Local Explorations – Hello from the Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail

In our neck of the woods, the summer has been absolutely beautiful, a little hot and humid at times, but I can’t remember a summer that was as hot and sunny as this summer of 2005.

The weekend before last I felt like exploring the local area a bit, and since I couldn’t get my husband to watch some of the first football games of the season, I struck out on my own and mapped out an itinerary. for a small venue. discovery. I’ve said it before: this website is about exploration and discovery, locally and abroad. The places right under our noses often have so much to discover that we don’t always need to travel by plane to discover something new.

Since we spent so much time along the Toronto waterfront during my brother’s visit, and since I’m a huge water addict in all its shapes and forms, I thought I’d stretch the envelope a little further east and see what’s in it for me. to feature Lake Ontario outside of East Toronto. city ​​limits. More specifically, let’s take a look at Lake Ontario’s shoreline and Waterfront Trail.

The Waterfront Trail stretches for a total of 740 km, stretching from Niagara-on-the-Lake in the southwest to Brockville in the east. Of course, 450 miles in one day would be too much, so I focused my explorations on the communities east of Toronto: Pickering, Ajax, and Whitby.

I started just on the west side of the Toronto city limits at the Rouge River Estuary, which is part of a protected nature reserve. The river flows in a lagoon setting and joins the lake just outside a long, extended finger of sand, right next to a beautiful sandy beach. A video production company was filming a soca music video and the pedestrian bridge over the Rouge River was blocked by the film crew. That didn’t deter a group of fishermen under the railroad bridge from casting their lures in hopes of catching the big one.

My next stop was Pickering, the first community east of Toronto. I went down to Liverpool Beachfront Park, which is home to a very attractive new Cape Code style housing development, marina and restaurant surrounded by marshland inland from the shoreline. There are several recreational facilities on the beach at Frenchman’s Bay and the boardwalk takes you up to the fences of the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant.

Back in the car I went and looked for the next city further east: Ajax, which has a beautiful waterfront. I parked my car at Rotary Park, which has a nice pavilion with a food concession, put on my rollerblades, and rolled east past Ajax Waterfront Park and Harwood Gardens to the eastern edge of Waterfront Park. Virtually the entire waterfront in downtown Ajax is parkland and near Lion’s Point and Harwood Gardens the shoreline is elevated, with plenty of benches to sit and relax and gaze at the endless horizons of Lake Ontario.

I made a short stop in Whitby, but by this time my stomach was growing and the nagging sensation in my digestive system made me decide to explore this area in more detail at another time. I thought I had to save some of the nice things for next time.

After almost 20 years in Canada, I had never explored these parts of the Lake Ontario shoreline and was amazed at how many beautiful places I found. As fall approaches, I plan to expand my discoveries and head out to discover some of Ontario’s brilliant fall colors and get to know the local neck of the woods a little better.