West Hill, Toronto
Encyclopedia
Location and principal features
It is located in the eastern end of the city, in the former city of ScarboroughScarborough, Ontario
Scarborough is a dissolved municipality within the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Geographically, it comprises the eastern part of Toronto. It is bordered on the south by Lake Ontario, on the west by Victoria Park Avenue, on the north by Steeles Avenue East, and on the east by the Rouge River...
. Scarborough was merged with five other municipalities and a regional government to form the new "City of Toronto" in 1998. It is roughly bounded by Scarborough Golf Club Road and a branch of Highland Creek on the west, the CNR
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad"....
railway tracks and Lake Ontario on the south, and Highland Creek on the north-east. The name comes from its elevated position on the west side of Highland Creek, a deep glacial
Glacier
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...
ravine
Ravine
A ravine is a landform narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streamcutting erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than valleys. A ravine is generally a fluvial slope landform of relatively steep sides, on the order of twenty to...
.
The section east of Manse Road, which roughly splits this neighbourhood in half, is often now referred to as the Manse Valley neighbourhood. It has less commercial development and more industrial development than the western part of the neighbourhood. However, both parts were treated as part of West Hill prior to development.
Due to its position on the main road from Toronto to Kingston
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
, there was a post office
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
named "West Hill" from the mid 19th Century until the 1990s. From 1906 until the closing of the line in 1936, West Hill was the eastern terminus of the Toronto and Scarborough Electric Railway, a street-car
Light rail
Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...
line. West Hill Public School is one of the oldest in Toronto, a school having been built on the present site in the 1880s, although the original building was replaced by a modern facility in 1994. West Hill Collegiate Institute
West Hill Collegiate Institute
West Hill Collegiate Institute is a public high school in Toronto, located in eastern Scarborough. The school was opened in 1955 and named after the community of West Hill, Toronto in which the school is located, and recently celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2005...
is also a older high school in Scarborough, having been opened in 1955. The other major high schools serving the area are Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute
Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute
Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute is a public high school located in Toronto, located in south east Scarborough. The school was built in 1969 and named for Sir Oliver Mowat, a Father of Confederation and former Ontario premier....
on the other side of Highland Creek and Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute
Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute
Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute is a high school in Toronto, located in southern Scarborough, specifically, in the heart of Guildwood Village beside The Guild Inn at 145 Guildwood Parkway...
in the Guildwood
Guildwood
Guildwood, also known as Guildwood Village, is a historic and residential neighbourhood in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located along the Scarborough Bluffs, south of Kingston Road, from Grey Abbey Trail in the east to the end of Sylvan Avenue in the west.-History:Guildwood village...
neighbourhood.
The main routes through West Hill are Kingston Road
Kingston Road (Toronto)
Kingston Road is the southernmost major road along the eastern portion of Toronto, specifically in the districts of East York and Scarborough. Until 1998, it formed a significant portion of Highway 2...
(part of the former Highway 2
Highway 2 (Ontario)
King's Highway 2, usually referred to simply as Highway 2 is a provincially maintained highway in Ontario. Once the primary east–west route across the southern end of the province, Highway 2 became mostly redundant in the 1960s following the completion of Highway 401, which more or less...
), Morningside Avenue and Lawrence Avenue
Lawrence Avenue
Lawrence Avenue is a major east-west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is divided into east and west portions by Yonge Street, the dividing line of east-west streets in Toronto....
East.
Before the completion of Highway 401 in the 1960s, West Hill was one of the major shopping areas in the region. In the 1950s, it served communities as far away as Oshawa
Oshawa
Oshawa is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It lies in Southern Ontario approximately 60 kilometres east of downtown Toronto. It is commonly viewed as the eastern anchor of both the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe. It is now commonly referred to as the most...
. However, as development spread east and north along the new highway, major commercial developments became less viable. A major regional shopping centre, Morningside Mall, built in the late 1970s, was left without a major tenant when Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
, Dominion
Dominion Stores (Ontario)
Dominion Stores was once a national chain of supermarkets in Canada, which was still known as the Dominion of Canada at the time of the company's founding. The chain was founded in 1919 in Ontario and was later acquired by Conrad Black's Argus Corporation...
, and Shoppers Drug Mart
Shoppers Drug Mart
Shoppers Drug Mart Corporation is Canada's largest pharmacy chain with more than 1,241 stores operating under the names Shoppers Drug Mart in nine provinces and two territories and Pharmaprix in Quebec as well as in Hawkesbury, Ontario....
abandoned the mall. Morningside Mall was completely demolished as of late 2007, and has been replaced by Morningside Crossing, a plaza.
Another change occasioned by the building of Highway 401 was a drop in business for the large number of motel
Motel
A motor hotel, or motel for short, is a hotel designed for motorists, and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles...
s lining Kingston Road
Kingston Road (Toronto)
Kingston Road is the southernmost major road along the eastern portion of Toronto, specifically in the districts of East York and Scarborough. Until 1998, it formed a significant portion of Highway 2...
. Most of the motel sites have been redeveloped as commercial sites, and most of the remaining motels serve as temporary housing for Toronto's homeless.
There are many people of British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
, Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
, Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
and Black Canadian
Black Canadian
'Black Canadians is a designation used for people of Black African descent, who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The term specifically refers to Canadians with Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean origin...
heritage living in West Hill.
Development
Until after World War II, West Hill was largely rural, although the stretch of Kingston Road (including what is now Old Kingston Road) running through it had some commercial development, some even dating back to the late 19th century. The neighbourhood's oldest remaining buildings tend to be along this stretch.In the 1950s the neighbourhood was still difficult to reach by road, except for access to the south-west towards the city because even at this point Kingston Road was a four lane highway. However, access to the direct east and west had to navigate Highland Creek and required a steep descent and ascent. There was no access across the creek across Morningside. However, the main bus commuter bus route from downtown Toronto to Oshawa ran directly along Kingston Road as well. As such, early development in the neighbourhood clustered around Kingston Road starting in the 1950s. The first subdivisions stretched along the straight north-south roads running off Kingston Road, primarily those existing road allowances which were close together and allowed for back-to-back lots with minimum frontage and depth. Larger plots of land that were developed in the late 1950s through the 1970s tended to be laid out with curved roads, short connecting roads and dead end streets that made for quieter neighbourhoods but resulted in irregular lot sizes.
The neighbourhood grew quickly and by the mid-1960s there were several new public schools to serve the new residents, who were generally young families drawn to the lower home prices in the area. The area's K-6 and K-8 public schools, Galloway Road, Eastview, Peter Secor, and Heron Park, were all built in this period, as was the separate school, St. Martin de Porres. By the 1970s, two technical high schools, Sir Robert Borden and Maplewood, had joined West Hill C.I.
West Hill Collegiate Institute
West Hill Collegiate Institute is a public high school in Toronto, located in eastern Scarborough. The school was opened in 1955 and named after the community of West Hill, Toronto in which the school is located, and recently celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2005...
, as did Joseph Brant, a senior public school that accepted grades 7-8 from three feeder schools.
At the times of the earliest developments, sanitary sewer service had not been extended this far east. House lots generally had to be large to accommodate septic tanks. Development was largely limited to single family homes and low rise apartment blocks.
Road and traffic access to the neighbourhood quickly improved. During the 1960s, new bridges were built spanning the deep sections of Highland Creek on Lawrence, Morningside and Kingston. This allowed direct access to the new Highway 401 to the east and west. The introduction of the GO Train at Guildwood Station allowed direct commuter connections into the city. The completion of the Bloor-Danforth subway line to Warden Station
Warden (TTC)
Warden is a station on the Bloor–Danforth line of the subway system in Toronto, Canada. It is located at 3276 St. Clair Avenue East, on the southeast corner of the intersection with Warden Avenue....
allowed more frequent TTC bus service into the neighbourhood. Service improved again when the subway was extended to Kennedy Station
Kennedy (TTC)
Kennedy is the terminal subway station of the Bloor-Danforth and Scarborough RT lines of the Toronto subway and RT. It is located at 2455 Eglinton Avenue East, just east of Kennedy Road. The station opened in 1980 in what was then the Borough of Scarborough with the Bloor-Danforth platform, and the...
Commercial development centered around the triangle where Kingston, Lawrence and Morningside met, and spread out along Kingston Road and parts of Morningside Avenue. In the south-eastern part of the neighbourhood, there was industrial development along Coronation Drive, mostly catering to the chemical industry.
City services continued to improve and in the 1970s high rise apartment buildings were introduced. Most homes in the neighbourhood were upgraded to have both storm and sanitary sewers. This allowed redevelopment of many larger lots to allow more homes in existing space. By the late 1970s, almost all the land in the neighbourhood had been developed.
Development peaked in the late 1970s with the building of Morningside Mall, an enclosed mall built on the site of a strip plaza, anchored by Woolco and Dominion.
Recent urban trends
However, although the development of the neighbourhood continued into the 1980s, its character started to change as many of the original residents started to age and residential patterns in Scarborough started to change. Commercial development in the Morningside and MalvernMalvern, Toronto
Malvern is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with a population of 44,315. It is located in the northeast corner of the city, in the district of Scarborough. Scarborough was merged with five other municipalities and a regional government to form the new City of Toronto in 1998...
neighbourhoods improved, and residents who used to come to West Hill to shop now no longer had to do so. It was clear that Toronto was overbuilt with shopping centers and Morningside Mall started only to draw from the immediate neighbourhood as larger nearby malls such as Cedarbrae Mall
Cedarbrae Mall
Cedarbrae Mall is a shopping mall in the Scarborough area of Toronto, Canada, at the corner of Markham Road and Lawrence Avenue. The mall opened in the early 1960s.-Notable tenants:...
and Scarborough Town Centre
Scarborough Town Centre
The Scarborough Town Centre is an upscale shopping mall in the Scarborough district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Central to the Scarborough City Centre, it is adjacent to the Scarborough Centre RT station and Scarborough Centre Bus Terminal. It was constructed by Oxford Properties and opened in...
had better road access.
As such, recent re-development in the neighbourhood has been centred along the commercial areas surrounding Kingston Road. Disused commercial properties are often redeveloped as high density residential townhouses.
Home prices in the neighbourhood generally remain below average for the City of Toronto as a whole despite the average size of homes (predominately two-bedroom bungalows) and larger lot sizes. In addition, the neighbourhood's population is slowly shrinking as the resident per home average continues to drop. Newcomers to the neighbourhood tend to be younger families looking for inexpensive housing in the city with convenient commuting connections.
Amenities
West Hill has a good mix of commercial establishments far more typical of an older neighbourhood than a new suburb. Fast food establishments do not dominate and there are many sit-down restaurants featuring a variety of cuisines including Greek, Canadian Chinese, Caribbean and Middle Eastern, echoing the ethnic diversity of the neighbourhood. There are two supermarkets and numerous smaller food outlets. The area is well served by physicians, dentists and lawyers and features three pharmacies, including both major chains.The area has numerous sports facilities, including an indoor arena at Heron Park and two swimming pools, one of which is indoor. There are tennis facilities at nearby Scarborough College
Scarborough College
Scarborough College is an independent day and boarding school for boys and girls aged 3-18 years. It is located in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England and was founded in 1898. The school has been an International Baccalaureate World School since June 2006...
.
A new branch of the Toronto Public Library has been built further east of the old site at Morningside Mall, roughly at the geographical centre of the neighbourhood.
The neighbourhood has numerous small parks, usually near the sites of the public schools. It also borders the huge park system running through Highland Creek on three sides, and has a large park bordering Lake Ontario in the south-east part of the neighbourhood south of the industrial district.
TTC bus service through the neighbourhood is frequent and operates on all the major streets in the area, allowing access to the Bloor-Danforth Subway at Kennedy Station and the Scarborough RT at Lawrence East. GO Train service is available at Guildwood Station. The neighbourhood will also lie on the new Scarborough-Malvern light rail line which is expected to carry 22 million passengers a year by 2021.