Scarborough Bluffs

A 15km Escarpment Along Lake Ontario Rising To About 90 Metres, Cut Into 12,000 Year Old Glacial Lake Sediments That Record The Last Ice Age In Visible Layers, And Named By Elizabeth Simcoe In 1793 · Toronto, Ontario

Elizabeth Simcoe saw these cliffs from a boat in 1793 and named them for the Yorkshire scarps they reminded her of. They run about fifteen kilometres along the Lake Ontario shoreline in eastern Toronto and rise to roughly ninety metres, and what makes them significant is what they are made of: TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS OF GLACIAL LAKE SEDIMENT, laid down in the ancient Lake Iroquois and now exposed in visible layers that geologists read as a record of the last ice age. Very few places anywhere show that sequence so plainly. THE CLIFFS ARE ALSO ACTIVELY ERODING - they always have been, the sediment is soft, and houses along the top have been lost. Bluffers Park at the foot of them has a marina, a beach and restaurants, reached by one steep road down; the parks along the top give the views. It is the most dramatic landform inside Toronto and a large number of residents have never been.

Bluffers Park, 1 Brimley Road South, Scarborough, Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

THE PARKS ARE OPEN ALL YEAR AND ARE FREE, with no gate - the clifftop parks at Scarborough Crescent, Cathedral Bluffs and Bluffer's Park along the top, and BLUFFERS PARK AT THE BOTTOM reached by a single steep access road off Brimley Road South. PARKING AT BLUFFERS PARK IS PAID AND FILLS COMPLETELY on summer weekends - it is the single biggest practical problem here, and the access road backs up badly. THE BEACH IS SUPERVISED BY LIFEGUARDS ONLY IN THE SUMMER SEASON, roughly late June to early September, during posted hours. The marina and the restaurants at the bottom run seasonally. THERE IS NO PATH BETWEEN THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM in most places - the clifftop parks and Bluffers Park are separate drives, which surprises first-time visitors.

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