Live in Islington
The village Etobicoke grew out of, and one of five TRREB districts on this site where a detached house benchmarks at more than three times an apartment, with the two still moving apart.
Islington was a stop on Dundas Street before it was anything else: an inn in 1832, a post office named after an English birthplace in 1860, and a village that Etobicoke Township grew around and eventually swallowed. The City made it a neighbourhood of its own in 2022, when it split the old Islington-City Centre West into Islington (158) and Etobicoke City Centre (159), and the line it drew matters. The Dundas Street village, Montgomery's Inn and the murals are inside Islington. Both subway stations, the Six Points towers and the new civic centre are not: they are in Etobicoke City Centre, across Bloor Street, which is a five to fifteen minute walk depending where in the neighbourhood you stand.
The village Etobicoke grew out of, and the line the City drew through it
Islington Avenue and Mimico Creek on the east, Bloor Street West along the south, Rathburn Road across the north, and The East Mall on the west. Dundas Street West runs through the middle of it, along the old Lake Iroquois shoreline.
Dundas Street was the road west out of York, and Islington is what grew up beside it: an inn in 1832, a school the same year, and a post office in 1860 named after the part of London the innkeeper's wife came from. Etobicoke Township organised itself around this village and then outgrew it, and the street still shows the sequence, running along the old Lake Iroquois shoreline with two dozen commissioned murals on its walls telling the story to anyone waiting for a bus.
The first thing to get right here is which Islington you are looking at. In 2022 the City split the old Islington-City Centre West in two. Islington (158) is the northern half: the Dundas village, Montgomery's Inn, the golf club and the streets around them. Etobicoke City Centre (159) took the southern half, and with it both subway stations, the Six Points blocks and the towers on Bloor Street. Listings use the name loosely across all of it, so a search on the word returns three different places at three different prices. Search on the map instead.
Two markets are being averaged into one district figure here. In July 2026 the detached benchmark in TRREB district W08 was $1,638,600 and the apartment benchmark was $520,400, a shade over three to one and the widest gap in the west end. They move at different speeds too, detached down 2.21% over the year and apartments down 7.73%. The clearest sign of it is in the raw sales: the same month recorded an average price of $1,086,767 and a median of $825,000, which is what happens when fifty detached sales and fifty-eight apartment sales are added into one column.
And the composite barely moved. W08 gave up 1.93% over the year, against 4.67% next door in W07 and 8.66% in Scarborough's E07. That is the shallowest fall of any district covered by these Toronto guides, and the mix explains it. A district weighted toward large detached houses falls more slowly than one weighted toward apartments, whatever else is true.
The change already approved is larger than anything in the timeline above. In 2026 Council approved a master plan for the Cloverdale Mall site at Dundas and The East Mall: 5,536 homes in ten towers of twenty-five to forty-one storeys on thirty-two acres, beside a neighbourhood of 23,460 people. Whether that reads as an amenity or as a decade of construction depends entirely on which street you buy on, and the approved plan already answers it. Read it before you offer.
- Search on the map rather than the name: listings apply Islington to three City neighbourhoods, and only one of them is 158
- Read the district average against its median, $1,086,767 against $825,000 in July 2026, before you accept any single benchmark
- On anything within sight of Cloverdale, read the approved master plan first: ten towers is a decade of construction
- On a Bloor Street or Dundas apartment, order the status certificate and read the reserve fund study
- Four units are permitted as of right on a residential lot; the five and six unit permission is Toronto and East York wards, and this is Etobicoke York
- Both land transfer taxes apply here, provincial and municipal, exactly as they do downtown
How Islington got here
- 1814A settlement forms on Dundas Street, the stage coach road west out of York, and is first called Mimico.
- 1832Montgomery's Inn opens on Dundas Street to serve the coach traffic, and a school opens the same year under a name Islington Junior Middle School still carries.
- 1860The postal village is named Islington, after the part of London where the innkeeper's wife was born.
- 1968Line 2 reaches Islington station just south of here, and office and apartment towers start going up along Bloor Street.
- 2004The business improvement area starts commissioning murals along Dundas Street West, which is how the village got its second name.
- 2021The Kipling Bus Terminal opens and takes the Mississauga buses off Islington station, ending fifty years of regional buses on Bloor Street here.
- 2022The City splits Islington-City Centre West in two, and Islington (158) becomes a neighbourhood in its own right.
- 2026Council approves 5,536 homes across ten towers on the Cloverdale Mall site, the largest single change the neighbourhood has faced.
Mimico Creek, Tom Riley Park and Echo Valley
The open space here is one creek, followed most of its length. Echo Valley Park holds the Mimico Creek valley north of Dundas, and Tom Riley Park runs about fifteen hectares from Dundas down to Bloor with the ball diamond, the tennis courts and the community garden in it. Between them sits the Islington Golf Club, private and closed to the public, which is why the middle of the neighbourhood has so few streets in it. West of all that, Centennial Park is the regional one, with the ski hill and the conservatory.
What the map does not show: the creek path is useful and very seasonal. In March Mimico Creek runs high and the low sections close, and a summer downpour can do the same within an hour. The golf course is worth understanding before you buy beside it: it is private land, it is not a park, and it will not become one.
Elsewhere in Toronto, not Islington
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. The two station rows are the ones to read carefully. Kipling is the end of Line 2 and the Milton line platform beside it is thin outside the peaks, so the subway is the real service here.
Every gym within reach
The neighbourhood is unusually well served for a suburban one, because the Etobicoke Olympium is a few minutes west: a fifty metre competition pool and a twenty-five yard warm-up pool, used as a venue for the 2015 Pan Am Games, with a track and a gym in the same building.
- Two pools, a track and a gym under one roof, on City recreation pricing
- Echo Valley Park and the Mimico Creek trail for the daily route
- Tom Riley Park for the diamond, the courts and the field
- Centennial Park west of here, with the ski and snowboard hill through the winter
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Etobicoke Olympium open | The City's fifty metre competition pool and twenty-five yard warm-up pool at Rathburn and Renforth, a 2015 Pan Am Games venue, with a track and a gym alongside. | 6–10 min |
| Echo Valley Park open | The Mimico Creek trail north of Dundas, which is the neighbourhood's default running route. | 3–4 min |
| Tom Riley Park open | The ball diamond, the tennis courts, the multipurpose field and the creek path down to Bloor. | 6–9 min |
| Centennial Park open | The regional park west of here, with the ski and snowboard hill in winter and the fields and the conservatory the rest of the year. | 7–11 min |
The free option is the creek path from Echo Valley down through Tom Riley to Bloor. It floods, so check the City's trail closures in March and after any heavy summer week.
An 1832 name, and boundaries that do not follow the neighbourhood
Islington Junior Middle School has carried its name since 1832, which makes it the oldest in Etobicoke, and it runs kindergarten to grade eight on Cordova Avenue. Etobicoke Collegiate is the public secondary school, on Montgomery Road at the south-east corner. On the Catholic side, Our Lady of Sorrows covers the elementary years at the Bloor Street end and Michael Power/St. Joseph is the secondary school, west of here on Eringate Drive.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Islington Junior Middle School | Toronto District School Board | Kindergarten to grade eight in the village. A school has carried this name since 1832, which makes it the oldest in Etobicoke, though the building a child attends today is nothing like that old. |
| Etobicoke Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | The public secondary school on Montgomery Road, inside the neighbourhood at its south-east corner. Assignment is by address, and the boundary does not follow the neighbourhood line. |
| John G. Althouse Middle School | Toronto District School Board | The middle school on Lloyd Manor Road, just north of the neighbourhood. Some addresses here feed into it rather than into Islington, which is worth confirming before you offer. |
| Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic elementary school on Montgomery Road, at the Bloor Street end of the neighbourhood. |
| Michael Power/St. Joseph High School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic secondary school on Eringate Drive, west of here. It draws from a wide area, so the commute is a bus rather than a walk from most of Islington. |
| Toronto Catholic District School Board | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic board draws its own boundaries over these streets, and they do not match the public board's. Check the address in both locators rather than assuming they agree. |
Neither board draws its lines on the City's neighbourhood boundary, and some addresses in the north feed into John G. Althouse instead of Islington. Check the exact address in both boards' locators. The nearest school is often not the assigned one.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Colder than the lakeshore neighbourhoods, with none of the lake's moderating effect
- The thinnest listing month of the year
- The Mimico Creek path ices in the shaded stretches below Dundas
- The month that tests the mortar on a 1950s side-split
- Condominium budgets and reserve fund notices circulate in the Bloor Street buildings
- Snow clearing on Dundas is prompt; on the crescents behind it, less so
- Mimico Creek runs high and the low path sections close without notice
- The spring market opens and the first detached listings appear
- The best month to read a lot's grading, with the leaves still down
- The busiest month for new listings in a district that trades in both halves of the market
- Cloverdale construction traffic builds on The East Mall and Dundas
- Worth timing the walk to Kipling station at the hour you would actually do it
- The Dundas Street murals are at their best before the tree canopy closes over them
- Open houses run across the post-war houses and the Bloor Street apartments alike
- Golf club traffic returns to Islington Avenue on weekend mornings
- Summer downpours start, and Mimico Creek drains a long way north of here
- Ask about the backwater valve on any house near the valley
- Montgomery's Inn holds its outdoor programming through the warm months
- Several degrees warmer than the lakeshore on the same afternoon
- The slowest sales month of the year
- Airport arrivals run low over the north of the neighbourhood on some wind directions
- The quietest month on the residential crescents
- Highway 427 and Gardiner resurfacing usually lands now and pushes traffic onto Dundas
- A good month to test how a west-facing back garden handles late sun
- The autumn market opens and runs to late November
- School traffic returns to Dundas and Islington Avenue at the same two hours
- Subway crowding at Kipling is at its worst in the first weeks of term
- The pleasantest walking weather of the year along the creek
- Property tax instalments and assessment notices land around now
- The escarpment along Dundas shows itself once the leaves are down
- Listings thin sharply and negotiating room opens on the detached side
- The wettest test a flat-roofed 1960s apartment building will get
- Early dark makes the twenty minute walk to Kipling feel like a longer one
- Closings cluster before the year end and listings all but stop
- Both land transfer taxes are due at closing, so the cheque is twice the provincial one
- The least competition of the year, for the least choice
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 Islington, 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.