The Don Valley Parkway is the expressway that Metropolitan Toronto built through the Don River valley between the Gardiner Expressway and Sheppard Avenue. Its first section, Bloor Street to Eglinton Avenue, opened on August 31, 1961, and the Lawrence to Sheppard stretch was finished on November 17, 1966. Highway 404 continues the route north. One trade publication puts the cost at $40 million.
Road ideas before Metro
People proposed roads through the Don Valley long before the parkway existed. A City of Toronto online exhibit on unbuilt and built transport schemes reproduces a Parks Department drawing of a “Don Valley Boulevard,” running from Thorncliffe Farm to Lawrence Avenue, dated September 25, 1912. Historian Jennifer Bonnell, writing for the Network in Canadian History and Environment, dates the first plans for a roadway in the valley to 1914 and notes that several 1930s proposals were dropped. The two dates probably describe different drawings, and both were park-style boulevards, not expressways.
The City exhibit says the 1943 master plan proposed “superhighways,” and that the 1959 Official Plan widened the idea into an inner ring of expressways around the downtown and an outer ring around Metropolitan Toronto. Bonnell describes the 1943 plan somewhat differently, as a U-shaped recreational parkway through the Don and Humber valleys. Sources therefore stress different parts of the same plan.
The real push came after the new regional government took shape. The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was created in 1953 with borrowing powers that allowed region-wide projects (see Metropolitan Toronto in 1954). According to Bonnell, Metro road engineers sketched an arterial framework in 1953 and 1954 that already included a Don Valley route.
Choosing the route
Metro’s first chair, Frederick Gardiner, was an enthusiast for highways. His biographer, Timothy Colton, wrote of his “unalloyed fascination” with building multilane roads, a phrase Bonnell quotes. Gardiner gave his name to the lakeshore expressway that was Metro’s first big road project, described in the Gardiner Expressway article. The Don Valley route was the second.
Bonnell’s research shows that the alignment moved several times. In September 1953, E.P. Taylor’s Don Mills Development Company, which held more than 2,000 acres near Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East, presented its plans to Metro council. Metro’s Roads Committee was then reviewing alignments, including one that would have cut through the proposed development. In the fall of 1954 the Metro Planning Board dropped the Don Mills alignment and proposed the Woodbine Avenue right-of-way instead. By October 1955 the recommended route ran from the planned lakeshore expressway north along the Don Valley to Highway 401, largely through undeveloped farmland.
Local lore says Taylor asked for the parkway to serve his subdivision. Bonnell reports that she found no evidence of this after months of research, so the claim is best treated as unproven. What the record does show is that the developer advertised the road. A Don Mills advertisement in the Toronto Daily Star of September 15, 1955 promised that the parkway would halve a 25-minute drive downtown.
Building through the valley
Daily Commercial News, a construction-industry paper, reported in a 2011 anniversary article that construction began in 1958. Bonnell’s 2011 essay gives a longer span of 1958 to 1967, so the end of the work depends on what is counted. The article says the road was designed by the New York firm Fenco-Harris together with the Toronto firm Foundation Engineering, and that three construction companies shared the work.
The same article lists the earthmoving. Crews excavated 4.6 million cubic metres of soil and reused 1.25 million cubic metres of it as fill. They removed two hills to flatten the valley floor, rerouted more than three kilometres of the Don River and built retaining walls along 1.6 kilometres of the steeper sections. Five houses were expropriated, and their owners could take a buyout or have the house moved. One was relocated to Scarborough. Land swaps between Metro and the City let the road follow public land and kept the acreage of parkland the same. For the valley’s earlier history, see the articles on Toronto’s lost rivers and ravines and the Don Valley Brick Works.
Four openings, 1961 to 1966
The parkway opened in stages, and the dates below come from Daily Commercial News.
| Section | Date |
|---|---|
| Bloor Street to Eglinton Avenue opens | August 31, 1961 |
| Eglinton Avenue to Lawrence Avenue completed (work began July 1961) | October 30, 1963 |
| Link from Bloor Street to the Gardiner Expressway completed | November 6, 1964 |
| Lawrence Avenue to Sheppard Avenue completed | November 17, 1966 |
The City’s North York exhibit confirms the span of 1961 to 1966, and the City’s own page on the parkway gives 1966 as the year of completion. Premier Leslie Frost and Metro Chairman Fred Gardiner took part in the 1961 opening, according to the construction paper. The road had only two access points that day because the Don Mills Road exit did not yet exist, and traffic backed up at the Eglinton exit as drivers headed uptown. Sam Cass, then Metro’s traffic commissioner, told the paper that the public opposed the project in the usual Toronto way. He also recalled that opening it “was a hell of a big difference.”
What it cost
Daily Commercial News gives the total construction cost as $40 million at the time, or more than $270 million in 2011 dollars. That is the only cost figure in the sources used for this article, and it comes from a trade publication, not from Metro council papers. No breakdown by section was found. Treat the number as an approximate total until it is checked against Metropolitan Toronto records in the City of Toronto Archives.
Traffic and effects on the valley
The parkway filled quickly. Bonnell writes that by 1966 it was already one of the busiest roads on the continent at peak hours and that volumes passed capacity by the early 1980s. In 2001 it carried about 160,000 vehicles a day, she says, against a design capacity of 60,000, and drivers nicknamed it the “Don Valley Parking Lot.” The City of Toronto now gives the same design capacity of 60,000 vehicles a day and reports about 135,000 on an average weekday. The City describes the road as about 15 kilometres long, running from the Gardiner Expressway to Highway 401, mostly with six lanes and 12 exits, and as the only expressway linking the north and south ends of the city.
Bonnell also lists costs to the valley itself. Road runoff drains through storm sewers into the river, collisions kill animals, access to the water is limited and constant noise changes how people experience the parkland. She argues that a road along a natural valley bottom shaped the suburban growth that followed it in the northeast.
The end of the expressway era
The Don Valley route was meant to be part of a network. The City exhibit says organized opposition led the Province to cancel the Spadina Expressway during construction in 1971. It would have cut through the Cedarvale and Nordheimer ravines to join the Crosstown Expressway, and only the stretch now called the William R. Allen Road was built. The North York exhibit dates the cancellation to June 1971 and says Premier Bill Davis made the decision after major protests. It adds that the road was extended south to Eglinton Avenue in 1975. The Scarborough Expressway was cancelled in 1974, which the City exhibit says ended the era of superhighway building in Toronto. More on the northern suburbs is in the North York article.
North of Sheppard Avenue, the same exhibit says Highway 404 opened in 1977 as the northern extension of the parkway. It dates the construction of Highway 401 to stages between Weston Road and Bayview Avenue from 1952 to 1956.
Frequently asked questions
When did the Don Valley Parkway open?
The first section, from Bloor Street to Eglinton Avenue, opened on August 31, 1961. The final section, from Lawrence Avenue to Sheppard Avenue, was completed on November 17, 1966.
Who built the Don Valley Parkway?
The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto built it. Daily Commercial News says the New York firm Fenco-Harris designed it with the Toronto firm Foundation Engineering.
How much did the Don Valley Parkway cost?
One trade publication, Daily Commercial News, gives $40 million at the time. No archival record of the total was found, so treat it as approximate.
Did E.P. Taylor cause the parkway to be built?
Local history says he asked for it to serve Don Mills, but historian Jennifer Bonnell found no evidence of that. The Don Mills Development Company did lobby on the route and advertised the parkway.
What happened to the other planned expressways?
The Spadina Expressway was cancelled in 1971 while under construction and the Scarborough Expressway in 1974, according to a City of Toronto exhibit.
Sources
- Daily Commercial News (Peter Kenter), article on the 50th anniversary of the Don Valley Parkway, February 23, 2011 (accessed October 2026)
- Jennifer Bonnell, “Highway to Nowhere: The Don Valley Parkway and the Development of Toronto’s North-East,” Network in Canadian History and Environment, May 14, 2014
- Jennifer Bonnell, “Writing the Environmental History of Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway,” Network in Canadian History and Environment, November 14, 2011
- City of Toronto, Don Valley Parkway, expressways page (accessed October 2026)
- City of Toronto, online exhibit “No Little Plans: Roads”
- City of Toronto, online exhibit “Progress, Economy, Heart: Getting Around in North York”
Related reading
- The Gardiner Expressway
- Metropolitan Toronto in 1954
- Lost rivers and ravines of Toronto
- North York history
- Don Valley Brick Works
Last verified: November 2026
Cite this page
APA: History of Toronto. (2026, November 1). Don Valley Parkway History: How Toronto Built the DVP. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/don-valley-parkway-history
MLA: “Don Valley Parkway History: How Toronto Built the DVP.” History of Toronto, 1 Nov 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/don-valley-parkway-history. Accessed .
Chicago: History of Toronto. “Don Valley Parkway History: How Toronto Built the DVP.” Last modified November 1, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/don-valley-parkway-history.
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