Toronto is a big city full of families bringing up our kids in safe neighbourhoods. We’re in an urban environment that boasts great food, fantastic parks, and four distinct seasons that offer year-round winter, fall, spring, and summer activities.
In short, Toronto is a fantastic city to live in when you’ve got kids. Here’s why.
1. Seasons
From sun and sand to snow and ice—and everything in between—Toronto’s four distinct seasons make for different kinds of fun all year round.
Have you ever met a child who didn’t like snow? We may moan because we have to shovel it, but for kids, there’s never enough—for tobogganing, snowball fights, snowman-making, and ice-skating. Then, just when we’re growing weary of the white stuff, the sun peeks out and the cherry blossoms blooms, beckoning us back to the parks and playgrounds.
Then it’s just a hop and a skip to summer sun, heading to Toronto’s beaches and waterfront biking trails, outdoor swimming pools and splash pads, al-fresco dining, park playdates, and evening walks for ice-cream on the city’s friendly neighbourhood streets. Soon enough it’s time for crisp autum air and gorgeous fall colours in the parks as we go apple-picking and start the school year and all those fun after-school activities available to Toronto kids.
2. Awesome Attactions
We’re incredibly lucky to have amazing cultural institutions with excellent programs for kids, like the Ontario Science Centre, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Royal Ontario Museum, weekly programs for kids, camps, and frequent family-friendly events.
And let’s not forget that, we’ve also got the Toronto Zoo, Riverdale Farm, Ripley’s Aquarium, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Black Creek Pioneer Village, the Harbourfront Centre, and the Young People’s Theatre, and many more amazing attractions for kids in Toronto!
3. Cuisine from Everywhere
We’re proud that Toronto kids try lots of different foods from around the world. By our guesstimate many little Torontonians eat a wider variety of cuisines by the time they enter kindergarten than we did by the time we entered high school!
If you want authentic Ethiopian food, Venezuelan food, Japanese food, Thai food, French food, or traditional aboriginal Canadian cuisine, Toronto has it.
See this list of 30 kid-friendly restaurants in Toronto and try the 17 best places to brunch with kids downtown.
4. Skiing and Snowboarding in the City
Toronto has its own ski hills in the city. Really. With chair lifts for the steep runs and great bunny hills. Earl Bales Park at Bathurst and Sheppard and Centennial Park in Etobicoke have affordable city-run ski hills that will keep kids challenged until they reach the end of the beginner level. The City of Toronto offers ski rentals and private and group lessons.
The GTA has excellent options for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, too!
5. The Waterfront
Our fair city has more than 40 km of waterfront: on a sunny day Lake Ontario sparkles to the south as far as the eye can see.
The waterfront is lined with multi-use biking and pedestrian pathways, parks and playgrounds, boardwalks, outdoor pools, beaches, public volleyball and tennis courts, restaurants, and attractions. And it’s always a treat to hop on a ferry to the Toronto Islands in warm weather.
Family friendly festivals take place at several locations on the waterfront in spring, summer, and fall, and the Harbourfront Centre is one of the best sources of family fun all year round—most of it free!
6. Parks
Toronto has an incomparable network of parks and ravine space, and every Toronto family seems to have more than one favourite. No one can argue that huge High Park, with its zoo, pool, kiddie train, and cool “castle playground” is a wise choice.
Another park that nearly every Toronto kid agrees on is Dufferin Grove Park. Even families in East York have been known to trek crosstown for the fantastic offerings at this large park with outdoors skating in winter, one of the city’s best farmer’s markets, year-round on Thursday, ample tree canopy in summer, and the best kid-“construction zone” ever (bring the kids a change of clothes!) and a wading pool.
7. Kids Walk to School
On a school day in Toronto the streets are full of students big and little walking to school in the morning, a habit that is becoming less common in North America as more kids are driven to class. But the practice lives on in this city, and Toronto parents don’t blink at walking even the youngest kids to school twenty minutes or more each way in every type of weather.
Although walking to school is not practical for every family, no one can argue that in contributes to healthier, happier students and adds to the vibrancy of Toronto’s communities.
8. Toronto Islands
Toronto kids know that a trip to the Toronto Islands entails two things. 1. A ferry ride. 2. Fun rides at the old-timey Centreville Amusement Park.
But there’s even more for the active family to do once you get island-side. There’s a blue-flag beach (which means the water quality is safe to swim in), a wonderful splash pad with dips and curves and tremendous spouts of water, a play park, a petting farm, a children’s garden, bikes for rent, a boardwalk, and plenty of sun-dappled bike paths and green spaces to explore. And the ferry is fun, but how setting sail on a working pirate ship? Ahoy!
9. Streetcars
If your commute to work includes waiting for the streetcar, which seems only to ever come late and in a group of three, you probably have little remaining patience for Toronto Transit Commission’s trams.
But from a kid’s perspective, heck, even a tourist’s perspective, riding the Red Rocket, with its clickety-clack and clang of the bell, is a bunch of fun. Even tweens and jaded teenagers love the streetcar, especially the sleek new streetcars that are (slowly) taking over more city streets.
10. Neighbourhoods
Toronto has been described as a city of neighbourhoods, and we certainly do have a richness of family-friendly enclaves.
Whether you live in Corktown or Bloor West, as parents it’s fun to chat about preschools or compare tasting notes on local restaurants and coffee houses with other local parents, and for kids it’s nice to encounter friends at the park on the weekend and see the same faces behind the counter of the corner store at the end of your street.
Not only do our Toronto neighbourhoods provide us with the essentials and amenities we need day-to-day, they give our children a sense of belonging and urban citizenship that they will take with them into adulthood.
