Toronto’s High Park – and getting there

High Park is one of the great underrated pleasures of visiting Toronto … and half the fun is getting there.

The efficient, but boring, way of getting to High Park is to take the Bloor-Danforth subway to High Park station, get off at the High Park Avenue exit, cross Bloor Street, and enter via the main entrance.

But you’re in Toronto, and so you have no excuse for being boring … so try one of the alternative routes and see something of the city.

The 506 College/Carlton streetcar will take you to High Park from downtown along College Street from College or Queen’s Park station — get on a westbound car to High Park. It will take you through some of Toronto‘s most interesting neighbourhoods. Just west of downtown, between Bathurst and Ossington, there’s the hustle and bustle of Little Italy, with its multiple cafes, gourmet food shops, and friendly street atmosphere. West of Ossington you get into an eclectic mix of new Canadians from all over the world, together with old Canadians (as it were) looking for an interesting place to live on a streetcar line near downtown. College St. then runs into Dundas Street at Landsdowne Ave, where the College car meets up with the Dundas Car and takes you through some authentic urban industrial wasteland over the CN tracks (but not too much industrial wasteland), before splitting off from Dundas to take you through the fun and quirky Roncesvalles neighborhood. Then you get to stately old houses near High Park and finally, to the High Park Loop with a newly built shelter that allows you to wait for the streetcar in comfort on the way back (and also provides the streetcar operators with a discreet place to answer the call of nature …).

If you’re coming from downtown closer to Queen Street, take the 501 Queen car west from Queen or Osgoode stations, though the glitter of Queen west (University to Bathurst), funky Queen West west (Bathurst to the CN tracks), and run-down-but-struggling-to-be-funky Parkdale (CN tracks to about Roncesvalles), till finally you hit the Queensway, the western beaches, and the southern end of the Park at Colborne Lodge Road.

Once you get to the Park you have lots and lots of options. On the west side of the Park, easily accessible from the Queen car and Colborne Lodge Road, is Grenadier Pond. The Pond runs almost all the way from the Queensway to Bloor Street West, and has been rehabilitated to become a natural habitat for fish and waterfowl of all kinds. Closer to the south end, there are the Hillside Gardens, with manicured gardens to admire and large stretches of lawns to hang out on and read your book or admire the scenery. Further north are the west ravine nature trails — bring a good pair of shoes — the best place on the west side of the the park to disappear into nature for a while. Along the pond itself you can admire the willows and the wildlife that is now increasingly coming to make the Park its home. If you catch the pond at exactly the right time (good luck …), you’ll see the Japanese cherry blossoms in bloom.

If you’re coming from the east on the College/Carlton car, you’ll be dropped off on the east side of the Park. Take Howard Park Road down to the concession stands and the duck pond, and then you have a multitude of options for getting to the center of the Park. You can make a leisurely stroll down Deer Pen Road, and admire the mini-zoo full of large herbivores from all over the world (how did they get those sheep from North Africa??) — a family-friendly excursion if there ever was one. Going north will take you to the Spring Creek Nature Trails, perhaps the most secluded (and frankly confusing) part of High Park. If you like dogs, drop in on the Dogs off-leash area which on a busy Saturday afternoon will have maybe two dozen dogs s