Ninety years of plans for the Toronto Islands

On July 24, the federal government said it won't support expanding the island airport. That came a few weeks after Ontario passed a law taking over the city's share of it. If you've been in Toronto a while, this will feel familiar. Big plans for the Toronto Islands have a long history of not happening. Here's how we got here.

It started with tents

People were living out there long before the airport.

In 1899, eight tents went up on Ward's Island at $10 for the season. By 1913, there were enough of them that the city laid out sidewalks and numbered the lots. The tents got floors, then kitchens, then porches. In 1931, the city finally let people build properly, on the same small lots the tents had sat on. That's why the houses out there are still packed so close together.

*"Toronto from the Island, 1875", oil painting by Arthur Cox*

The airport is there because of seaplanes

Through the 1920s, seaplanes were already landing in the harbour. Airmail was flying between Toronto and Buffalo by 1929. That same year, the council gave the Harbour Commission money to study an "air harbour" on the island.

The land made sense. Flat, empty, and right beside downtown.

The tunnel that was dug and then filled back in

Here's the part most people don't know.

In 1935, Ottawa put $1 million into a tunnel under the Western Gap to reach an airport that hadn't been built yet. The city added another $600,000. Council approved it 15-7, in a vote that ran to about 2:30 in the morning on August 8.

A bridge was the other option, and a cheaper one. The problem was ship traffic. A lift bridge would have had to open six or seven thousand times a year, needing staff around the clock, with a collision risk in a working channel every single time. A tunnel costs more upfront and less to run.

Then the federal government changed hands. The incoming government called it money wasted on a tunnel to a "summer resort" and stopped the work on October 29. The contract was cancelled by December, and Toronto paid about $106,000 to fill the hole back in.

The airport went ahead anyway. Construction started in 1937, and it opened in 1939 as Port George VI Island Airport, named for a royal visit that year. It was renamed Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport in 2009.

Everyone got there by ferry. About 120 metres of water, a two-minute crossing, with a cable pulling the boat over. That stayed the only way in for 76 years, until a walking tunnel finally opened in 2015.

The park plan

By 1955, there was a different idea. Clear the houses off and turn the whole place into one big public park.

Part of the reason was the Gardiner Expressway, which was eating up lakefront parkland. The city wanted to replace it, and the islands were the answer.

About 630 homes stood on the islands then. At the peak, roughly 8,000 people lived out there, mostly on Centre Island, with hotels, theatres and shops along a strip called the Avenue of the Islands.

Over the next fifteen years, most of it was demolished, starting with Centre Island and Hanlan's Point. By 1970, only 250 homes were left, all of them on Ward's Island and Algonquin Island. The people living in them had organized in 1969, and they stayed put.

The standoff at the bridge

The islanders had been fighting in court since 1974, and by 1978, they were losing badly.

In July 1980, a sheriff came over to deliver writs of possession. The whole community met him at the Algonquin Island bridge. Liz Amer, who co-chaired the residents' association, spoke to him — she argued the writs had expired and asked him to wait 24 hours for a judge to rule.

He turned around, got back in his car, and left without serving anyone. Days later, the evictions were back before a court.

*the standoff at the bridge, July 1980. Photo by Jim Wilkes, courtesy Toronto Star*

How it was finally settled

It took another 13 years to sort out. In 1993, the province passed the Toronto Islands Residential Community Stewardship Act: 262 homes stayed on land leases running to December 2092.

You can still buy one, barely.

Homes only sell to people on a 500-name waiting list, and you get on that list by lottery. A house is appraised on build cost alone — lot size and location are explicitly excluded — so a home fifteen minutes from downtown on a car-free island is priced as if it were sitting in a field. Nobody flips anything. About 70 have been sold since 1994, which works out to one or two a year.

The list is set to open again on October 1, 2026.

The bridge came back

Remember the bridge idea? It returned in 2003.

Council approved it, crews prepared the ground, and by the last week of November, a crane was on site. It was the closest anyone had come to a fixed link since 1935.

About a week later, it was over. Toronto had elected a mayor who ran on stopping it, council reversed its own decision on December 3, and Transport Minister David Collenette said Ottawa would respect that. The approval was shelved in January.

Robert Deluce, who was planning a new airline, settled with the government for approximately $20 million. He launched Porter in 2006.

And now

In 2013, Porter requested 168 more metres of runway at each end so it could operate jets. Ottawa refused in November 2015.

This time it wasn't an airline. Ontario took Toronto's share of the airport by law and backed a runway 600 metres longer, built on new land pushed out into the lake, aiming to handle up to 10 million passengers a year — about five times the current airport capacity. The premier said jets were coming one way or another.

On July 24, after more than 87,000 people wrote to the federal consultation, with about 87% of them opposed, the federal government declined it.

Ontario still holds the land and hasn't dropped the idea. There will be another plan.