Twelve Ways Into the Vale of Avoca, and Why Two Have Stayed Closed for a Decade
The Vale of Avoca has a dozen entrances, and nobody ever designed them as a set. The City's own description of the ravine says its trail network "grew through use, not planning," and that one line explains most of what Deer Park walkers run into. Two staircases have been fenced off for years. Some routes are steep, hard to find, or muddy for half the year. There are no signs telling you where you are. After a long stretch of piecemeal repairs, the City is now planning the ravine as one connected system, and much of the push for that came from the neighbourhoods around it.
The Vale covers roughly 17 hectares along about 1.5 kilometres of Yellow Creek. It runs south from Mount Pleasant Cemetery to Roxborough Drive, between Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road. The open-house panels the City presented on October 7 count twelve access points connecting the surrounding streets to the trails, and they say which ones get the most use.
| Entrance | What the City's panels say |
|---|---|
| David A. Balfour Park Trail at Avoca Avenue | One of the two busiest; a sloped path into the park trail |
| Mount Pleasant Road at Roxborough Drive | One of the two busiest; at the traffic signal |
| Mount Pleasant Cemetery | Popular |
| Heath Street East stairs behind Deer Park School, at Jeffrey E. Mann Landing | Popular |
| Heath Crescent stairs | Closed because of poor condition |
| 80 St. Clair Avenue East stairs | Closed because of poor condition |
The map also marks the Shaftesbury Avenue and Mathersfield Drive stairs at the south end, plus two informal-looking points along Mount Pleasant Road. One is south of Inglewood Drive. The other is north of Roxborough Street East, behind a guard rail. The panels say plainly that some entrances are "hard to find or poorly connected to the trail system." If the Mount Pleasant Road gaps are new to you, that's what the City means.
Both closures go back more than ten years, and each has its own history.
The Heath Crescent staircase links Deer Park to Moore Park across the creek. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority says a slope failed after the July 8, 2013 storm. The City reported the site to TRCA in late 2015 and closed the staircase for public safety. A TRCA photo from 2016 already shows it shut.
The St. Clair access is at the northwest corner of St. Clair Avenue East and Avoca Avenue. TRCA describes what's left there as "a dirt path and a few wooden steps," closed after it fell into disrepair in 2014. Rebuilding it is harder than it looks from the sidewalk. St. Clair sits high above the creek, so any route down is long and steep. The City's panels also note that steep paths erode faster, and that gentler slopes need room this ravine doesn't have. TRCA's St. Clair Staircase Project is still working out whether a staircase can go there at all. As of its September update, no public notices had gone out and no construction had started.
The two have different outlooks. Heath Crescent has a date. TRCA expects channel, slope and staircase work to start in the first quarter of 2027. The Deer Park Residents Group's September update listed a target tender release in the fourth quarter of 2026 and construction starting late in the first quarter of 2027. The same update said engineering alternatives for St. Clair were expected to go to TRCA late in the fourth quarter of 2026. Those dates are forecasts, and these projects have slipped before.
For years the Vale was repaired one site at a time. TRCA rebuilt the Yellow Creek channel below Summerhill Gardens in 2024, after emergency work that began in 2019. The City finished a separate study of protecting the sewers and watermains under the creek in 2025. None of that work addressed how people actually get into and through the ravine.
That changed in 2025, when City Council directed staff to plan for reducing erosion, renewing the natural environment, and creating "a connected trail network for the growing community." The resulting Vale of Avoca Ravine Improvement Project covers entrances, trail routes, creek crossings and wayfinding together. The panels lay out the current gaps: limited creek crossings, some redundant trails, and "no signs, seating, viewpoints or information about the ravine."
The scope also rules some things out. Lighting, playgrounds, sports facilities, washrooms and drinking fountains are all excluded, because the City's Ravine Strategy puts ecological protection first. The ravine is a City-designated Environmentally Significant Area, so whatever gets built will be modest. Expect better stairs, clearer routes, signs and a few places to sit.
The push to get here came largely from outside City Hall. The Midtown Ravines Group is a registered charity formed by ten residents' associations: South Eglinton Davisville, Moore Park, Deer Park, Avoca Vale, North Rosedale, Governors Bridge, Summerhill, South Rosedale, Bloor East and ABC. Its co-chairs are John Bossons and Tim Ross.
In July 2025, CBC Toronto reported that Council had approved $1.5 million for initial planning. In the same story, Bossons put a preliminary estimate on a full restoration of $35 to $40 million, and the group pledged to raise private money toward it. The planning money is roughly 4 percent of what a full restoration might cost, so most of the work still needs funding. The partnership is being formalized. Council has directed City staff to work with MRG on agreements that would allow fundraising and donations for City-approved projects, and a working group of MRG, TRCA and City staff advises the project team at each milestone.
The group's 2026 calendar shows the hands-on side. It organized litter cleanups over four mornings in April. It got City permission for Toronto Nature Stewards to begin volunteer work on a 1.8-hectare site in the south end of David A. Balfour Park. And on September 27 it led a 3.75-kilometre walk to all twelve entrances, starting from the Alvin Avenue exit of St. Clair station beside Deer Park Library.
New stairs fix getting in. The longer-term problem is the forest itself. This summer MRG sponsored the first ecological survey of the Vale since 2013. University of Toronto forestry graduate students Madeline Spencer and Nik Voss did the fieldwork, guided by Richard Laurie and Stephen Smith of Urban Forest Associates. Smith has worked in the ravine for more than two decades. The team sampled about 1,000 trees and mapped 280 trees of interest, roughly 180 of them oaks.
According to MRG's summary, the Vale "still supports a significant mature oak forest." Without active management, though, parts of it are likely to keep shifting toward invasive Norway maple. That tree shades out the understory, reduces biodiversity, and adds to slope erosion. The Deer Park Residents Group reported Norway maple at 57.1 percent of trees per hectare, with limited oak regeneration in some areas. It also reported that invasive plants are concentrated in disturbed, high-traffic places.
That last finding ties back to the entrances. Informal paths that grew through use are exactly the disturbed ground where invasive plants spread, and the City's panels list rerouting trails "for stability and to protect natural features" as one of the opportunities. Fixing how people get in and protecting the oaks are, in practice, the same job.
The first round of public input is over. The City's online mapping activity and survey ran from October 1 to 22, and the October 7 open house drew 73 people. The City says the results will be posted when they are available. The project page lays out what comes next:
Separately, Heath Crescent's staircase and slope work is the item to watch in early 2027. Residents can sign up for email updates on the City's project page. Until then, the Avoca Avenue path into David A. Balfour Park and the Mount Pleasant Road entrance at Roxborough Drive remain the main ways in. MRG's own guide warns that several access points involve steep slopes that can be muddy or icy, which is worth remembering as the season turns.
When you're selling a home a short walk from Avoca Avenue or Heath Street, the ravine is part of what you're offering, and the details count. Which entrance is closest, what is reopening and when, and how the Vale is likely to change over the next few years all matter to buyers. If you'd like to know how your home's position near the ravine figures in its value, New Chapter Homes can walk you through it. Start your new chapter: request a home valuation.
Claire has a keen interest in investment properties and looks forward to continuing to help her clients build their real estate investment portfolios.