The Etobicoke Waterfront Trail: Humber Bay to Long Branch

You can travel the Etobicoke waterfront end to end, from the Humber Bay Arch Bridge to the mouth of Etobicoke Creek at Marie Curtis Park. It is roughly nine kilometres, more if you take the park loops, and about two thirds of it is genuinely on the lake. The other third is not, and knowing which third is which is the difference between a good afternoon and a confusing one. Here is the whole thing, stop by stop, west from the Humber.

Most of the neighbourhoods along this stretch are ones we work in every week. Humber Bay Shores, Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch all have guides at davedubbin.com/neighbourhoods.

Photo: Unsplash

123456781. Humber Bay Arch Bridge2. Humber Bay Park East3. Humber Bay Park West4. Mimico Waterfront Park5. Amos Waites Park6. Colonel Samuel Smith Park7. Len Ford Park8. Marie Curtis Park© OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO

The eight access points below, mapped west from the Humber. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, tiles © CARTO.

1. Humber Bay Arch Bridge

The white steel arch at the mouth of the Humber River is the eastern gate. Cross it heading west and you are in Etobicoke. It is also the psychological start of the ride for anyone coming from downtown, because everything east of it is city and everything west of it is lake. Parking is scarce right at the bridge, so most people arrive on two wheels or on foot from Palace Pier or the Queensway.

2. Humber Bay Park East

Head south off Park Lawn Road and you land in the quieter of the two Humber Bay parks. There is a large parking lot, a boat launch, sheltered water where the sailing clubs run their small craft, and the Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat, a restored meadow at the end of Park Lawn Road that is worth ten minutes in late August when the plantings are at their best. This is the single easiest place to start if you are driving in with a bike on the rack.

3. Humber Bay Park West

West across Mimico Creek, and the busier of the pair. The promenade here is wide, the skyline view back toward downtown is the one that ends up on postcards, and on a Saturday morning it is shared by every kind of user at once. The towers of Humber Bay Shores are directly north of it, which is why this stretch feels more like a public square than a park.

4. Mimico Waterfront Park

The best kilometre on the Etobicoke waterfront, and it is engineered rather than found. Waterfront Toronto and the TRCA built 1.1 kilometres of multi use trail here on cantilevered boardwalks over the water, with cobble beaches, sheltered embayments and restored dune planting. It opened fully in June 2013. Before that, this shoreline was private backyards and there was no public route through at all.

Access is from the north. Head south off Lake Shore Boulevard West at Norris Crescent, Summerhill Road or Superior Avenue and you drop straight onto it.

If you are working your way through the west end trail network, these two pair with this one:

• The Etobicoke Creek Trail Guide: Five Access Points from the Lake North
• The Humber River Trail Guide: Six Access Points South to North
• Neighbourhood Spotlight: Long Branch

5. Amos Waites Park

A small park, 1.4 hectares, on Lake Shore Boulevard West at Mimico Avenue. Two playgrounds, the Amos Waites outdoor pool, and a short frontage on the lake with boardwalks and a bit of beach. It is the natural water and washroom stop between Mimico and New Toronto, and in July and August the pool is the reason most people stop here at all.

6. Colonel Samuel Smith Park

Seventy eight hectares of wooded shoreline at Kipling and Lake Shore, and the biggest single park on this route. Wide gravel paths, a working marina basin, meadow that fills with birds during migration, and a 250 metre refrigerated figure eight skating trail beside the Power House Recreation Centre at 65 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Road. It is the one stop on this list that is arguably better in February than in August.

7. Len Ford Park

Small, green, and directly on the water at the New Toronto and Long Branch edge. Nothing here is a destination on its own, which is exactly why it works as a rest stop. If you started at the Humber you are about seven kilometres in by the time you reach it.

8. Marie Curtis Park

The western end, 34 hectares at the mouth of Etobicoke Creek near Browns Line and Lake Shore. There is a public swimming beach on the east bank of the creek mouth, a wading pool and splash pad, playgrounds, picnic areas, an off leash dog area, and 1.7 kilometres of multi use trail that ties the Waterfront Trail into the Etobicoke Creek Trail heading north.

The park exists because of a disaster. Hurricane Hazel tore through this floodplain in October 1954 and destroyed the homes and cottages that stood here. The land was expropriated afterward and turned into parkland rather than rebuilt. Every time you walk it you are walking a flood plain that Toronto decided not to build on twice.

Where the trail is not continuous

This is the part guides tend to skip. West of Norris Crescent Parkette the lakeside path stops, because the shoreline through much of Mimico and New Toronto is still in private hands. The signed route climbs back up to Lake Shore Boulevard West and stays there until it drops into Colonel Samuel Smith Park at Kipling. It is a perfectly good ride, with a bike lane and a lot of storefronts, but it is a street, not a waterfront.

Plan around it. If you want an uninterrupted lakefront hour, ride the Humber Bay to Mimico Waterfront Park section and turn around. If you want the full nine kilometres, accept that the middle of it is Lake Shore.

Access points at a glance

What the trail does to property along it

A public amenity that cannot be replicated gets capitalized into nearby prices, which is the plain way of saying buyers pay something extra today for the walk they expect to take tomorrow. Lake frontage is the strongest version of that, because the supply of it is fixed. Nobody is making more shoreline between the Humber and Etobicoke Creek.

The catch is that the housing supply beside it is not fixed at all. Humber Bay Shores has absorbed thousands of new units in fifteen years, and when you can keep building vertically next to a fixed amenity, the premium the amenity would otherwise command gets spread across more doors. That is the difference between land being scarce and housing being scarce, and it explains why waterfront condos here have not behaved like waterfront houses do.

The current numbers bear that out. TRREB reported 1,564 GTA condo apartment sales in July 2026 at an average price of $636,323, down 2.3 percent from a year earlier, with the apartment benchmark at $535,200, down 7.35 percent. In Toronto West, which covers this entire stretch, the July average was $616,629 and units took 37 days to sell. With 8,352 active condo listings across the region, a buyer who wants to be within a five minute walk of this trail has genuine choice about which building and which floor, which is not something we could say in 2022.

The counterpoint is worth stating. Freehold houses in Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch sit on the same trail with none of the same supply pressure, because you cannot add fifty units to a 30 foot lot. If you believe the amenity premium here is real, the houses are where it survives, not the towers. Data current as of the July 2026 TRREB release, published August 6, 2026.

If you are trying to decide between Humber Bay Shores, Mimico and Long Branch, the trail is the same from all three and almost nothing else is. Book a call and we will walk you through what each one actually costs, what it rents for, and where we think the next five years are kinder. Reach us here.

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