If you asked most people who live near Gerrard and Coxwell what's happening at Williamson Park Ravine, you'd probably hear some version of "isn't that still torn up?" The mental image sticks: chain-link fencing, orange snow mesh, the sound of machinery drifting up from the rail corridor on a Sunday morning when you'd rather be walking a dog than dodging a construction zone. That image is two years out of date. The fencing came down, the boardwalk got built, and last fall a Toronto outlet was recommending this exact stretch of ravine as one of the city's better spots to catch the leaves before winter. The Upper Beaches has a finished amenity sitting right where residents still expect a mess, and most of the neighborhood hasn't caught up.
What Actually Happened Down There
The ravine belongs to the Small's Creek system, four connected green spaces threaded through the Upper Beaches between Coxwell and Victoria Park: Merrill Bridge Road Park, Williamson Park, and the smaller Newbold and Gainsborough sections. In February 2022, Metrolinx moved heavy equipment into Williamson Ravine to begin clearing trees for the Lakeshore East corridor's expansion from three tracks to four. City council pushed back almost immediately. A motion led by then-councillors Paula Fletcher and Brad Bradford asked Metrolinx to investigate alternatives that would reduce the damage to the ravine ecosystem, but Beach Metro Community News reported that crews had already started removing trees before the vote was even finalized.
What Metrolinx eventually built was a T-wall structure, precast concrete panels that let the retaining wall stay contained to Metrolinx's own property line instead of chewing further into the ravine floor. According to Metrolinx's own accounting, close to 70 percent of the trees marked for removal were invasive species, mostly Manitoba and Norway maple, and a redesign of the construction footprint saved an additional 60 trees, including several large red oaks. The agency committed to planting up to 2,000 native trees, shrubs, and smaller plants across the corridor as compensation.
The Boardwalk That Showed Up In 2024
By May 2024, the track widening was wrapping up and Metrolinx turned to the part of the project residents actually cared about: rebuilding the walking path. The old dirt trail through the ravine got replaced with a wooden boardwalk designed to connect two sections of existing boardwalk that had sat on opposite sides of the ravine for years without a link between them. Metrolinx's restoration plan named the species going into the ground: buttonbush, American witch-hazel, fragrant sumac, and black cherry, chosen specifically because they support birds and insects in a way the maple monoculture never did.
That is the detail worth sitting with. This isn't a patched-up trail. It's a stretch of ravine that had roughly 200 trees removed and is now growing back with a plant list picked for habitat value rather than whatever seeded itself after the last clear-cutting decades ago.
Walking It End To End
The loop is short enough to do on a lunch break and varied enough to be worth doing more than once. Here's how the three access points break down.
| Access Point | What You'll Find |
|---|---|
| Gainsborough Road, northwest entrance | A staircase drops you straight into forest cover, the most direct way in if you're coming from the west side of the neighborhood |
| Merrill Bridge Road Park | Open dog park at the top of the slope, then the boardwalk carrying you down into the ravine itself |
| Gerrard Street East, near Wembley and Hollywood | The southern exit, close enough to Gerrard's retail strip to turn the walk into an errand |
Cross under the rail line via Woodbine Avenue and you'll pass the murals painted under the overpass before looping back toward Wildwood Crescent. The full circuit runs close to two and a half kilometers if you link both sides of the ravine, though plenty of people just do one leg and turn around depending on how much time they've got before the dog gets impatient or the stroller needs a nap.
Why Last November Wasn't A Fluke
In November 2025, blogTO featured Merrill Bridge Road Park and Williamson Park Ravine's shared boardwalk as one of the city's better last-chance fall color spots, calling out the elevated walkway that carries visitors down into a densely forested river valley. That piece ran a full growing season and a half after the boardwalk opened. This fall marks another full year of growth on top of that. Buttonbush and fragrant sumac planted as small shrubs in 2024 have had two seasons to fill in, which matters for a restoration planting more than almost any other kind of landscaping. The first year is survival. The second and third years are when the canopy starts doing what it was planted to do.
None of this shows up if you're only picturing the ravine as it looked during construction. The walk that earned a mention in a citywide fall foliage roundup last year is the same walk sitting two blocks from Gerrard right now, just with another year of leaves on it.
Coffee At Both Ends
The Upper Beaches version of this walk has a built-in ritual, mostly because the ravine sits between two cafés that are easy to treat as bookends. Paper Route Café at 462 Kingston Road opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. on weekends, closing by 4 p.m., and its yellow-framed windows make it hard to miss if you're heading toward the southern edge of the neighborhood. On the Gerrard side, Morning Parade Coffee Bar at 1952 Gerrard East keeps slightly shorter hours through the week but has a back terrace that's worth the wait if you're doing the walk as a proper outing rather than a quick loop.
Start at one, finish at the other, and the ravine stops being a detour and starts being the reason for the walk.
The Neighborhood's Own Blind Spot
The Upper Beaches has spent the better part of four years absorbing construction noise, tree removal notices, and a fair amount of frustration about how the whole process was handled. That history is real and residents who fought for a better outcome deserve credit for the tree count that got saved and the restoration plan that got strengthened along the way. What's easy to miss is that the fight is over and the result is genuinely good: a finished boardwalk, a plant list built for habitat rather than convenience, and a walk that a citywide outlet thought was worth recommending to people who don't even live here.
If you've been avoiding that corner of Gerrard and Coxwell because you're still picturing fencing and mud, it might be time to go take another look. The neighborhood you already know just got a little better, and most people haven't noticed yet.
Want more of what's actually happening on the ground in the Upper Beaches, from the market to the sidewalk? Toronto City Realtor keeps close tabs on this pocket of the east end. Reach out anytime to book a showing or get a free home valuation.
