Why Tommy Thompson Park is the Perfect Escape From The City - Kind Of
By Fayeque Mir: May 13, 2025
Chances are that if you live in Toronto or in the GTA, you work in Downtown. You may even live there.
Doing either can get annoying over time, especially for nature lovers who wish they never lived in a city in the first place, as deadlines loom, traffic snarls, and the endless concrete jungle that is the downtown core makes you yearn for a patch of green, a whisper of wind, and the soothing sounds of nature.
Luckily the city has a secret weapon, a sprawling urban wilderness: Tommy Thompson Park, also known as "The Spit".
What is The Spit?
The Spit is a man-made peninsula with industrial origins, which, through the awesome power of nature, has become a park over time.
It was originally built in the 50’s to support shipping in the area, but since shipping didn’t expand like the peninsula’s creators had thought, it couldn’t fulfill that purpose.
Later in the 70’s the Spit was used as a landfill for industrial trash. Eventually, the most unpredictable thing happened, and nature moved in.
As a result, plants and animals, especially birds, began to call the Spit home. It then became a park.
It stretches 6 kilometers into Lake Ontario, and has become a destination for Bird watchers, cyclists, and people looking to take a break from the city.
The Spit has parking and is open from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the weekends, and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. during the weekdays.
How the Spit is the best city escape
Whenever one thinks of the best, yet nearby, downtown escape, a variety waterfront parks and gardens in and around the downtown area come to mind.
Some examples include HTO park, the Toronto Music Garden, and Sugar Beach. However, even when going to such areas, the traffic, buildings, and general city “feeling” is hard to escape from.
The Spit solves this issue with a catch, and that is that it isn’t very close to the downtown core.
Besides the main path running north to south in the middle of the peninsula, there a variety of really cool walking trials that just have an endless expanse of lake around them.
As well, both the park and the Cherry beach area itself give off natural park vibes with lots of trees, the smell of campfires, and people fishing.
Personally, when exploring the Spit, It really did not feel like I was in a city - kind of (more on that later). It was very serene, just the sounds of Birds chirping and Lake Ontario.
Why the SPit Is and isn’t the perfect escape
The Spit isn’t “perfect” because if you simply look west, you see the Downtown skyline.
Now to many, this may ruin the “city escape” experience, but for me, the Skyline makes exploring the Peninsula even cooler.
To your East however, you will see nothing but endless lake.
In this way The Spit both is perfect, because it has the incredible combination of a city skyline and beautiful nature, and isn’t perfect, because, for some, the Skyline may ruin the experience.
It’s up to you as to what you want to believe, but I think it’s always better to think of the glass as half full, rather than half empty.
