The Danforth
Greektown, and still genuinely Greek at the Pape end. Also Ethiopian, Bangladeshi and about a dozen good bakeries. Open late, walkable, on the subway.
East York
The smallest, friendliest piece of the city and the last borough in Canada until 1998. Brick semis, deep back gardens, ravines on two sides, and Greektown running along the bottom of it.
Stock photograph. Not East York.
A small town inside the city
Feels like
20–25 min on Line 2
To Union Station
A porch, within walking distance of a subway
Go for
How to say it
East York is not “the east end”: that is the Beaches and Leslieville, and people here will correct you cheerfully. East York is above the Danforth, it was a borough rather than a city, and residents are still faintly proud of that.
Heads up
The housing stock is old and small. Most of what looks like a bargain is a war-era bungalow that needs wiring, insulation and a plumber, and the lots are narrow enough that adding on gets complicated.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
Everything major is fifteen minutes away on Line 2, which is arguably the best of both.
Community sport
Leaside Flames & East York Baseball
Nothing professional, and that is the point. This is where you will actually meet your neighbours: the rink and the ball diamonds run everything from four-year-olds to over-fifties.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about East York.
Public places, parks, markets and the streets the independents are actually on. Nothing here is invented, and nothing here is a photograph of somewhere else.
Taylor Creek Park
A ravine trail that runs from Victoria Park all the way to the Don Valley. Paved, flat, and empty on a weekday morning.
Todmorden Mills
A 19th-century mill site and wildflower preserve at the bottom of the Don Valley, with a small theatre in it. Almost nobody who lives here has been.
Pape & Danforth to Coxwell
The independents thin out east of Pape and then cluster again around Coxwell. All of them are on the subway, which is the whole appeal.
East York Farmers' Market
Tuesdays at the East York Civic Centre from spring to autumn. Small, cheap, and the fastest way to be recognised by somebody.
The year
What comes round every year.
Keyed to a month, never to a date. Dates move, and a page that prints last year's is worse than one that says “September”.
July
East York Canada Day Parade
Running since the 1950s and one of the longest-standing in the country. It goes past a lot of front lawns, and people sit on them.
August
Taste of the Danforth
Canada's biggest Greek street festival shuts a kilometre of the Danforth to cars for a weekend. Free, and impossibly busy by eight in the evening.
May–October
East York Farmers' Market
Every Tuesday at the Civic Centre. Not the biggest market in the city, easily the friendliest.
HelloGTA.com
The GTA is enormous and most of it is unknown to everybody.
Including the people who have lived here twenty-five years. That is the whole brief: twenty-nine guides, and a question a week put to the region.