Black cherry trees blooming
On a new island and new waterfront community birthed by huge flood prevention program
A new mixed-income community is growing on a new island in Toronto’s eastern waterfront, now that one of the world’s most ambitious flood protection and river restoration projects has protected the area from flooding by the Don River.
The Don, a historic gathering place where it flows into Lake Ontario, will be at the heart of the new community expected to be home to more than 15,000 people, starting in 2031. Waterfront Toronto thinks it will be Canada’s most desirable new neighbourhood.
Waterfront Toronto June 3, 2025
Ookwemin Minising, which means “place of black cherry trees” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin, will be sustainable, walkable, and dense, with a strong sense of the area’s natural history. The island is ringed with wetlands surrounding a new park, named Biidaasige Park (pronounced Bee-daw-sih-geh) meaning “sunlight shining towards us” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin.
Once one of the largest wetlands on Lake Ontario, the Port Lands was gradually filled in, creating the city’s only industrial port and more than a century of contamination from coal storage, factories, and oil refineries. The $1.35-billion flood protection project transformed the eastern waterfront by creating a naturalized river mouth that connects the Don to Lake Ontario, while cleaning up the contamination.
The soil was decontaminated by bioremediation and thermal remediation, and to decontaminate the 1.2 million litres of groundwater excavated each day, they built their own water treatment plant to clean the water before pumping it into Lake Ontario. The 1.3 kilometer river valley was filled gradually, before opening it up fully to Lake Ontario.
“With 174 hectares of land now flood protected and unlocked for new communities, Toronto’s eastern waterfront is no longer a promise on paper; it is a place taking shape in real time, with new parks, transit, and future neighbourhoods,” says George Zegarac, president and CEO of Waterfront Toronto, which was created in 2001 to lead the transformation of Toronto’s waterfront. It works with the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, and the City of Toronto, in partnership with Indigenous communities and the private sector.
It is part of a broader vision for the Eastern Waterfront, that aims to house about 100,000 residents and create about 90,000 new jobs.
The City of Toronto Nov. 14, 2024
The choice of name turned out to be serendipitous. Black cherry once grew naturally along the waterfront’s original marshlands near the mouth of the Don River, and while the Indigenous advisory committee was pondering the name, it learned that Waterfront Toronto workers had planted more than 80 black cherry saplings on the island as part of environmental restoration work.
“It was an ‘A-ha’ moment because we are connected on a cellular level to this region,” said Elder Shelley Charles (Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation). “That moment affected me (positively) on so many levels. It affected me physically ... I had an emotional reaction.”
“Guided by the insight and wisdom of the Indigenous Advisory Circle convened to suggest a name, Ookwemin Minising honours the natural history of the land, a vision of environmental restoration and highlights a path to First Nations, Inuit and Métis community engagement and collaboration,” said Mayor Olivia Chow. “The decision to hand over that naming power to Indigenous communities was both a symbolic and concrete step in turning words into actions that contribute to truth, justice and reconciliation.”
An amazing discovery in 2021 was that some seeds of plants from the days when it was once one of the largest freshwater marshes on Lake Ontario survived, despite being buried for 100 years under seven metres of dirt.
“Trees are our relatives,” said Fred Martin, senior project manager for the waterfront at the Indigenous affairs office. Members of the circle spoke the name Ookwemin Minising out loud in unison to the east, south, west and north — as did dozens of city staff, councillors, the mayor and Waterfront Toronto representatives during the formal renaming process.
The three bridges that connect the island to the mainland and the rest of the Port Lands are coloured red, yellow and orange on the inside to correspond with dawn, midday and sunset.
Earlier this month, Waterfront Toronto released a Request for Qualifications, the first step in securing a development partner to build the first residential buildings. The first development block is expected to deliver approximately 700 units, with a target of 30% affordable rental units.
The updated plan increases overall density by 27% compared to the plan Toronto City Council approved in 2024, making room for about 12,000 new homes across the island with a target of 30% affordable homes. At least 40% of homes are planned as two bedrooms or larger.
“Growing Streets” is one of five videos that explore how Ookwemin Minising is being designed. (Waterfront Toronto)
Buildings, streets, and landscapes are being designed as one connected system. Streets prioritize walking, cycling, and transit, and weave nature into everyday routes. Buildings encourage street life, ensuring a comfortable and interesting environment for people. The “Growing Streets” approach designs streets to evolve over time, as healthy ecosystems do. Adding quirkiness to street design creates small moments of discovery in people’s day‑to‑day lives.
“The street is almost like a public courtyard,” Rasmus Astrup, design principal and senior partner at SLA, the Denmark-based firm that was part of the design team, told Fast Company. The main street will be car-free, and filled with 400 trees. Other streets will allow cars, but prioritize large swaths of green space. The design gives residents public space, and doubles as climate infrastructure that can reduce urban heat, support biodiversity, and capture water in storms.
The streets slope toward bioswales, or plant-filled channels designed to absorb rainwater. The streets have traditional sewers, but nature captures and stores water first. The plants and soil type inside each bioswale are based on the stormwater needs at that location and other goals like biodiversity. Other partners on the project, Trophic Design and Monumental, considered indigenous design priorities like “co-living” with other species; a network of greenery throughout the neighborhood will help wildlife move through the space.
My friend and I live within an easy transit ride to Biidaasige Park and have been visiting and following progress on this project for 4or 5 years. Not mentioned in this article is the huge amazing creative playground that is already open, the bike and hiking trails already open, and all the native shrubs and trees that are now growing along the new riverbank and park. It is an incredible transformation of a formerly neglected area near downtown Toronto.