Historically, Toronto’s waterfront was home to rich aquatic habitats, including cobble reefs, estuaries and bays with productive marshes, wooded shorelines and meadows. Diverse communities of fish lived in these habitats, which provided opportunities for shelter, food, and spawning activities. Over time, modern pressures such as port expansion and other industrial uses, transportation and recreation, led to serious environmental degradation.

As part of our sustainability mandate and through our partnership with Aquatic Habitat Toronto, Waterfront Toronto has made a commitment to incorporating improvements to aquatic habitat in all projects we undertake at the water’s edge. More information about our strategy for Aquatic Habitat improvements can be found in our Parks and Public Space Framework.
 

Planning and building new aquatic habitat is an integral part of creating a more liveable and sustainable waterfront. 

Waterfront Toronto has already completed several aquatic habitat improvement projects.  

During the construction of the wavedecks in the central waterfront more than 1900 square metres of aquatic habitat was created in addition to the 1700 square metres of new public space.

This new habitat invites fish and other aquatic life to inhabit the area. At the Spadina WaveDeck, the area is situated next to the pike spawning area of the Spadina wetlands. To create aquatic habitat in this deep water, sea wall environment, a variety of different measures were used such as boulders, smaller aggregate, root balls, large logs among other things all providing lots of spaces for fish to hide. Now aquatic plants can root in amongst the habitat features providing both food and shelter.

Similar installations were created at the Rees and Simcoe wavedecks where brand new aquatic habitat provides an environment for fish to reproduce, forage, live, and grow.

In partnership with Toronto and Region Conservation, we have opened new parks along the eastern and western parts of the City and improved the aquatic habitats in those areas.

• Mimico Waterfront Park was constructed through a lakefilling process along a narrow section of the existing shoreline. Restoration and shoreline enhancements to terrestrial and aquatic habitats were key elements of the park’s design and construction.

• Port Union Waterfront Park provides access to the shoreline, trails, wetlands, pedestrian lookouts and cobblestone beaches.  Shoreline restoration improvements and the creation of additional aquatic and terrestrial habitat were  important parts of the first phase of the park. Phase two construction, which is now underway, also includes the creation of new aquatic habitat.

New aquatic habitat was able built as part of the Western Beaches Watercourse. In addition to the 600 metre long training and competition watercourse for rowing and paddling, the project included the creation of an approximately 650 metres long breakwater with new aquatic habitat installations.