The Etobicoke Creek Trail Guide: Five Access Points from the Lake North

Etobicoke Lifestyle & Community Dave Dubbin August 21, 2026

The Etobicoke Creek Trail is the west end's quietest long walk. On the Toronto side it runs from the mouth of the creek at Marie Curtis Park north through Etobicoke Valley Park, breaks for a stretch where you have to use streets, and picks up again around Markland Wood before climbing to Centennial Park and the newer paved link that runs up to Eglinton Avenue West. The southern half is flat, paved and stroller friendly. The northern half is the interesting one.

Curious which Etobicoke pockets back onto this ravine system? Start with our neighbourhood guides here.

The map

12345Etobicoke Creek Trail access
1. Marie Curtis Park
2. Etobicoke Valley Park
3. Sherway / The West Mall
4. Neilson Park
5. Centennial Park© OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO

Access points plotted from OpenStreetMap data. Map tiles © CARTO, map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

1. Marie Curtis Park

Lake Shore Boulevard West at Forty Second Street, where the creek finally reaches Lake Ontario. This is the trail's southern anchor and the only access point with a beach, a big parking lot and washrooms. It is also where the Etobicoke Creek Trail meets the Waterfront Trail, so you can turn east toward Long Branch and Mimico or head north up the creek. Start here if you are bringing anyone who might want to turn around early.

2. Etobicoke Valley Park

615 Horner Avenue, tucked between the QEW and Lake Shore Boulevard. This is the section that feels furthest from the city despite being surrounded by it. Paved trail, mature trees, a real valley wall, and the creek doing what creeks do. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has done erosion work through here over the years, which is a reminder that this is an active watercourse and not a landscaped feature. After heavy rain, sections can flood. Check before you go.

3. Sherway and The West Mall

This is where we have to be straight with you: the trail does not run continuously. North of the QEW the ravine gets pinched by the Sherway and Queensway commercial corridor, and there is no dedicated path through it. Cyclists route on The West Mall and Evans, walkers usually drive past this stretch entirely. If you are planning a long day, treat Sherway as the point where you either get on transit or get in the car.

4. Neilson Park

56 Neilson Drive, off Bloor Street West near Renforth. The trail resumes in the valley here and runs north, threading around the Markland Wood Golf Club by way of a connector rather than cutting through it. The path narrows, the surface gets less predictable, and the tree cover thickens. This is the stretch that surprises people who assumed Etobicoke was all arterials and plazas.

5. Centennial Park

256 Centennial Park Road. The big one, with parking, washrooms, the conservatory and the ski hill. From Centennial Park Boulevard, the City and the TRCA built a 1.1 kilometre paved multi use trail running north alongside the creek and joining the eastbound sidewalk on Eglinton Avenue West. The City designed it to AODA standards with a maximum grade of 6.8% at a single point near the Eglinton access, so it is one of the more accessible ravine segments in the west end. It is also not lit and not winter maintained, which is worth knowing before you plan a January walk.

Keep going north from Eglinton and the trail eventually links into the Mississauga and Brampton sections. The full corridor, when it is finished, is planned to run about 50 kilometres from the Waterfront Trail up to Caledon.

A wooded creek trail in southern Ontario

Photo: Unsplash

If you like walking Etobicoke, these three go well with this one:

What the ravine does to the houses beside it

Buyers ask us constantly whether backing onto a ravine is worth paying for. The economics have two sides and they point in opposite directions.

On the plus side, ravine lots are in genuinely inelastic supply, which is the economist's way of saying that no matter how much demand rises, nobody can manufacture more of them. The city stopped making valley frontage a long time ago. Scarcity plus consistent demand is the classic setup for a durable price premium, and in Etobicoke it shows up most clearly in the pockets around Markland Wood and the streets east of the creek near Bloor.

On the minus side, the same ravine that gives you the view brings conservation authority regulation, slope stability obligations and, on some lots, real erosion exposure. TRCA permits govern what you can build near the top of bank, and the answer is often less than an owner expects. Insurance treatment of overland flooding varies by carrier. That is a set of costs and constraints that buyers frequently underweight because the view is doing the talking during the showing.

We are also not going to quote you a percentage premium for ravine lots, because a defensible number would require a hedonic regression on Etobicoke sales that isolates the ravine from lot size, frontage, house age and street, and we have not run one. Anyone who tells you the number is exactly 12% is guessing. What we can tell you is what specific comparable ravine and non ravine sales on nearby streets have actually done, which is the version that survives an appraisal.

How to actually use it

For a short outing, park at Marie Curtis and walk north to the QEW and back, roughly an hour at an unhurried pace on pavement the whole way. For a longer one, park at Centennial and take the north link up to Eglinton and back. For the full Toronto side, plan on a bike, plan on street riding through the Sherway gap, and plan on it taking most of a morning.

If proximity to the creek and the ravine system is part of what you are shopping for, that narrows the search considerably and changes what you should pay attention to on inspection. Book a call and we will map the streets that actually back onto it, pull what those lots have sold for, and flag the ones where the top of bank rules would limit what you could do later.

Dave Dubbin
Etobicoke Real Estate Expert
Dave Dubbin & Associates
Real Estate Broker for Etobicoke and Toronto Sotheby's International Realty, Canada