Toronto just got a bunch of new land

It can be hard to keep up with the seemingly endless infrastructure projects that are transforming the face — and shores — of Toronto, with the lakefront alone seeing a complete overhaul of the Port Lands neighbourhood, the redevelopment of Ontario Place, and a new iteration of Ashbridges Bay, to name a few.

While the former two undertakings have attracted most of the fanfare (and backlash), the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) has been chipping away at the third, just recently reaching a major milestone in its work that has physically redefined the city's waterline.

The Ashbridges Bay Landform Project involves, as its name suggests, adding physical land to the city's southernmost edge to help prevent ongoing erosion and stabilize the beach. The project aims to manage sediment that, for years, required regular dredging to allow boats to pass, and to enrich and preserve the local ecosystem.

Enormous piles of rubble have been hauled into the area, forming carefully designed rocky headlands that jut out from the mainland, along with breakwaters and other features to will serve to shield the beach from waves.

The beach itself has been refinished with large cobblestones that won't wash away like sand would in even the most tempestuous storms, while underwater rock shoals, log tangles, tree fields and more will help foster marine life in the area, while also preventing boats from getting too close. 

All of this has made for a completely new shore that even appears different on maps, pushing the city's bounds out further into the lake.

Toronto's waterline has noticeably changed around Ashbridges Bay as crews have, over the last four years, reshaped the beach. Photos from Google Maps.

While the project has been years in the making, the full perimeter of the new landform structure was only just completed in March, up to and including the final finishes of new plants and topsoil as crews renaturalized the area and made it as appealing as possible for local flora and fauna to thrive.

To put it into quantifiable perspective, the TRCA says in an update that in total, it added a whopping 14,527 square metres of cobble shoreline, 7,800 square metres of gravel and rip rap material, 6,170 square metres of underwater habitat shoals (plus another 3,142 square metres of submerged trees for the local ecosystem), and 5,036 square metres of naturalized shoreline area, including aquatic plantings.

Particularly interesting is the fact that some of this material came from various City of Toronto tunnelling projects, meaning that dirt dug up from an across-town portion of, something like the Ontario Line, is now taking on a new life serving a new purpose in Ashbridges Bay.