The Beaches is an upper-middle class neighbourhood and popular tourist destination located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The trendy shops of Queen Street East lie at the heart of The Beaches community, with the boardwalk by the lake and several large parks being just a few steps south. It's side streets are mostly lined with picturesque semis
and large-scale Victorian, edwardian and new-style mansions. It also
includes low-rise apartment buildings, and a few row-houses. The beach
itself is a single uninterrupted stretch of sandy shoreline bounded by
the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant
(locally known as the water works) to the east and Woodbine park (a
small peninsula in Lake Ontario) to the west. Although it is
continuous, there are four names which correspond each to approximately
one quarter of the length of the beach (from east to west): Balmy
Beach, Scarboro Beach, Kew Beach and Woodbine Beach.
It is one of the few desirable neighborhoods in the city to
have held-off the construction of high-rise condominiums, giving it a
unique small-town feel in a massive city.
The name of the community is the subject of a long-standing dispute. Some long-time local residents believe that The Beach
is the proper historical name for the area, whereas others are of the
view that "The Beaches" is the more universally recognized
neighbourhood name, particularly by non-residents. All government
levels refer to the riding, or the ward in the case of the municipal government, as Beaches-East York.[1]
The dispute over the area's name reached a fever pitch in 1985, when
the City of Toronto installed 14 street signs designating the
neighbourhood as "The Beaches". The resulting controversy resulted in
the eventual removal of the signs, although the municipal government
continues to officially designate the area as "The Beaches".[2]
In early 2006 the local Beaches Business Improvement Area voted to
place "The Beach" on signs slated to appear on new lampposts over the
summer, but local outcry caused them to rescind that decision.[3]
The Beaches Business Improvement Area board subsequently held a poll
(online, in person and by ballot) in April 2006 to determine whether
the new street signs would be designated "The Beach" or "The Beaches",
and 58% of participants selected "The Beach" as the name to appear on
the signs.
Originally, the Beaches area was considered to be bounded by Woodbine Avenue to the west, Victoria Park Avenue to the east, Kingston Road to the north, and Lake Ontario
to the south. The lakefront is divided into three sections; Woodbine
Beach to the west, Kew Beach in the centre, and Balmy Beach to the
east. It is these beaches which give the neighbourhood its name and
defining principal characteristic. Until Lakeshore Boulevard was
extended to Woodbine Avenue in the 1950s, Woodbine Beach was not a
bathing beach, but rather a desolate wooded area known as The Cut.
Today, some Torontonians generally tend to view the The Beaches
neighbourhood as extending to Coxwell, with the area north of Queen
Street East and west of Woodbine nicknamed the Beaches Triangle. In addition, the area north of Kingston Road up to the CNR tracks has become known as the Upper Beaches. However, some locals still use the original definition.
Still, whatever the definition of its borders, before amalgamation
in 1998 the Beaches neighbourhood was at Toronto's extreme eastern
limit and formed part of the city's border with the suburb of Scarborough.
Even now, residents refer to The Beaches as being in the east end of
the city, though since the amalgamation of city services in 1998, it is
strictly speaking part of the east-central district of Toronto.
Source: Wikipedia
