Top 10 things no one will tell you about Princess Gardens and Humber Valley Village — except your local real estate expert

Published 1 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke. Every claim below is quoted from a City of Toronto, Province of Ontario, Government of Canada, Ontario Heritage Trust, TRCA, TDSB or MPAC document, named and dated, and read on 31 August and 1 September 2026. Where a figure is my own calculation from open data rather than a published statistic, I say so in the paragraph where it appears. Where a document is silent, or where two official documents disagree, this page says so instead of picking one quietly.

There are two kinds of information about this part of Etobicoke. There is what people say — about the golf courses, about the big lots, about which school your children go to, about how safely any of it is protected. And there is what is written down in Council minutes, by-law text, provincial statutes and City datasets. The two sets overlap less than you would expect, and where they diverge, the written version is usually both more surprising and more useful.

One geographic note before the list, because it governs everything after it. Neither “Princess Gardens” nor “Humber Valley Village” is a City of Toronto geography. The City’s official neighbourhoods on this ground are Princess-Rosethorn (10), Edenbridge-Humber Valley (9) and Humber Heights-Westmount (8). Every census figure, every zoning extract and every application count below is for one of those three, and I name which one each time.

All three sit almost entirely in Ward 2, Etobicoke Centre, and every planning application here goes to Etobicoke York Community Council.

1Neither “Princess Gardens” nor “Humber Valley Village” is a City geography — and the City’s own data puts a 40-storey tower in one of them by mistake

This starts as pedantry and ends as a materially wrong number on a listing sheet.

The City of Toronto’s 158-neighbourhood model has no Princess Gardens and no Humber Valley Village. What it has is Princess-Rosethorn, Neighbourhood 10; Edenbridge-Humber Valley, Neighbourhood 9; and Humber Heights-Westmount, Neighbourhood 8. “Princess Gardens” is the local name for the Princess Margaret Boulevard and Princess Anne Crescent blocks inside Neighbourhood 10. “Humber Valley Village” is the market name for the Royal York, Kingsway and Wimbleton pocket inside Neighbourhood 9. Neither has a legal boundary, which means neither has a defensible statistic attached to it.

Now the part that should worry anyone reading a map produced by software. The City’s own Development Applications dataset carries coordinates for the Weston Road files that fall inside the Humber Heights-Westmount polygon. They do not belong there. The largest of them is a 40-storey, 488-unit proposal at 1798–1812 Weston Road. Its authoritative City address point is roughly 200 metres north-east of the coordinate in the development file, in Weston, Neighbourhood 113, Ward 5 York South-Weston. For 1800 Weston Road the development file gives 43.69678, −79.51332; the address point gives 43.698769, −79.513124.

A naive spatial join therefore puts a 40-storey tower in “Humber Valley.” It is not there. The same is true of 2059, 2179, 2270–2274 and 2346 Weston Road. If you are shown a “development pipeline” map for this area, ask whether the applications were geocoded to the City’s address points or taken from the coordinates in the application file. It is the difference between an accurate picture and an alarming one.

Two boundary quirks in the same family. 4000 Eglinton Avenue West — three 25-storey towers and a 21-storey tower — plots in Humber Heights-Westmount, while the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station sites at 4200, 4530, 4620 and 4760 Eglinton and the towers at 63 and 73 Widdicombe Hill Boulevard plot in Willowridge-Martingrove-Richview. And 1 Richview Road is in Edenbridge-Humber Valley while 32 Richview Road, 130 metres away, is in Humber Heights-Westmount. Richview Road straddles the line.

One more thing the names hide. On the 2021 census, Edenbridge-Humber Valley — the City’s “Humber Valley Village” — is 55.7 per cent apartment and 43.5 per cent renter, with 40.7 per cent single-detached houses. Princess-Rosethorn is 85.4 per cent single-detached, with twenty-five condominium dwellings and ten semi-detached houses in the entire neighbourhood, and exactly half of all its dwellings have four or more bedrooms. Those percentages are mine, from the City’s published counts. They are two very different housing markets sharing one reputation.

2In 1998 the City tripled the minimum lot size on a block of Islington Avenue specifically to stop severances — and wrote down that it was doing so

This is the best-documented planning decision in the area and almost nobody who lives on that block has read it.

In September 1997 a developer applied for draft plan of subdivision approval to create five lots at 1394 and 1396 Islington Avenue, on the west side of Islington backing onto the Islington Golf Club. The lots complied with the existing R1 zoning. Etobicoke Council refused the application on 8 September 1997, the applicant appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, and Council instructed staff to change the zoning underneath the appeal.

The result went to City Council on 4 March 1998 as Etobicoke Community Council Report No. 2, Clause 13, “Amendments to the Official Plan and Etobicoke Zoning Code — Former City of Etobicoke — West Side of Islington Avenue, Between Orrell Avenue and Riverbank Drive,” File No. Z-2256. From the Commissioner of Urban Development’s report of 21 January 1998, reproduced verbatim in that item:

Read those three passages together. The area under review was twenty-four lots. The Official Plan had designated them Low Density Residential subject to Site Specific Policy No. 22, which expressly permitted re-subdivision on an incremental basis under a comprehensive plan. Council raised the minimum lot area from 557 m² to 1,800 m² — a 3.2-fold increase — and deleted the policy that had allowed severance. The developer’s solicitor objected that “the proposed amendment may lack planning merit” and asked for a deferral pending the Board hearing. Council proceeded anyway. One deputant, writing as both a resident and “members of Islington Golf Club,” argued that “it is crucial that the integrity of the area be preserved by maintaining the existing size of those lots.”

That by-law is still on the books. The current zone string on Islington Avenue, Riverbank Drive, Fairway Road and Chestnut Hills Crescent, from the City’s Zoning By-law — Zoning Area dataset (modified 20 February 2026), is:

Zone string	Minimum frontage	Minimum lot area	Maximum density	Extent
RD (f15.0; a1800; d0.45) (x37)	15.0 m	1,800 m²	0.45 FSI	about 5.0 ha
RD (f24.0; a555; d0.45) (Princess Gardens core)	24.0 m	555 m²	0.45 FSI	about 139.4 ha
RD (f30.0; a2700; d0.45) (x27) (Edgehill / Colwood / Edgevalley / Westridge)	30.0 m	2,700 m²	0.45 FSI	about 9.5 ha
RD (f45.0; a4000; d0.45) (x998) (Leggett Ave)	45.0 m	4,000 m²	0.45 FSI	about 3.7 ha

In the Princess Gardens core the binding constraint is not area at all. 555 m² is an ordinary lot area; 24.0 metres of frontage is not. To sever one lot into two as of right you would need 48.0 metres, or 157.5 feet, of frontage. Almost nothing on Princess Anne Crescent or Princess Margaret Boulevard has that. Severance here is a variance exercise, not an as-of-right one, every single time.

And the 1998 by-law was partly worked around twenty years later, in the one way it did not anticipate. In 2017–18 the Committee of Adjustment approved consents at 1386 and 1388 Islington Avenue, heard 2 August 2018: “To obtain consent to sever a portion of the lot for the purpose of a lot addition. Part 2 will be added to Part 4 … to create one new lot fronting on Fairway Road.” The 1,800 m² minimum attaches to the Islington Avenue frontage. The new lot was created on the side street. Nearby, at 7 Orrell Avenue, the Committee approved a consent to sever into two undersized lots plus two new dwellings on 14 September 2023.

3A provincial statute already in force can void that by-law, and every other minimum lot size here, without a Council vote or an appeal

This is the single most consequential 2026 development for these particular streets, and I have not seen it explained to a seller or a buyer once.

Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, received Royal Assent on 2 June 2026. Its Schedule 7 rewrites subsection 34(3.1) of the Planning Act and adds two new subsections. Verbatim:

The commencement clause matters as much as the text. Schedule 7, section 16(1) provides that the Schedule comes into force on Royal Assent except as otherwise provided, and the deferral list in section 16(2) covers sections 1, 2(1), 3, 9 and 12 to 14. Section 7 is not on that list. The power is law as of 2 June 2026.

What is not law is the number. On 30 March 2026 the Province posted Environmental Registry notice 026-0311, “Proposed Regulatory Approach to Establish a Minimum Residential Lot Size in Urban Areas,” proposing 175 square metres (approximately 1,900 square feet) for parcels of urban residential land outside the Greenbelt that sit in settlement areas, are zoned residential and are fully serviced by public sewage and water. The notice states that “any municipal zoning requirement for minimum frontage and/or minimum depth that would not allow for the minimum lot size standard to be met would be inapplicable” and that the regulation “would not apply to subdivision control.” The comment period closed 14 May 2026.

Zone	Minimum lot area today	Multiple of the proposed 175 m²
RD (f45.0; a4000) (x998) — Leggett Ave	4,000 m²	22.9×
RD (f30.0; a2700) (x27) — Edgehill, Colwood, Edgevalley, Westridge	2,700 m²	15.4×
RD (f30.0; a2020) (x23) — Westmount Park Rd	2,020 m²	11.5×
RD (f15.0; a1800) (x37) — the 1998 Islington Avenue by-law	1,800 m²	10.3×
RD (f19.5; a1345) — Edenbridge Dr, North Dr	1,345 m²	7.7×
RD (f21.0; a1040) (x45) — Thorncrest	1,040 m²	5.9×
RD (f24.0; a555) — Princess Gardens core	555 m², but 24 m frontage	3.2× on area; the frontage is the provision that would be struck
RD (f13.5; a510)	510 m²	2.9×

Put plainly: the 1998 by-law that raised the Islington Avenue minimum to 1,800 m² “to preclude any re-subdivision of these existing lots” would be inoperative on the day a 175 m² regulation was filed. No Council vote. No Ontario Land Tribunal hearing. No public meeting. The statute makes the provision “of no effect.”

4The two golf clubs are the reverse of what their names suggest, they are on the wrong creeks, and one of them is entirely inside the ravine by-law

Everyone in this area talks about the golf courses. Almost everyone gets the basic geography backwards.

Islington Golf Club, at 45 Riverbank Drive, is in Princess-Rosethorn. St. George’s Golf & Country Club, at 1668 Islington Avenue, is in Edenbridge-Humber Valley. That is the reverse of what the names imply. And neither is on the Humber: Islington Golf Club sits on Mimico Creek; St. George’s sits on Silver Creek. I verified both by point-in-polygon against the City’s Neighbourhoods layer and by intersecting the City’s Centreline watercourse features with the golf-course zoning polygons.

Both clubs carry the same zone, OG, under Chapter 90, section 90.40 of By-law 569-2013. Neither polygon carries a site-specific exception. Their protection is generic zoning, not a bespoke instrument written for them.

So when someone asks whether they could build on the golf course, here is the honest answer in three parts.

Part one: there is no application. I searched the City’s Development Applications dataset (modified 31 August 2026, 26,432 records) after re-geocoding every record to the City’s authoritative address points, and the Committee of Adjustment closed and active files as well. There is no application of any type on 45 Riverbank Drive, on 1668 Islington Avenue, or on any parcel inside either OG polygon. No appeal. No Ministerial Zoning Order found affecting either property. That said, a development-application dataset only shows files the City has opened; it cannot show pre-application discussions, land assembly or option agreements, and a negative cannot be proven exhaustively.
Part two: the Official Plan does not promise a golf course stays a golf course. Chapter 4, section 4.3, Policy 5 says the areas shown as “Other Open Space Areas” “will be used primarily for golf courses, cemeteries, and open spaces associated with utilities.” But Policy 7 is the one that should be quoted in full:

That is neither “protected forever” nor “they are going to build on it.” It is a policy that says an application would be judged on its planning merits.

Part three: the environmental layers have more teeth than the land-use policy. St. George’s is entirely inside the ravine and natural feature protection area. Every tree on it, of any size, is permit-controlled under Municipal Code Chapter 658 — subject to the by-law’s own golf-course carve-out at section 658-4A(7), which exempts “normal maintenance and play enhancement activities within manicured areas of turf of an existing golf course as certified by the General Manager.” Maintenance is exempt. Clearing for development is not.

One footnote on the club’s history. The Etobicoke Historical Society — a local historical society, not a City or archival source — records that Islington Golf Club was incorporated in 1923, that eighteen holes were ready for play in August 1924, that the course was designed by Stanley Thompson, and that the founders were drawn by “the rolling farmland and winding Mimico Creek.” I am attributing that, not asserting it. The one element of it I verified independently from City data is the Mimico Creek location.

5Hurricane Hazel’s deadliest street is inside these boundaries — and the two governments that record the death toll do not agree on it

On 15 October 1954 the Humber River took a street off the map. That street is in Humber Heights-Westmount, Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre, and it still exists.

Raymore Drive. Today the City’s address points record 33 addressed properties on it, running west to about longitude −79.5199 — the street now stops at the valley edge. Its neighbours in the same block are Tilden Crescent (61 address points), Crane Avenue (46), Kingdom Street (42), Alma Drive (36) and Riverlea Drive (36). Raymore Drive and Tilden Crescent share the zone RD (f13.5; a510; d0.45) (x24).

The Ontario Heritage Trust page also records what the storm did to Toronto and what the province did afterwards: “more than 200 mm of rain in less than 24 hours”; the Metropolitan Toronto and Region Conservation Authority subsequently purchased “about 32,000 acres” of flood hazard land; and municipalities “expropriated and cleared 530 properties (349 in Metropolitan Toronto and 181 outside the city) on floodplains.” That is the origin of the regulatory regime that governs ravine lots in Etobicoke today. It was not written in the abstract.

What the flood standard actually is. TRCA’s regulatory flood plain is the more severe of the Regional Storm — which is Hurricane Hazel — or the 100-year storm, and across most of TRCA’s jurisdiction the Regional Storm governs. Permits are required under the Conservation Authorities Act and Ontario Regulation 41/24. TRCA’s own list of work that triggers a permit is broad: “placing or excavating fill, building a new home, or replacing an existing home,” plus “constructing home additions, garages and sheds, decks, and pools, or landscaping.”

For a new or replacement house on a ravine-backing lot, TRCA’s submission requirements include “Existing top of slope if the property backs onto the ravine,” the “Setback dimension from the top of slope (or stable top of slope where applicable) to the proposed dwelling,” flood plain elevations and floodproofing measures. TRCA states that “additional technical information (eg. geotechnical slope stability assessment, structural engineering letter with stamped drawings) may be required once staff have carried out an initial review and a site visit.”

6In the ravine by-law area a tree is protected at any size — a seedling counts, and the minimum fine is $500 per tree

Most Toronto buyers know that a private tree of 30 centimetres diameter or more is protected. Very few know that the rule changes completely once your lot is inside the ravine area, and a great many lots here are.

Municipal Code Chapter 658, Ravine and Natural Feature Protection, was adopted on 3 October 2002 by By-law 838-2002 and retitled on 27 May 2008 by By-law 513-2008; the consolidation I read carries the footer “658-1 May 12, 2022.” Section 658-2A reads:

Section 658-2B extends the same permit requirement to placing or dumping fill or refuse and to altering the grade. The penalties, at section 658-12C, are:

Offence	Minimum	Maximum
Injury or destruction of any tree in a protected area	$500 per tree	$100,000
Any other offence under the chapter	$500	$100,000
Special fine	—	$100,000
Unlawful fill, grading or breach of permit conditions (continuing offence)	$500	$10,000 for each day the offence continues

And section 658-13 lets the City do remedial work itself and “recover the costs incurred … by action or by adding the costs to the tax roll and collecting them in the same manner as property taxes.” On the private-tree side, Chapter 813, section 813-29 carries a matching minimum of $500 and maximum of $100,000 per tree, and measures diameter at 1.4 metres above ground level — separately for each stem of a multi-stemmed tree, which is how a tree that looks small can still be protected.

The fees, from the City’s permit page as it read on 31 August 2026: Ravine Tree (Non-Construction) $87.57 per tree; Ravine Tree (Construction) $262.72 per tree; boundary or neighbour tree $183.03 non-construction and $549.08 construction; and where there is inadequate space to replant, cash-in-lieu of $583 per tree. The permit must be posted visibly from the street for one day before work begins, and the City gives written notice to boundary-tree owners at least 15 days before a permit issues.

Streets with the most affected addresses, on that same count: Edenbridge Drive 71, Knoll Drive 39, Eden Valley Drive 38, North Drive 37, Bearwood Drive 24, Valecrest Drive 23, Taylorwood Drive 22, Royal York Road 21, Strath Humber Court 18 and Ridgevalley Crescent 17.

Three exemptions worth knowing, because they are frequently misread. A terminally diseased, dead or imminently hazardous tree can be removed — but only where it is certified as such by the General Manager; you cannot self-declare. No City grading permit is required for “grade changes within areas that are regulated by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority” — meaning in the deepest valley you need TRCA rather than the City, and in the shoulder you need the City. And the City Surveyor “may plot the boundary line defining a protected area on a plan or map … upon request, at the expense of the requestor.”

7There is no station-area policy, no secondary plan, no heritage district and no business improvement area here — and the “Martin Grove” station area in the approved list is at Finch

Four negatives in a row is an unusual thing to publish. Each one is established from the City’s own mapping layers, and each one changes what somebody can do near you.

One: no Major Transit Station Area. On 15 August 2025 the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing approved Official Plan Amendments for 120 Toronto station areas — 25 MTSAs and 95 Protected MTSAs — and the City records that the decision “is final and cannot be appealed and the City of Toronto is required to update its zoning by-laws to allow the new heights and densities.” Those permissions are substantial: within 200 metres, buildings of up to 30 storeys and 8.0 FSI on Mixed Use, Apartment Neighbourhoods and Regeneration Areas sites; up to 20 storeys and 6.0 FSI from 200 to 500 metres; and on Neighbourhoods-designated land, 6 storeys on a Major Street within 200 metres and 4 storeys elsewhere in the station area.

And there is no Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station area at all. None of Royal York, Scarlett, Islington at Eglinton, Martin Grove at Eglinton or Renforth appears among the 120. The one approved entry named “Martin Grove” (SASP 645, 206.8 hectares) sits between latitude 43.7296 and 43.7448 and longitude −79.6044 and −79.5805 — that is Martin Grove and Finch, on the Finch West LRT, in West Humber-Clairville and Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown, roughly seven kilometres north. A keyword search says yes; the geometry says no. If someone shows you a “Martin Grove station area” as a reason to expect height near Eglinton, ask them for the coordinates.
Two: no secondary plan. Querying the City’s live Secondary Plan layer against the three neighbourhoods returns a 0.394-hectare clip of the Etobicoke Centre Secondary Plan touching the extreme southern tip of Princess-Rosethorn at Islington and Dundas, plus two slivers of one-thousandth of a hectare. Effectively nil. Any statement that “Etobicoke Centre planning applies here” is wrong.
Three: no heritage conservation district. The City’s live Heritage District layer returns exactly one district for this envelope: Weston Phase I, By-law 798-2006, centred east of the Humber in Weston village. Within a 900-metre ring around the three neighbourhoods, every Part V heritage property belongs to the Weston or Weston West district. There is no HCD and no HCD study covering Princess-Rosethorn, Edenbridge-Humber Valley or Humber Heights-Westmount.
Four: no business improvement area. From the City’s Business Improvement Areas dataset, effective 27 April 2026: the Village of Islington BIA is 34.65 hectares, of which 0.02 hectares touch Princess-Rosethorn — a boundary sliver. The Weston Village BIA lies entirely within Weston. The Kingsway BIA is, by my own measurement, about 871 metres away at the nearest point. Humbertown, the Royal York and Dundas node and the Rathburn and Islington plazas have no BIA at all. The Village of Islington murals and its heritage programming belong to the neighbouring commercial district, not to Humber Valley Village or Princess Gardens.

8The Official Plan caps Dundas Street West at six storeys here, and the live applications are for fourteen and fifteen

This is a documented, current and entirely public tension, on the one commercial street most people in Humber Valley Village actually use.

The lands on the north and south side of Dundas Street West, between Royal York Road and the Humber River, carry Site and Area Specific Policy 277 in the Official Plan — from Chapter 7, 200-series, December 2024 consolidation. Unusually, SASP 277 embeds a full set of Dundas Street West urban design guidelines directly into the Plan. Among them, verbatim:

Now the applications on that exact stretch, from the City’s Development Applications dataset as at 31 August 2026, with file numbers:

File	Address	Filed	Status	What is proposed
26 195461 WET 02 SA	4174 Dundas St W	3 Jul 2026	Application Received	14 storeys, 120 dwelling units, about 11,755 m² residential gross floor area
22 178815 WET 02 OZ	4174 Dundas St W	19 Jul 2022	Closed	15 storeys, FSI of approximately 6.41
21 196623 WET 02 OZ	4174 Dundas St W	11 Aug 2021	Closed	14 storeys, four underground levels
22 160113 WET 02 SA	4160 Dundas St W	10 Jun 2022	Under Review	A six-storey and eight-storey mass timber mixed-use building, the eight-storey portion facing the Humber River
25 241423 WET 02 SA	4668 Dundas St W	17 Oct 2025	Under Review	A 6-storey purpose-built rental building; a parallel Committee of Adjustment file heard 16 July 2026 describes 58 dwelling units
24 217174 WET 02 OZ	56 Nottingham Dr	24 Sep 2024	Under Review	A 10-unit condominium townhouse development, about 2,008 m² and FSI 0.81, six units fronting Dundas and four fronting Chestnut Hills Crescent

The Plan says six storeys. The live file says fourteen. Its 2022 predecessor said fifteen at 6.41 FSI. That is not an accusation of anything; a Site and Area Specific Policy is a policy, an application is an application, and the gap between them is resolved by City Planning, by Council and sometimes by a tribunal. But it is the single most useful thing to know about the future of that street, and it is sitting in a public dataset with file numbers on it.

There is also a door left open in the policy itself. SASP 277 says of the lands between the railway corridor and beyond 80 metres from the Dundas Street northern edge that they “should be subject to a separate review process because of … the opportunities for greater building heights and densities.” The Plan contemplates more height back from the street. It does not contemplate it on the street.

And the precedent on the same stretch is already built. At 4208, 4210 and 4214 Dundas Street West the approved scheme — implemented by By-law 462-2017 (Official Plan) and By-law 463-2017 (Zoning) — was an eight-storey mixed-use building fronting Dundas, three-storey stacked townhouses, and a 21-storey residential tower at the rear of the site, with a public road and park. The condominium files record 196 units in the 21-storey block, 137 in the eight-storey building and 80 stacked townhouses. That is what “greater heights away from the street” produced last time.

9From 1 September 2026 the Humber Valley Village catchment goes to Richview Collegiate — which was at 118 per cent of capacity in 2023

This is the single school fact buyers in Humber Valley Village care about most, it changed this month, and it is documented in a two-page letter almost nobody has read.

The Toronto District School Board’s Etobicoke / Richview Boundary Change Final Decision Letter, dated 19 November 2025, records a decision date of 22 October 2025 and an effective date of 1 September 2026. What it does: “the split Humber Valley Village Junior Middle School attendance area” is consolidated and directed “entirely to Richview CI (Regular program).” The schools affected are Etobicoke Collegiate Institute and Richview Collegiate Institute.

There is grandfathering, and it is the reason two families on the same street can legitimately have children at two different high schools for years: “An exemption applies to current students who reside in the areas described above and their younger siblings.” Current students may finish where they are, and younger siblings may follow them.

Now the capacity picture, from the TDSB’s Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy 2024-2033, Tab 10 School Data:

School	Revised capacity 2023	Head count 2023	Utilisation 2023	Surplus seats 2023	TDSB participation	Home-school participation
Richview Collegiate Institute	873	1,036	118%	−157	62%	46%
Martingrove Collegiate Institute	1,059	983	92%	+83	67%	43%
Princess Margaret Junior School	392	396	101%	−4	61%	50%
Rosethorn Junior School	366	336	92%	+30	66%	61%
John G Althouse Middle School	504	413	82%	+91	56%	47%
Humber Valley Village Junior Middle School	475	416	88%	+59	65%	54%
Westmount Junior School	324	278	86%	+46	32%	25%

Two figures in that table deserve to be said out loud. Fewer than half the school-aged children inside Richview’s boundary attend Richview (46 per cent), and only 62 per cent attend any TDSB school — meaning roughly 38 per cent of the local secondary cohort is in the Catholic or private system. At Westmount Junior School the figures are 32 per cent and 25 per cent: three-quarters of that neighbourhood’s elementary-aged children go somewhere else. And Princess Margaret Junior School was already at 101 per cent in 2023 and is projected at 120 per cent from 2033, the only elementary school inside these neighbourhoods projected to go materially over.

For completeness, the schools physically inside each neighbourhood. Princess-Rosethorn has six: Rosethorn Junior School, Princess Margaret Junior School, John G Althouse Middle School, Martingrove Collegiate Institute, Richview Collegiate Institute at 1738 Islington Avenue and St. Gregory Catholic School. Edenbridge-Humber Valley has one: Humber Valley Village Junior Middle School at 65 Hartfield Road. Humber Heights-Westmount has two: Westmount Junior School and St. Demetrius Catholic School. Etobicoke Collegiate Institute, which people routinely assume is local, is in Kingsway South.

10Your tax bill is calculated on a January 2016 snapshot, while your land transfer tax was regraduated on 1 April 2026

Two dates, ten years apart, both live on the same closing statement.

The assessment first. MPAC’s current valuation date is 1 January 2016. The Province extended the postponement of the province-wide reassessment through the end of the 2021–2024 cycle by a regulation filed 16 August 2023, and MPAC states plainly that “property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on fully phased-in January 1, 2016 current values.”

That matters more here than in most of Toronto, because of what has landed on this ground since January 2016. A 615-unit tribunal-approved redevelopment at 289–291 The Kingsway and St. Stevens Court. The completed Humbertown blocks. A 21-storey tower, an eight-storey mixed-use building and 80 stacked townhouses at 4208–4214 Dundas Street West. A Council-approved 29-storey, 306-unit building at 1 Richview Road. A 35-storey, 374-unit application next door at 32 Richview Road. A 53-lot subdivision off Glen Agar Drive. Four Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station sites. And a provincial Transit-Oriented Community proposal at Martin Grove and Eglinton. None of it has moved a single assessed value. Every 2026 tax bill in these three neighbourhoods is levied on a photograph of the area taken in January 2016.

The land transfer tax has not stood still. Toronto’s Municipal Land Transfer Tax for properties with one or two single-family residences, from the City’s page as it read on 7 April 2026, effective 1 April 2026:

Value of consideration	Toronto MLTT rate
Up to $55,000	0.5%
$55,000.01 to $250,000	1.0%
$250,000.01 to $400,000	1.5%
$400,000.01 to $2,000,000	2.0%
$2,000,000.01 to $3,000,000	2.5%
Over $3,000,000 to $4,000,000	4.40%
Over $4,000,000 to $5,000,000	5.45%
Over $5,000,000 to $10,000,000	6.50%
Over $10,000,000 to $20,000,000	7.55%
Over $20,000,000	8.60%

The cliff nobody explains sits at exactly $3,000,000, where the Toronto marginal rate steps from 2.5 per cent to 4.40 per cent. On the incremental $500,000 between a $3.0 million and a $3.5 million purchase, that is $22,000 of Toronto MLTT against $12,500 at the old marginal rate. In an area whose 2021 census median dwelling value was already $1,700,000 in both Edenbridge-Humber Valley and Princess-Rosethorn, with averages of $1,900,000 and $1,840,000, the $3 million and $4 million steps are live pricing considerations rather than hypotheticals. Also on the record: the Municipal Non-Resident Speculation Tax at 10 per cent, effective 1 January 2025, and an administration fee of $102.56 plus HST. I am quoting no first-time-buyer rebate amount, because the City page I read makes no mention of one.
And one clause every buyer of an empty house should read twice. The Vacant Home Tax has been 3 per cent of Current Value Assessment since the 2024 taxation year, and a property is “deemed vacant if the owner fails to make a declaration of occupancy status by the deadline.” Then the sentence that lands on the wrong party: “Like property taxes, the Vacant Home Tax is attached to the property, not the individual”; where no declaration was made, “the purchaser will be held responsible for the payment of the tax,” and the tax “forms a lien on the property.”

Note carefully what that 3 per cent applies to: Current Value Assessment, which is the frozen January 2016 figure, not the sale price and not the market value. The CVA will be lower than what the house sells for. I am not printing a dollar estimate of a vacant home tax bill, and neither should anyone else without your actual assessment notice in front of them. The practical point stands regardless: a large house here that sat empty through an estate sale, with no declaration filed, arrives at closing with a lien attached to the land — and it becomes the buyer’s problem unless the lawyer catches it.

Four more, because they come up every week

The Committee of Adjustment is the real planning authority here, and severances are almost nonexistent. I filtered the City’s Committee of Adjustment Applications datasets (closed since 2017, modified 29 August 2026, plus active files), re-geocoded every record to the City’s address points and tested it against the neighbourhood polygons: 695 applications inside the three neighbourhoods, 647 closed and 48 active, of which 657 are minor variances and 38 are consents. On closed files: 553 approved, 25 refused, 7 deferred, 2 withdrawn — an approval rate on decided files of 95.7 per cent, and 97.6 per cent in Princess-Rosethorn. The counts are the City’s; the filtering and the rate are mine. Two cautions against over-reading it. That is not a rubber stamp — 25 refusals is not zero, and the refusals cluster tightly on one thing: at least 15 of them read “To construct a new detached dwelling with an attached garage,” including three refusals at 405 The Kingsway in a single 2023 sitting, and repeat refusals at 416 The Kingsway, 39 and 8 Yorkleigh Avenue, 12 Hartfield Court and 49 Bywood Drive. And consents are vanishingly rare: only 18 closed severance files since 2015 against 8,658 addressed properties — by my arithmetic, roughly one severance application per 480 properties per decade. One further note on the dataset: its ANYONE_OBJECT_AT_MEETING field is null for all 647 closed records, so nobody — including me — can tell you anything about neighbour objection rates from it.

The neighbourhood immediately north of Humber Valley Village is a City-designated Emerging Neighbourhood, and nobody marketing this area mentions it. Humber Heights-Westmount is designated an Emerging Neighbourhood under the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020. Same ward, same river, directly adjoining. On the 2021 census its median household total income was $85,000 against $162,000 in Princess-Rosethorn — a gap of $77,000, or 1.9 times, by my own arithmetic on the City’s published figures. Its median dwelling value was $1,000,000 against $1,700,000. 17.8 per cent of its renter households are in subsidised housing and 34 per cent of renter households are in core housing need, against 4.2 per cent of all households in Princess-Rosethorn. This is not a warning; it is the actual social geography of a two-kilometre stretch that gets marketed as one thing.

Between a fifth and two-fifths of each neighbourhood is mapped as an area of archaeological potential, on top of everything else. Intersecting the City’s Archaeological Potential layer with each neighbourhood gives — my own computation on the City’s polygons — 41.5 per cent of Humber Heights-Westmount, 34.9 per cent of Edenbridge-Humber Valley and 20.0 per cent of Princess-Rosethorn. The City’s Archaeology page states that its Archaeological Management Plan “identifies lands that may hold archaeological resources” and requires assessments on those lands prior to development. Stacked on the same ground: a Natural Heritage System covering 37.8 per cent of Edenbridge-Humber Valley, and three Environmentally Significant Areas — Lambton Woods (21.6 ha, entirely inside Edenbridge-Humber Valley), Chapman Valley (12.0 ha, entirely inside Humber Heights-Westmount) and part of Lambton Park Prairie. One thing I am not telling you is who may carry out an archaeological assessment or what licence they need — those are real requirements, but the City page I read does not state them and I did not obtain the City’s terms of reference.

This is a driving neighbourhood, and the census says so precisely. On 2021 census main-mode-of-commuting figures — percentages mine, counts the City’s — Princess-Rosethorn has the lowest transit share and the highest car-driver share of its peer group: 82.8 per cent commute by car, truck or van and 75.9 per cent as a driver, against just 9.9 per cent by public transit. Edenbridge-Humber Valley is 76.4 per cent car and 16.7 per cent transit; Humber Heights-Westmount 78.0 per cent and 17.0 per cent. Fifteen people in Princess-Rosethorn commuted by bicycle, and Statistics Canada recorded zero bicycle commuters in Humber Heights-Westmount. If a listing tells you a house here is transit-oriented, the census disagrees.

What this list is not

It is not an argument against buying here. Princess-Rosethorn is 85.4 per cent detached houses, half of them with four or more bedrooms, on an average of 8.2 rooms per dwelling, with the lowest five-year mobility of its peer group — 22.1 per cent, which is a statistical way of saying people do not leave. Edenbridge-Humber Valley wraps a river valley, two golf courses, Lambton Woods and a completed town-centre redevelopment. Both sit in Ward 2, ten minutes from a subway station that already has three elevators.

The point is that every one of the ten items above is knowable before you sign, and almost none of it is in a listing. Two of them — the 1998 by-law and the 2026 statute sitting on top of it — point in exactly opposite directions on the question most large-lot owners here would say matters most. One of them is a disagreement between two governments about how many people died on a street that is still there. That is the difference between working with someone who has read the by-law and working with someone who has read the brochure.

Frequently asked questions

Is Princess Gardens a City of Toronto neighbourhood?

No. Neither Princess Gardens nor Humber Valley Village appears in the City’s 158-neighbourhood model. The official neighbourhoods on this ground are Princess-Rosethorn (10), Edenbridge-Humber Valley (9) and Humber Heights-Westmount (8). Princess Gardens is the local name for the Princess Margaret Boulevard and Princess Anne Crescent blocks inside Princess-Rosethorn; Humber Valley Village is the market name for the Royal York, Kingsway and Wimbleton area inside Edenbridge-Humber Valley. Neither has a legal boundary, so any statistic quoted for either is really a statistic for one of the three City neighbourhoods.

Can I sever my lot on Islington Avenue between Orrell Avenue and Riverbank Drive?

Not as of right, and that is deliberate. On 4 March 1998, City Council adopted Etobicoke Community Council Report No. 2, Clause 13, File No. Z-2256, raising the minimum lot area on that block from 557 square metres to 1,800 square metres and deleting Official Plan Site Specific Policy 22, which had permitted re-subdivision. The staff report states that the increase effectively precludes any re-subdivision of these existing lots. The zoning is still in force today as RD (f15.0; a1800; d0.45) (x37). In 2018 the Committee of Adjustment did approve a consent at 1386 and 1388 Islington Avenue that created one new lot fronting on Fairway Road, because the 1,800 square metre minimum attaches to the Islington Avenue frontage.

Could the Province override Toronto’s minimum lot sizes here?

The power already exists. Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, received Royal Assent on 2 June 2026 and its Schedule 7 added Planning Act subsections 34(3.1) to (3.3), under which a municipal by-law requiring a minimum parcel area greater than a prescribed area is of no effect, as is any minimum frontage or depth provision that would require a larger parcel. Section 7 of that Schedule was not deferred, so the power is in force. The number is not settled: Environmental Registry notice 026-0311, posted 30 March 2026 with comments closed 14 May 2026, proposed 175 square metres, but that notice is still at proposal stage, no decision has been posted and no regulation has been filed. Treat it as a live risk, not as current law.

Which golf club is in Princess Gardens, and could it ever be developed?

Islington Golf Club, at 45 Riverbank Drive, is the one in Princess-Rosethorn, and it sits on Mimico Creek. St. George’s Golf and Country Club, at 1668 Islington Avenue, is in Edenbridge-Humber Valley and sits on Silver Creek. Neither is on the Humber. Both carry OG zoning under Chapter 90 section 90.40 of By-law 569-2013 with no site-specific exception. There is no development application, no Committee of Adjustment file, no appeal and no Ministerial Zoning Order on either property in the City’s datasets as at 31 August 2026. Official Plan policy 4.3.7 says that if an application to develop privately owned open space is made and no public agency wishes to purchase the land, the application will be considered on the basis of its consistency with the policies of the Plan. That is not a guarantee in either direction. I did not verify who owns either club’s land or the Official Plan designation of either parcel, and I am not asserting either.

Do I need a permit to remove a tree in Humber Valley Village?

It depends on whether the lot is inside the ravine and natural feature protection area. Inside it, Municipal Code Chapter 658 section 658-2A prohibits injuring, destroying or removing any tree without a permit, with no diameter threshold at all, and also covers fill, refuse and grade alteration. Outside it, private trees are protected under Chapter 813 at 30 centimetres diameter and over, measured at 1.4 metres above ground and separately for each stem of a multi-stemmed tree. Fines run from a $500 minimum to $100,000 per tree, with continuing fill and grading offences at $500 to $10,000 for each day. Ravine tree permit fees as at 31 August 2026 were $87.57 per tree non-construction and $262.72 per tree for construction. By my own count from City data, 646 addressed properties across the three neighbourhoods sit inside the ravine area, but the open-data layer was last refreshed on 8 November 2022, so check your address on the City’s live map.

Did Hurricane Hazel really happen here, and how many people died?

Yes, on Raymore Drive, which is in Humber Heights-Westmount, Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre, and still has 33 addressed properties today. The death toll on that street is recorded differently by two official sources and I am not going to pick one silently. The Government of Canada’s archived Environment and Climate Change Canada pages state that Raymore Drive experienced the most casualties with 35 people dead on one street, against a storm total of 81. The Ontario Heritage Trust’s provincial plaque background paper states that 14 homes on Raymore Drive were swept away and 32 residents killed in one hour. Both are official and they differ by three. The defensible phrasing is that more than thirty people died on one street on 15 October 1954.

Is there a Major Transit Station Area in Princess-Rosethorn or Humber Valley Village?

Essentially no. Of the 120 station areas the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing approved on 15 August 2025, only the Islington Protected MTSA touches these neighbourhoods, and by my own measurement of the City’s shapefile it covers 0.47 hectares of Princess-Rosethorn, about 0.4 per cent, and 0.13 hectares of Edenbridge-Humber Valley. No Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station appears among the 120 at all. The approved entry named Martin Grove, SASP 645, is at Martin Grove and Finch on the Finch West LRT, about seven kilometres north, not at the Eglinton station of the same name. So the provincially mandated permissions of up to 30 storeys and 8.0 FSI within 200 metres of a station do not apply anywhere here.

How tall can a building on Dundas Street West be in Humber Valley Village?

The Official Plan says six. Site and Area Specific Policy 277, covering the lands on both sides of Dundas Street West between Royal York Road and the Humber River, sets a minimum building height of two storeys and a maximum of six storeys, or 18.5 metres measured from the public sidewalk level adjacent to the main entrance, along Dundas Street West, with a 1.5 metre step-back at the fourth storey and a 45 degree angular plane where a site abuts the R2 zoning in the Kingsway neighbourhood. The live applications are taller. City file 26 195461 WET 02 SA, filed 3 July 2026 for 4174 Dundas Street West, proposes 14 storeys and 120 units; its 2022 predecessor, file 22 178815 WET 02 OZ, proposed 15 storeys at an FSI of about 6.41. That gap is resolved by City Planning, by Council and sometimes by a tribunal, not by the policy alone.

Which high school does a Humber Valley Village address feed?

Richview Collegiate Institute, from 1 September 2026. The Toronto District School Board’s Etobicoke and Richview Boundary Change Final Decision Letter of 19 November 2025, recording a decision date of 22 October 2025, consolidates the split Humber Valley Village Junior Middle School attendance area and directs it entirely to Richview CI Regular program. Current students and their younger siblings are exempt and may stay where they are. Richview was at 118 per cent of capacity in the TDSB’s October 2023 figures, with 1,036 students against a revised capacity of 873, though the same table projects 85 per cent by 2028 on a model calculated in the 2022-2023 school year that predates this boundary change. The board’s letter does not list the specific streets that moved, so use the TDSB school locator for your address.

Why is my property tax based on a 2016 value when the neighbourhood has changed so much?

Because the province postponed the reassessment. MPAC states that property assessments for the 2026 property tax year continue to be based on fully phased-in 1 January 2016 current values, with the postponement extended through the end of the 2021 to 2024 assessment cycle by a regulation filed 16 August 2023. Since that valuation date these neighbourhoods have absorbed a 615-unit tribunal-approved redevelopment on The Kingsway, a 21-storey tower on Dundas Street West, a Council-approved 29-storey building at 1 Richview Road, a 35-storey application at 32 Richview Road, a 53-lot subdivision off Glen Agar Drive and four LRT station construction sites, and none of it has moved an assessed value. The same frozen assessment is also what the Vacant Home Tax is charged on, at 3 per cent of Current Value Assessment, which is why that tax is calculated on a figure lower than any current sale price.

Related reading

• Top 10 things no one will tell you about The Kingsway, Etobicoke
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about Islington and Etobicoke Centre
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about The Queensway and Stonegate-Queensway
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about Alderwood, Etobicoke
• Toronto Municipal Land Transfer Tax: the bracket table from 1 April 2026
• Toronto Vacant Home Tax: the buyer can be left holding it
• Toronto West market report, July 2026

Sources

Every figure on this page traces to one of these twenty-five, and each was read on 31 August or 1 September 2026. Primary sources only — by-law text, Council decision, Official Plan consolidation, statute, regulatory notice, City open dataset, conservation authority, school board decision letter, or the agency that administers the thing being described. Where I could not verify something from a primary source, it is not on the page; where it came from a secondary source, I say whose it is.

• Neighbourhoods and Neighbourhood Profiles open datasets. City of Toronto Open Data, 158-neighbourhood model. Neighbourhoods dataset metadata modified 20 February 2026, supplying the Princess-Rosethorn, Edenbridge-Humber Valley and Humber Heights-Westmount polygons used for every area, intersection and point-in-polygon test on this page; Neighbourhood Profiles metadata modified 27 May 2026, supplying the 2021 Census populations of 11,170, 15,190 and 10,005, the dwelling structure and tenure splits, median household incomes of $162,000, $100,000 and $85,000, median dwelling values, the Emerging Neighbourhood designation, the mobility figures and the main-mode-of-commuting counts. Note that the 2016 and 2011 profiles use the older 140-neighbourhood model, so no trend line is computable on these boundaries. open.toronto.ca
• Address Points open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, dataset modified 31 August 2026. The 8,658 addressed properties across the three neighbourhoods, all in the former City of Etobicoke, 8,523 in Ward 2 and 135 in Ward 1; the 33 addressed properties on Raymore Drive; the authoritative coordinates that correct the Weston Road geocoding artefact; and the boundary checks at 1 and 32 Richview Road. open.toronto.ca
• Development Applications open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, dataset modified 31 August 2026, 26,432 records. The Dundas Street West files 26 195461 WET 02 SA, 22 178815 WET 02 OZ, 21 196623 WET 02 OZ, 22 160113 WET 02 SA, 25 241423 WET 02 SA and 24 217174 WET 02 OZ; the 29-storey approval at 1 Richview Road and the 35-storey application at 32 Richview Road; the 4208 to 4214 Dundas condominium blocks; the absence of any application on 45 Riverbank Drive or 1668 Islington Avenue; and the Weston Road coordinates that fall inside the Humber Heights-Westmount polygon while the address points do not. open.toronto.ca
• Committee of Adjustment Applications open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, closed applications since 2017 plus active files, dataset modified 29 August 2026. The 695 applications inside the three neighbourhoods, the 553 approvals and 25 refusals, the 18 closed consents, the refusal cluster on new detached dwellings, the 1386 and 1388 Islington Avenue lot addition heard 2 August 2018, and the 7 Orrell Avenue consent of 14 September 2023. The dataset’s neighbour-objection field is null for all closed records. open.toronto.ca
• Zoning By-law — Zoning Area open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, dataset metadata modified 20 February 2026. Every zone string quoted on this page, including RD (f15.0; a1800; d0.45) (x37) on Islington Avenue, Riverbank Drive, Fairway Road and Chestnut Hills Crescent; RD (f24.0; a555; d0.45) across the Princess Gardens core; RD (f30.0; a2700; d0.45) (x27); RD (f45.0; a4000; d0.45) (x998) on Leggett Avenue; RD (f13.5; a510; d0.45) (x24) on Raymore Drive and Tilden Crescent; and the OG polygons for both golf clubs under Chapter 90, section 90.40 of By-law 569-2013, neither carrying a site-specific exception. Chapter 10 of By-law 569-2013, where the exception numbers are defined, was not read. open.toronto.ca
• Etobicoke Community Council Report No. 2, Clause 13, City Council 4 March 1998 — File No. Z-2256. City of Toronto Council agendas. The 1998 anti-severance by-law: the refusal of the F & F Construction five-lot subdivision at 1394 and 1396 Islington Avenue on 8 September 1997, the twenty-four lots under review, the R1 standard of 15 metres frontage and 557 square metres, the 119-metre lot depths, the 1,800 square metre minimum drawn from the average of the 21 deep lots, the deletion of Site Specific Policy 22, and the sentence that Council’s direction effectively precludes any re-subdivision of these existing lots. toronto.ca
• Municipal Code Chapter 658, Ravine and Natural Feature Protection. City of Toronto, consolidation footer 12 May 2022. Adopted 3 October 2002 by By-law 838-2002 and retitled 27 May 2008 by By-law 513-2008. Section 658-2A prohibiting injury or removal of any tree without a permit; 658-2B on fill and grade; the section 658-12C fines of $500 minimum and $100,000 maximum per tree and the special fine; 658-12D and E on continuing offences at up to $10,000 per day; 658-13 adding remedial costs to the tax roll; 658-3A on plotting the boundary at the requestor’s expense; and the exemptions at 658-4A(1), 658-4A(7) for golf course turf maintenance and 658-4B(5) for TRCA-regulated grade change. toronto.ca
• Municipal Code Chapter 813, Trees. City of Toronto. Article III, Private Tree Protection, adopted 30 September 2004 by By-law 780-2004 and amended in 2008 and 2013. Section 813-29 penalties of $500 minimum and $100,000 maximum per tree plus the special fine, and the rule that diameter is measured 1.4 metres above ground level and separately for each stem of a multi-stemmed tree. toronto.ca
• Tree and ravine protection permits — when to apply, and how to apply. City of Toronto, the when-to-apply page modified 29 January 2026 and the how-to-apply page modified 31 August 2026. The rule that the ravine by-law prohibits harming or removing any trees regardless of size against a 30-centimetre threshold elsewhere; and the fees of $87.57 per ravine tree non-construction, $262.72 per ravine tree for construction, $183.03 and $549.08 for boundary trees, $583 cash-in-lieu, the requirement to post the permit visibly from the street for one day before work, and the 15-day written notice to boundary tree owners. toronto.ca
• Ravine & Natural Feature Protection Area, Natural Heritage System and Environmentally Significant Areas open datasets. City of Toronto Open Data. The ravine layer, metadata modified 8 November 2022 and used directionally only against the City’s live map, gives the 210.0, 67.5 and 48.2 hectares of ravine coverage and the 646 addressed properties inside it. The Natural Heritage System and Environmentally Significant Areas layers, both metadata modified 16 March 2026, give the 37.8 per cent coverage of Edenbridge-Humber Valley, the 99 and 63 per cent figures for the two golf clubs, and Lambton Woods at 21.6 hectares, Chapman Valley at 12.0 hectares and part of Lambton Park Prairie. open.toronto.ca
• Toronto Centreline (TCL) open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, Version 2. The watercourse features intersected with the golf-course zoning polygons to establish that Islington Golf Club sits on Mimico Creek, with about 1,792 metres of it inside the club, and that St. George’s sits on Silver Creek, with about 649 metres inside the club — and that neither is on the Humber. Also the street extract confirming only two laneway segments in the whole three-neighbourhood area. open.toronto.ca
• Toronto Official Plan, Chapter 4 — Land Use Designations. City of Toronto, web page modified 17 June 2026. Section 4.3 Policy 5, that Other Open Space Areas will be used primarily for golf courses, cemeteries and open spaces associated with utilities; Policy 3 on Natural Areas; and Policy 7, that privately owned Parks and Open Space Areas are not necessarily open to the general public nor intended to be purchased by the City, and that a development application on such lands will be considered on the basis of its consistency with the policies of the Plan. toronto.ca
• Toronto Official Plan, Chapter 7 — Site and Area Specific Policies, 200 series. City of Toronto, December 2024 consolidation. Site and Area Specific Policy 277, covering the lands on the north and south side of Dundas Street West between Royal York Road and the Humber River: the two-storey minimum and six-storey, 18.5-metre maximum height along Dundas Street West, the 1.5-metre step-back at the fourth storey, the 3.6-metre ground floor, the 70 per cent facade requirement, the prohibition on townhouses on the north side and in the first 60 metres of depth on the south side, the 45-degree angular plane against the R2 zoning in the Kingsway neighbourhood, the 10-metre average and 6.5-metre minimum setback from the long-term stable top-of-bank at 4208 to 4214 Dundas, and the separate review process contemplated for lands beyond 80 metres from the Dundas Street northern edge. toronto.ca
• Bill 98, Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026. Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Parliament 44, Session 1. Royal Assent 2 June 2026. Schedule 7 (Planning Act), section 7(3), repealing and replacing subsection 34(3.1) and adding subsections (3.2) and (3.3), under which a by-law requiring a minimum parcel area greater than the prescribed area is of no effect, as is any minimum frontage or depth provision requiring a larger parcel; and the commencement clause at section 16(1) with the deferral list at 16(2), which does not include section 7. ola.org
• Environmental Registry of Ontario notices 026-0311 and 026-0300. Government of Ontario. Notice 026-0311, Proposed Regulatory Approach to Establish a Minimum Residential Lot Size in Urban Areas, posted 30 March 2026 with comments closed 14 May 2026, proposing 175 square metres for serviced urban residential parcels outside the Greenbelt and stating that conflicting minimum frontage or depth requirements would be inapplicable and that the regulation would not apply to subdivision control. Notice stage is Proposal: no decision has been posted and no regulation has been filed. Companion decision notice 026-0300, posted 9 June 2026, confirms only that the regulation-making authority could be used. ero.ontario.ca
• Minister-Approved Major Transit Station Areas open dataset, and Zoning for Major Transit Station Areas. City of Toronto Open Data, 120 features, dataset metadata modified 3 February 2026; and the City page modified 30 June 2026. The 15 August 2025 ministerial approval that is final and cannot be appealed; the permissions of up to 30 storeys and 8.0 FSI within 200 metres and 20 storeys and 6.0 FSI from 200 to 500 metres, and 6 and 4 storeys on Neighbourhoods-designated land; the Islington Protected MTSA (SASP 627) as the only station area touching these neighbourhoods; the absence of any Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station area among the 120; and the coordinates showing that the approved Martin Grove MTSA (SASP 645) is at Martin Grove and Finch on the Finch West LRT. open.toronto.ca
• City of Toronto live ArcGIS mapping services. gis.toronto.ca, layers queried 31 August 2026 for the target envelope. The Secondary Plan layer, returning only a 0.394-hectare clip of the Etobicoke Centre Secondary Plan in Princess-Rosethorn and two one-thousandth-hectare slivers; the Site and Area Specific Policy layer geometry; the Heritage District layer, returning only Weston Phase I under By-law 798-2006 across the Humber; the Archaeological Potential layer used for the 41.5, 34.9 and 20.0 per cent figures; and the live Ravine and Natural Feature Protection By-law layer, which is the current layer where the open-data shapefile is not. gis.toronto.ca
• Business Improvement Areas open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, effective stamp 27 April 2026. The Village of Islington BIA at 34.65 hectares, of which 0.02 hectares fall in Princess-Rosethorn; the Weston Village BIA lying entirely within Weston; and The Kingsway BIA at 8.65 hectares in Stonegate-Queensway and Kingsway South, from which the 871-metre nearest distance is measured. open.toronto.ca
• Hurricane Hazel — Fatalities, and Impacts. Government of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada archived pages. The statement that Raymore Drive experienced the most casualties with 35 people dead on one street, the official storm death toll of 81, the date of 15 October 1954, and the naming of Raymore Drive and Woodbridge on the Humber among the hardest-hit communities. This is one of the two official sources that disagree on the Raymore Drive figure. canada.ca
• Hurricane Hazel — provincial plaque background paper. Ontario Heritage Trust, a provincial agency. The statement that the Humber swept away 14 homes on Raymore Drive on the west side of the river just south of Lawrence Avenue, killing 32 residents in one hour; that Toronto received more than 200 mm of rain in less than 24 hours; that the conservation authority subsequently purchased about 32,000 acres of flood hazard land; and that municipalities expropriated and cleared 530 properties on floodplains, 349 of them in Metropolitan Toronto. This is the second of the two official sources that disagree on the Raymore Drive figure. heritagetrust.on.ca
• TRCA planning and permits, Regulated Area Search, and Flood Plain Map Viewer. Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. The permit requirement under the Conservation Authorities Act and Ontario Regulation 41/24 and the list of triggering work; the submission requirements for building a new home and replacing an existing home, including existing and stable top of slope, setback dimensions, flood plain elevations, floodproofing, and the possible requirement of a geotechnical slope stability assessment; the confirmation that there is no published universal numeric setback and that the top-of-slope line may be adjusted after a site visit; the Regional Storm standard; and the Flood Plain Map Viewer disclaimers that it covers riverine flooding only, is a generalized representation that should not be relied upon for the precise limits, is provided as is without warranty of any kind, and is updated on a ten-year cycle. No section number, allowance or numeric extent from Ontario Regulation 41/24 is quoted on this page, because the provincial e-Laws text would not load. trca.ca
• Etobicoke / Richview Boundary Change — Final Decision Letter, 19 November 2025. Toronto District School Board. The decision date of 22 October 2025 and effective date of 1 September 2026; the schools affected, Etobicoke Collegiate Institute and Richview Collegiate Institute; the consolidation of the split Humber Valley Village Junior Middle School attendance area and its direction entirely to Richview CI Regular program; and the exemption for current students and their younger siblings. The letter gives no capacity figures and does not list the streets moved. tdsb.on.ca
• Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy 2024-2033, Tab 10 School Data. Toronto District School Board. Richview Collegiate at 873 capacity, 1,036 head count, 118 per cent utilisation and minus 157 seats in 2023, projected to 85 per cent in 2028; Princess Margaret Junior at 101 per cent in 2023 and 120 per cent from 2033; Westmount Junior at 86 per cent in 2023 and 102 per cent in 2028; Humber Valley Village Junior Middle at 88 per cent; the TDSB participation and home-school participation columns; and the Board’s own note that the projections were calculated in the 2022-2023 school year and do not reflect enrolment trends from the fall of 2023 or boundary decisions made in 2023-2024. The percentages beside FCI Backlog elsewhere in the same document are Facility Condition Index figures, not utilisation. tdsb.on.ca
• Municipal Land Transfer Tax rates and fees; Vacant Home Tax. City of Toronto, MLTT page modified 7 April 2026 and Vacant Home Tax page modified 22 July 2026. The single-family bracket table effective 1 April 2026 reaching 2.5 per cent from $2,000,000.01 and 4.40 per cent above $3,000,000, rising to 8.60 per cent above $20,000,000; the municipal non-resident speculation tax of 10 per cent effective 1 January 2025; the administration fee of $102.56 plus HST; the absence of any first-time buyer rebate on the page as retrieved; and the Vacant Home Tax at 3 per cent of Current Value Assessment from the 2024 taxation year, the deeming rule for a missed declaration, and the statements that the tax is attached to the property and not the individual, that the purchaser will be held responsible, and that it forms a lien on the property. toronto.ca
• The Assessment Cycle. Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. The current valuation date of 1 January 2016; the extension of the postponement through the end of the 2021 to 2024 assessment cycle by a regulation filed 16 August 2023; and the statement that property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on fully phased-in 1 January 2016 current values. No Toronto residential tax rate or City Building Fund levy is quoted on this page, because I did not retrieve either in this research. mpac.ca