Toronto/Scarborough

Scarborough is the easternmost of the six former municipalities which formed Metro Toronto.

It includes all if the City of Toronto east of Victoria Park Avenue, including the city's zoo and a stretch of Lake Ontario and Rouge River shoreline (as its southern and eastern borders, respectively).

Understand
As late as the 1950s, "Scarborough Township" was largely rural. A piece of road from Oshawa to the current Highway 2A in Scarborough's east end had been built as freeway by 1939, but until 1956 this traffic poured onto Scarborough surface streets such as Kingston Road (at the time, the main motel strip for traffic from the east) or Danforth Avenue on its way across the Don River into Toronto. As the city grew, suburbs gradually sprawled north through Don Mills, east into Scarborough and westward through Etobicoke and across the county line to Mississauga, largely following the freeways and an east-west subway line first opened in 1966. Toronto surpassed Montréal in size sometime after 1976, becoming Canada's largest city. As the easternmost point still within Metropolitan Toronto, the city of Scarborough was unofficially nicknamed "Scarberia" through much of the 1980s. In the 1990s Agincourt, a neighbourhood in the northern portion of Scarborough, was nicknamed "Asiancourt", as it had become a third Toronto Chinatown, accommodating an influx of immigrants arriving from Hong Kong before its 1997 retrocession to communist China.

Since then, huge amounts of suburbia have sprawled northward into Markham and eastward into Durham as the city expanded. The six former Toronto boroughs, from Scarborough to Etobicoke, were annexed to the City of Toronto in 1998.

Get in
All Toronto-bound traffic from points eastward (such as Montréal) enters the city by road and rail through Scarborough.

By car
The borough's major freeway is Ontario Highway 401, Canada's busiest highway. Twelve lanes of chaos are packed at peak hours with motorists from the eastern suburbs (such as Pickering and Oshawa in Durham) all flooding into the city at once.

The north-south Highway 404/Don Valley Parkway does not enter Scarborough, but runs just west of it. Exiting the 404/DVP onto any of the eastbound cross streets, from Steeles Avenue south to the lakeshore, should take you across Victoria Park Avenue into Scarborough.

By train

 * VIA Rail stops at the Guildwood GO Transit station on Kingston Road on its way into Toronto from Ottawa and Montréal.
 * GO Transit offers regular commuter train service to Toronto and throughout the GTA (from Oshawa to Hamilton or Niagara). Main train connections are at the Rouge Hill, Guildwood, Eglinton, and Scarborough stations. The Stouffville line offers limited rush hour service to and from downtown Toronto with stops at Milliken, Agincourt and Kennedy stations in Scarborough.

By bus


With the temporary closure of the Scarborough Centre Bus Terminal until about 2030, the following bus services have various on-street, curb-side stops near Scarborough Town Centre (mall) and near on Line 3 Scarborough:

Get around

 * The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) provides bus and subway service throughout Scarborough and all of Toronto. On subway Line 2 Bloor-Danforth, all stations from Victoria Park to Kennedy Station serve Scarborough.
 * In 2023, Line 3 Scarborough/Scarborough RT was replaced by buses and will not reopen.
 * Bicycle routes cover most of Scarborough as well as the rest of Toronto. You can rent a bike with Bike Share Toronto. With a day's worth of cycling, it is possible to cycle most of Scarborough.

Shopping districts

 * Kennedy Avenue from Lawrence Avenue East to Ellesmere Avenue is a commercial district featuring dozens of independent furniture, electronic, houseware and computer businesses that all share some of the best deals the city has to offer, together with a couple of large electronic chains. It is often very congested on weekends by automobile, and many merchants lack adequate parking, but it is within walking distance of the Scarborough RT and there is bus service from the Kennedy subway station on the Danforth line. This is not really a destination for tourists, and it's quite a drive from the city centre, but if you're in the area, and want to do some discount shopping, there may be something here to suit your needs.

Stay safe
High lake levels in 2017 have resulted in landslides along the Scarborough Bluffs. Thus, visitors are advised to stay away from top edge and lower base of the bluffs. Safe access to the water is provided at Bluffer's Park, Sylvan Park, Guild Park and Gardens, or East Point Park.

Go next

 * Markham has two attractive main streets.