The Beaches

Around the Neighbourhood

Cultural landmarks: the Fox Theatre at Queen and Beech, a 1914 cinema that bills itself as North America’s oldest continuously operating movie house; the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, the art-deco “palace of purification” anchoring the east end of the boardwalk; and the Beaches International Jazz Festival, which takes over Woodbine Park and Queen Street every July.

Hot local spots: The Goof (officially the Garden Gate Restaurant at 2379 Queen East), a Canadian-Chinese institution since 1952, plus Yumei Sushi, a Queen Street fixture since 1995, the Italian room La Sala, Murphy’s Law pub near Woodbine and Kingston, and newer arrival Limon for Israeli plates.

Parks & green space: Kew Gardens running from Queen down to the lake with its bandstand, the Woodbine Beach and Ashbridges Bay stretch to the west, and the Glen Stewart Ravine, a pocket of old forest tucked off Glen Manor.

Your Typical Neighbour

The Beaches is family territory: dual-income professional households, a lot of strollers and dogs on the boardwalk, and people who chose the water over a shorter commute. The City of Toronto profiles the neighbourhood at about 21,500 residents, and household incomes here sit comfortably above the Toronto median of roughly $84,000. Homeownership runs high and housing skews to detached and semi-detached houses with a layer of low-rise apartments, which is part of why it reads more “small town” than “big city” once you’re off Queen. See the City profile for the full age, income and ownership breakdown.

Source: City of Toronto Neighbourhood Profile, The Beaches, 2021 Census

What We Love

The lake, full stop. A continuous sand beach, a long boardwalk and the Martin Goodman Trail mean you can swim, run or just sit and watch the foxes that den under the boardwalk. Queen Street East is a genuine main street of independent shops and restaurants rather than chains, the parks are excellent, and the community shows up… for the jazz festival, the polar bear dip, the farmers’ market in Kew Gardens. For a lot of people this is the rare Toronto neighbourhood you never really need to leave.

What We Don’t Love

Summer. The same beach that sells the neighbourhood brings traffic, road closures and a fight for every parking spot from May to September. Transit to downtown is streetcar-only and slows to a crawl at rush hour. And Queen Street turns over constantly, so the café you fell for might be something else by next year. Prices, of course, are steep, and the well-priced fixer-upper almost always ends in a bidding war.

Real Estate

The housing stock is mostly Edwardian and large-scale Victorian houses, a good number of them former wood-frame cottages that have been modernized, on tree-lined streets with deep porches and the occasional run of newer townhomes. Density is a live issue here: residents have fought hard to keep the cottage-y character, and some streets carry heritage protection, so new low-rise condos arrive slowly and against resistance. Inventory is thin and people don’t move often, which keeps competition high and bidding wars common on anything turn-key or anything with potential. New to the market? Start with our First-Time Buyer guide.

(Current prices and days on market appear in the live statistics block below, updated quarterly.)

Transit

The 501 Queen streetcar is the workhorse into downtown, with the 502 and 503 running along Kingston Road and the 92 Woodbine and 64 Main buses connecting north to Woodbine and Main Street subway stations. There’s no subway in the neighbourhood, the usual trade-off, but drivers get to Lake Shore Boulevard, the Gardiner and the Don Valley Parkway quickly.

Schools

School offerings in the Beach are plentiful, and the level of family participation is evident in the high performance ratings that many have. This fact is a significant contributor to the popularity of the ‘hood among young families.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Kew Beach Junior Public School
St. John Catholic School
Balmy Beach Community School
École élémentaire La Mosaïque
Kew Beach Junior Public School

SENIOR SCHOOLS

Monarch Park Collegiate Institute
Malvern Collegiate Institute
Collège français secondaire
Riverdale Collegiate Institute

For school rankings and Fraser Institute scores, see our interactive Toronto school map.