Ninety metres of eroding cliff along fifteen kilometres of lakeshore, holding a geological record of the last ice age.
The Bluffs run about 15 kilometres along Lake Ontario in Toronto’s east end, rising to around 90 metres at the highest point. They are the eroded face of an ancient sandbar and delta, laid down at the edge of glacial Lake Iroquois and in the preceding interglacial.
The exposed strata contain a continuous record of around 70,000 years of glacial and interglacial deposits, including plant and animal fossils, and were studied by A. P. Coleman in the early twentieth century. Geologists come from a long way to look at them.
Elizabeth Simcoe, the Lieutenant Governor’s wife, named them in 1793 after the cliffs of Scarborough in Yorkshire.
Where to go
Bluffer’s Park at the foot of Brimley Road is the only vehicle access to the beach, and the main destination — a marina, a sandy beach with lifeguards in summer, and a view straight up the cliff face.
It gets extremely busy on summer weekends and the road down is a single lane; parking fills by mid-morning and the city has run a shuttle at times.
Scarborough Bluffs Park at the top of Brimley Road gives the view along the cliffs without the descent.
The Doris McCarthy Trail at Ravine Drive is the best walk — down a wooded ravine to the shoreline, about a kilometre each way, named for the painter who lived at the top of it for seventy years.
Cathedral Bluffs Park has the most dramatic formations.
The erosion
The bluffs are retreating. Erosion rates vary but reach a metre or more a year in unprotected sections, and houses along the top have been lost.
People die here. There are falls from the edge and from people scrambling on the face, and rescues from the shoreline below where the tide of debris comes down. Fences exist for a reason and are routinely ignored for photographs.
Stay behind them, and do not sit under the cliff.
Getting there
This is the awkward part. It is in Scarborough, about 20 kilometres east of downtown, and there is no rail line close.
Kennedy station on Line 2, then bus 12 down Brimley, then a walk. Around an hour from downtown in total.
Driving takes 30 minutes; parking at Bluffer’s is paid and full on summer weekends.
Practicalities
Free. There is a restaurant at the marina and seasonal food trucks. Facilities are limited elsewhere.
Autumn is the best season — the colour on the ravine trails, no crowds, and clear air.
More Parks & Outdoors
High Park
Four hundred acres with a zoo, a lake, an oak savannah that burns on purpose, and a cherry blossom that shuts the roads.
Trinity Bellwoods Park
Thirty-eight acres of grass where the west end drinks in summer, with a white squirrel that has its own following.