Live in Don Mills
Canada's first planned suburb, and the one Toronto district where the apartment benchmark held: down 0.68% over the year to July 2026 while the city's fell 7.09%.
Don Mills was not built street by street. E. P. Taylor's development corporation assembled about 2,000 acres of farmland on the East Don from 1952 and had Macklin Hancock, a Harvard graduate student in his mid twenties, lay the whole thing out at once: four residential quadrants around the crossing of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East, each with its own schools, churches and parks, and a shopping centre in the middle. Seventy years later the plan is still legible on the ground, and it is also the reason the housing here is unusually homogeneous for Toronto. The market has behaved unusually too. In July 2026 the TRREB district this falls in, C13, carried a detached benchmark of $1,653,700, down 4.08% over the year, and an apartment benchmark of $620,500, down 0.68%, while the City of Toronto apartment benchmark fell 7.09% and Willowdale's C14 fell 11.31%. What did fall here was the townhouse benchmark, down 10.46%, which is the opposite of the pattern in every other Toronto guide on this site.
The whole thing was drawn before any of it was built
From York Mills Road and the Highway 401 corridor on the north to Eglinton Avenue East on the south, between Bayview Avenue and Wilket Creek on the west and the East Don valley and the Don Valley Parkway on the east. The 1950s plan was smaller than the City's neighbourhood: it ran from York Mills south to the rail corridor, between Leslie Street and the valley.
Most Toronto neighbourhoods accumulated. This one was designed. E. P. Taylor's development corporation assembled about 2,000 acres of farmland on the East Don from 1952 and announced the scheme on 11 March 1953, and the layout was drawn by Macklin Hancock, a Harvard graduate student in his mid twenties. He put four residential quadrants around the crossing of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East, each with its own schools, churches and parks, and a shopping centre where the two roads met, with the through traffic on the edges. Seventy years on, you can still read all of that from a car window.
The consequence for a buyer is uniformity. A neighbourhood built to one plan over roughly a decade has one vintage of house, one vintage of pipe and one vintage of electrical service, with the flat and low-pitched roofs the modernists liked on a lot of it. That cuts both ways: comparables are easier to read here than almost anywhere in the city, and a renovation that nobody else on the street has done yet is harder to price.
The market has behaved unlike the rest of Toronto. In July 2026 the TRREB district this falls in, C13, carried a detached benchmark of $1,653,700, down 4.08% over the year, and an apartment benchmark of $620,500, down 0.68%. Over the same twelve months the City of Toronto apartment benchmark fell 7.09% and Willowdale's C14 fell 11.31%. The apartment stock here effectively held while the city's did not. What did give way was the townhouse benchmark, down 10.46%, the steepest of the four housing types in C13 and the reverse of the pattern in every other Toronto guide on this site. No published explanation for either is convincing, and this guide will not invent one.
The centre in the middle of the plan has now been built three times. Don Mills Centre opened in 1955 as an outdoor row of shops, with a Koffler's drug store in it that became the first Shoppers Drug Mart. It was enclosed in 1978, declined, was demolished in 2006 and reopened in April 2009 as the Shops at Don Mills: an open air street grid with a square, apartments above the shops and no roof over any of it. The 1953 idea came back after thirty-one years under a roof.
Two things changed here recently and they point in opposite directions. The Ontario Science Centre, Raymond Moriyama's 1969 building down the ravine slope on Don Mills Road, closed on 21 June 2024 over the condition of its roof panels and has stayed shut, with the replacement at Ontario Place not expected before 2029. Then on 8 February 2026 Line 5 Eglinton opened, and Science Centre station arrived at Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East. The neighbourhood lost its landmark and gained rapid transit within twenty months. Run the rent versus buy calculator on the C13 numbers rather than the city's, because the two halves of this district are not moving together.
- The apartment benchmark here barely moved over the year, so a discount the city-wide numbers led you to expect may not exist
- Toronto charges its own land transfer tax on top of the province's, with a first-time buyer rebate of up to $4,475 on the municipal half
- Flat and low-pitched roofs are common in the original stock; ask when the membrane was last replaced and what it cost
- A 1950s electrical service was never sized for air conditioning plus everything else, so price the upgrade before you offer
- Four units are permitted as of right on a residential lot here; the five and six unit permission is Toronto and East York only
- Anything backing onto the Don or Wilket Creek needs a slope and grading question asked, and City permission for work near a ravine
How Don Mills got here
- 1952E. P. Taylor's Don Mills Development Corporation begins assembling about 2,000 acres of farmland on the East Don, north-east of what was then the built-up city.
- 1953The plan is announced on 11 March. Macklin Hancock lays out four residential quadrants around the crossing of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East, each with its own schools, churches and parks.
- 1955Don Mills Centre opens at that crossing, an outdoor centre with a supermarket, a Koffler's drug store that became the first Shoppers Drug Mart, and a dozen other tenants.
- 1969The Ontario Science Centre opens on Don Mills Road, built by Raymond Moriyama down the side of the ravine rather than across the flat.
- 1978Don Mills Centre is enclosed and expanded to 462,000 square feet, and stops being the open street the plan had intended.
- 2009The Shops at Don Mills opens in April on the same site, demolished in 2006 and rebuilt by Cadillac Fairview as an open air street grid with a square in the middle.
- 2024The Ontario Science Centre closes on 21 June over the condition of its roof panels. The building has stayed shut, and the province's replacement at Ontario Place is not expected before 2029.
- 2026Line 5 Eglinton opens on 8 February, putting Science Centre station at Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East and Aga Khan Park and Museum station east of it.
Edwards Gardens, Wilket Creek and the walk to the lake
Edwards Gardens at Lawrence and Leslie was a private estate garden before the City took it, and it is now the head of the paved ravine trail that runs down Wilket Creek, through E.T. Seton Park below the Science Centre and on to the lake. The Toronto Botanical Garden shares the site and runs the teaching programme. This is one of the few places in Toronto where you can leave a driveway on foot and stay on a trail for two hours.
What the map does not show: the valley is also the drainage. The Don rises fast, the trails close after a summer storm and sometimes stay closed for days, and the City regulates work near a ravine. On a lot that backs onto one, ask about slope, grading and the permit history before you offer, because thirty years of quiet erosion is not visible from the street.
Elsewhere in Toronto, not Don Mills
21 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 21 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from a representative point in the neighbourhood, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model: honest ranges, not routed times. Read the Union Station row loosely: it is a car figure down the Don Valley Parkway, whose peak and off-peak are barely the same road.
Every gym within reach
The City's own provision here is thin for a neighbourhood of 27,000 people: an arena on Don Mills Road and not much else, which is why the City has proposed a recreation complex on the Celestica lands north of Eglinton. Until that exists, the honest answer is the ravine.
- The arena on Don Mills Road is the City facility inside the neighbourhood, about a kilometre from most addresses
- Edwards Gardens and the Toronto Botanical Garden are free, and the trail below them runs for kilometres
- E.T. Seton Park adds an archery range and the valley floor route south
- The Donalda Club is private: golf, curling and tennis by membership, and it is worth knowing that before you assume the green space is yours
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Don Mills Civitan Arena open | The City rink on Don Mills Road, with a children's house league and public skating slots through the week. | 3–4 min |
| Edwards Gardens and the Toronto Botanical Garden open | The garden and the head of the ravine trail, free to walk and the closest thing here to a daily route. | 3–5 min |
| E.T. Seton Park open | The valley floor south of the Science Centre, with an archery range and the paved trail that runs to the lake. | 6–10 min |
| Donalda Club open | A private golf, curling and tennis club on the East Don inside the neighbourhood. Membership only, and it is worth knowing that before you assume you can use it. | 5–7 min |
The free option is the trail from Edwards Gardens south. It is continuous, it is paved for most of its length, and it is the reason a lot of people put up with everything else about commuting from here.
A school inside every quadrant, by design
The 1953 plan put an elementary school in each quadrant so no child had to cross an arterial road, and Norman Ingram, built in 1954, is one of the four. Don Mills Collegiate Institute and Don Mills Middle School both opened in 1959 and still share a building and a library. The collegiate has run the board's gifted programme since it moved here from Earl Haig in 1997, and that programme admits from outside the catchment.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norman Ingram Public School | Toronto District School Board | One of the four elementary schools built with the original quadrants in 1954, and a good illustration of how the plan worked: a school inside each quadrant, reachable without crossing an arterial road. |
| Don Mills Middle School | Toronto District School Board | Opened in 1959 and sharing a building and a library with the collegiate, though the two schools have separate addresses and separate everything else. |
| Don Mills Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | The assigned secondary school, founded in 1959. The board's gifted programme moved here from Earl Haig in 1997 and admits from outside the catchment. |
| Senator O'Connor College School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic secondary school on Rowena Drive, serving Don Mills along with Wexford, Maryvale and Dorset Park. The Catholic board's boundaries are drawn separately from the TDSB's. |
| Toronto District School Board optional attendance | Toronto District School Board | Specialised programmes admit centrally across the city rather than by home address. Applications close in the autumn for the following September. |
Two cautions. The TDSB assigns by street address rather than by neighbourhood, and the Catholic board, which runs Senator O'Connor College School on Rowena Drive, draws entirely separate boundaries. Check the specific address in each board's boundary tool before you offer.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Daily mean around −5 °C, and colder on the valley floor than up on the tableland
- The rink in the square at the Shops is the reason most people leave the house
- Condominium status certificates take ten days by statute, so order early if you are buying
- Freeze and thaw on the long 1950s driveways, which is when the cracks show
- Reserve fund studies and budget notices circulate in the older apartment corporations along Don Mills Road
- Spring listings are prepared, and in this district the detached ones are prepared carefully
- The spring market begins and the C13 listing count climbs
- The best month to read a flat roof and a 1950s grade, with the snow off and the leaves not yet on
- Ravine lots need a slope stability question asked before an offer, not after
- The busiest month for new listings in the city, and the townhouse stock here is the part that has moved most
- The gardens reopen for the season and the trail below them fills up
- Worth walking the quadrant you are buying in: the plan put the through traffic on the edges
- Seventy years of street trees come in and the neighbourhood changes character for the summer
- Detached listings see the most competition of the year
- The Botanical Garden's plant sale is the one weekend the parking here genuinely runs out
- The ravine trail from Edwards Gardens to the lake is at its best and its busiest
- Occupancy dates cluster in the middle of the year and add supply to the rental market
- A good month to test the Don Valley Parkway commute you would actually make
- Humid and high twenties, with the year's heaviest rainfalls
- The Don floods fast and the valley trails close after a storm, sometimes for days
- The quietest month of the year for sales
- The emptiest month in a neighbourhood with a lot of long-settled households
- Contractors are booked out, so get quotes before you need them
- Air conditioning load is the honest test of a 1950s house that has never had its service upgraded
- The autumn market opens and runs to late November
- School catchments matter most now, and the Don Mills Collegiate boundary is the one people ask about
- The gifted programme's assessment cycle starts, which is a separate process from the catchment
- The pleasantest month of the year for the ravine, and the busiest for the gardens
- Assessment notices and tax instalments land around now
- Leaf fall clogs the eaves on every street that backs onto the valley, which is most of them
- Listings thin sharply after mid-month
- Grey and wet rather than cold, and the trail turns to mud
- The best negotiating month of the year, including in a district where apartment prices have barely moved
- The thinnest month for both listings and competition
- Closings cluster before the year end
- The square at the Shops runs its holiday programme, which is the closest thing the neighbourhood has to a main street event
5 more photographs of the community and its surroundings
All freely licensed, via Wikimedia Commons. Filter by category.
Showing 1–5 of 5 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Don Mills, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Toronto library.