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Have you ever wondered what happens to the familiar streets of Toronto when they leave the city behind? Road Trip brings you along for a ride to the very end of the street, exploring the sights along the way and finding what makes each road unique.
What comes to mind when you think about Dufferin Street? The Dufferin Gate at Exhibition Place? Maybe the Dufferin Mall? Or Corso Italia. Perhaps the Allen Expressway? What about rolling hills, cows, horses, and farms? No? Well then join us on a cycling road trip up Dufferin, exploring the street as it carves a path from the northern edge of Toronto through suburbia and the Greenbelt all the way to the very end of the road in the Holland Marsh.
Our journey begins at a deserted Downsview station. We'll cycle up other streets for a while before joining Dufferin at Steeles. (Val Dodge/Torontoist)
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This is a great idea for a bike ride / blog post.
A friend of mine did something like this years ago. He rode his bike from Kipling Station to Kennedy Station just to see what it was like. This would be a great blog series for sure!
Great pictures, this would be a fantastic ride. My daily commute takes me along Sheppard and past your starting point and then up in to Vaughan. I still can't believe that people fall for the promise of "country-style" living and end up in squished together ugly homes. To each their own, but the sooner I peddle my way out of the supposed "City Above Toronto" the better. Looking forward to your future rides and postings.
I really enjoyed this article as well. I've seen parts of Dufferin when we went on school trips in grade school but this is such a better view.
I don't think I could live up there as I'm a city boy. But I do love going camping in areas that are as far North of our province as you can go. That's where the true stary nights are. Keep them coming!
It feels a lot more like summer in these photos than it does downtown.
I'd like to see the end of the Queen West streetcar line as it follows Lakeshore.
I just did that one a few weeks back. I'd recommend it; it's a nice quiet part of the city out toward long branch.
Awesome Article!
It reminds me of my childhood goal to ride a bike from Innisfil to Toronto. Unfortunately that never panned out.
Google says that's about a 100 km one-way trip. An undertaking for sure, and certainly not a round trip to make in one day. Growing up in Brantford, I'd ride with a few friends to Dundas (about 30 kms away), spend the afternoon on the trails there and then head home for a late dinner. I'm working on rebuilding that endurance and drive. Just thinking of handling tight single-track after my 20 km commute now makes me shudder.
Great article! I haven't done a trip like this for some time now... I keep getting older and the burbs keep sprawling :(
I went up Dufferen once, but Leslie was my favourite. Once you got to Major Mackenzie it turned into a quiet little road heading toward lake Simcoe... I'm not sure if you have to go even further now.
Getting through that ring of big suburban motorways surrounding the city is such a drag, especially with all the big trucks it can be a white-knuckle experience. I wish there was at least one bike-friendly route to escape the city in each of the north, west & east directions.
If you take the GO train to Ajax, the relaxing countryside starts just 7 km north of the train station. I rode out that way all summer last year.
Riding north from the Ajax GO station, through northern Pickering, and back down through parts of Rouge Park and northeastern Scarborough is fun. You can hop on the Scarborough RT or GO train to avoid the worst part of the ride back into town.
My chosen route for going north from Toronto is Warden. It turns into a country road sooner than Leslie does and remains rural for its entire length. Leslie goes through several built-up areas and feels more like a highway.
The TTC's Warden bus is now equipped with bike racks and goes as far north as Major Mackenzie, right at the edge of the country. I'm not sure which other TTC routes will take you that close to good country riding.
Thanks for the tips Val! A few years ago I tried the GO train out to Oakville and headed north toward Milton, but already the suburban housing developments were going up all over the place there.
Nice ride. There is a website called bikely.com where people post their rides, with distances, links to Google Earth, etc. Southern Ontario is really not so bad.
Of course, one close-to-Dufferin landmark worth noting in York Region is Richard Serra's "Shift". (How easy would it be to access now?)
Damn, I thought that was farther west.
Brilliant idea! Val, if you're still reading the comments, how long did the whole trip take you?
The actual riding time from Downsview station to the top of Dufferin and back home to the east end was five hours for 115 km. The total time taken was about an hour longer, including a quick lunch break and a whole lot of picture-taking.