave → Toronto Music Garden, 479 Queens Quay W

Paved promenade, then gravel garden paths

Start with the most unusual garden on the waterfront. Designed by Julie Moir Messervy with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and opened in 1999, it interprets Bach's Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello, with each of its six dance movements given its own landscape: a river-like Prelude, a swirling Courante in wildflowers, a conifer-ringed Sarabande, and a Gigue of grass steps that forms a small amphitheatre facing the water. In summer, free concerts are often staged on those steps; check the schedule before you go. Allow 30 to 40 minutes to wander it properly.

About this place

Toronto Music Garden is a park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Wladyslaw · CC BY-SA 3.0
Spadina WaveDeck to HTO Park 0.6 km Map

Toronto Music Garden → HTO Park

Timber boardwalk and paved promenade

Heading east you cross the Spadina WaveDeck, one of the curving timber boardwalks that rise and fall over the water's edge like a Canadian Shield shoreline, the work of West 8 and duToit Allsopp Hillier. HTO Park, opened in 2007, is next: a sand beach with fixed yellow umbrellas and Muskoka chairs, its name a pun on H2O and TO. The scene deliberately echoes Seurat's painting of La Grande Jatte. It is for sitting, not swimming. About 10 minutes on foot, plus whatever time the chairs claim.

About this place

HTO Park is an urban beach in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that opened in 2007. It is located west of Harbourfront Centre, on Lake Ontario.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Scalable Grid Engine · CC0
Harbourfront Centre 0.7 km Map

HTO Park → Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W

Paved promenade and boardwalk

More WaveDecks punctuate the boardwalk as you head toward York Quay, where Harbourfront Centre fills about ten acres with galleries, craft studios, stages and a pond. Founded in 1972 and run as a non-profit since 1991, it hosts thousands of events a year. Look in at The Power Plant, a contemporary art gallery in a former power station, and cross the little Amsterdam Bridge, a 1974 gift from the city of Amsterdam, for one of the cleanest CN Tower views on the waterfront. On summer weekends an international marketplace sets up here. Budget 30 minutes, more if something is on.
Queen's Quay Terminal and the ferry docks 0.6 km Map

Harbourfront Centre → Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, foot of Bay St

Paved promenade

Queen's Quay Terminal is the big Art Deco warehouse at the water's edge, converted in 1982 into shops, restaurants and apartments; the Farm Boy grocery inside is the easiest picnic stop on the route. Continue past Harbour Square Park, with its Sundial Folly, to the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, where the boats leave for the Toronto Islands. Even if you are not crossing, the dock is a good place to watch the ferries turn in the harbour. Allow 15 minutes.

About this place

Queen's Quay Terminal is a condominium apartment, office and retail complex in the Harbourfront neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was originally built in 1927 as a marine terminal with office, warehouse and cold-storage facilities. When shipping to Toronto declined in the 1960s and 1970s, the building was bought by the Government of Canada to be repurposed along with a section of the industrial waterfront. The Terminal Building itself was rebuilt in the 1980s with the addition of four floors of residential above the original facility, which was converted into retail and office uses. The cold storage wing was demolished and its plant building became The Power Plant gallery and Harbourfront Centre Theatre.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Sam Chan from Port Coquitlam, Canada · CC BY-SA 2.0
Queens Quay East to Sugar Beach 1.1 km Map

Jack Layton Ferry Terminal → Sugar Beach, Lower Jarvis St at Queens Quay E

Paved promenade and sidewalk

East of Yonge Street the waterfront gets newer and more open. At the foot of Yonge, a plaque plays up the old claim that it is the longest street in the world. Keep going along Queens Quay East to Lower Jarvis, where Sugar Beach, opened in 2010 and designed by Claude Cormier, lays pink umbrellas and a candy-striped rock outcrop across a sandy strip. The joke is the neighbour: the Redpath Sugar Refinery sits across the slip, and you may see a lake freighter unloading raw sugar. Around 15 minutes of walking.

About this place

Sugar Beach is an urban beach park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that opened in 2010. It is located across from Redpath Sugar Refinery in Toronto's eastern East Bayfront. Like HTO Park to the west, the beach is not meant for wading or swimming in Lake Ontario, but rather functions as a waterfront public space for relaxation, leisure, and social activities. It cost $14 million.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine · CC0
Sherbourne Common 0.4 km Map

Sugar Beach → Sherbourne Common

Paved promenade and park paths

Finish one block east at Sherbourne Common, a park that is also a piece of infrastructure: its pavilion houses a stormwater treatment facility, and the cleaned water flows along a 240-metre channel fed by three nine-metre sculptures by Jill Anholt that release water from their tops. They glow after dark, which makes this the right place to end an evening walk. In summer the splash pad keeps children busy while you look back west at the skyline you just walked past. About 5 minutes to reach, as long as you like to linger.

About this place

Sherbourne Common, designed by landscape architect Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg, is a waterfront park located in a former industrial area of Toronto. It is one of the earliest parks in Canada to incorporate a neighborhood-wide stormwater treatment facility into its design. Located east of Lower Sherbourne Street, the 1.47 hectare park spans two city blocks. It stretches from Lake Ontario to Lake Shore Boulevard in the north.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Randolph Croft · CC BY 2.0