On July 25, 2025, City Council  took a major step towards meaningful restoration of the Vale of Avoca ravine with the approval of funding of $1.5 million for a master plan to address the closely linked problems of ravine and channel erosion, degraded trail infrastructure, and degraded environmental conditions.

 

The Midtown Ravines Group, working closely with Councillors Saxe and Matlow, and with Mayor Olivia Chow, set a new course that moves past the historical tendency to address ravine problems in a piecemeal fashion. The approved process will encompass remediation and improvements across multiple city departments — Parks & Recreation, Toronto Water, and Environment, Climate & Forestry — and will also involve the TRCA on slope and channel erosion issues.

 

We expect that the City will launch a competitive process to select a design consortium to develop a plan based on expertise in water course and ravine slope engineering, landscape architecture and park design. The Midtown Ravines Group welcomes input from and engagement with ravine users as the process moves forward. We will keep you informed through our newsletter as work on the Master Plan proceeds.

 

More on this topic: The long battle for Yellow Creek Ravine, by John Lorinc in Spacing, August 28, 2025. 

If you go to iNaturalist in a browser (or in the app, if you search for the Vale of Avoca) you will find that a project by that name aggregates all the observations made within the boundaries of the Avoca ravine. To date, 133 observers have identified 388 species within this ravine. This number continues to grow all the time. The observations also provide some indication of the prevalence of certain plant species throughout the ravine. 

We encourage people to use this app discover what others have observed, and to help contribute additional observations to create a detailed view of the ravine’s biodiversity. Describing the distribution of native and invasive plant species is an important prerequisite for a plan to protect and expand the ravine’s ecological quality.

A local nonprofit startup is wading into the issue of water quality in the Vale of Avoca using innovative instruments placed at intervals within Yellow Creek to generate high-frequency data on water clarity and temperature.

On July 26, 2025, a group of 20 explored the Avoca ravine on a Toronto Field Naturalists outing, co-led by Ellen Schwartzel of TFN and the Midtown Ravines Group. 

The two-hour walk explored the natural history of the ravine, vestiges of one of Toronto’s first destination parks, the impact of erosion on the ravine slopes and Yellow Creek channel, and the ravine environment, including both its native and invasive elements. 

Future events being scheduled include a tree walk, an iNaturalist Bioblitz, clean-up days, and other guided tours; check the Vale of Avoca website for the events schedule.

In days gone by, you could cross the Vale of Avoca ravine using the now long-gone Summerhill Avenue bridge. We do not know when this route was taken out of service, but it would have been sometime before the 1950 completion of the Clifton Extension, which extended Mount Pleasant Road south of St Clair, connecting with Jarvis Street near Bloor Street. This picture also shows the original steel trestle rail bridge in the background, replaced by the current concrete bridge in 1918.

 

Cudmore Creek Ravine may be midtown’s forgotten ravine, but it hasn’t been completely overlooked. On June 20, 2025, the City completed the Cudmore Creek Wetland and Trailhead Project, which has transformed a section of this ravine into an oasis of biodiversity, and a destination for users of the Crother’s Woods trail network.

There is currently a review underway of Toronto’s Parkland Strategy. Please register your views with the City’s online Parkland Strategy Survey, currently open until September 14, 2025.

The City recently completed the Glen Road Pedestrian Bridge & Tunnel Replacement project. This project updated the footbridge spanning the Rosedale Valley ravine, connecting Glen Road to its southern extremity, with links to Hower Street and the Sherbourne subway station. The earlier bridge was removed in March, 2023. The bridge's grand reopening will take place on Saturday, September 13, at 5:30 p.m.

We expect the Rosedale Valley Road Multi-use Trail upgrade project to begin in 2026. Please see the RVR Trail Upgrade Project website for more details.