Horse-powered ferries, a vanished mainland connection and Babe Ruth’s first professional home run are part of the Toronto Islands’ strange history.
The Toronto Islands look familiar from the water: beaches, paths, boats and open parkland. Their history is far less ordinary. The islands once had horse-powered ferries, an amusement park attraction built around diving horses and a baseball stadium where Babe Ruth made professional history.
They were also once connected to the mainland. Here are seven Toronto Islands history facts that put the waterfront landscape in a different light.
1. Ferries once ran on horse power
The first horse-powered ferries to the Toronto Islands began operating in 1833. Horses walked on treadmills, turning paddle wheels that moved the boats across the water.
Steam-powered ferries began replacing them by the 1850s. Horse boats were officially off the route by 1850, closing one of the strangest chapters in Toronto’s transportation history.
2. Hanlan’s Point featured diving horses
Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park once promoted a stunt in which two white horses climbed a high platform and dove into shallow water.
The horses were named King and Queen. The early-20th-century attraction eventually ended amid growing concerns about animal treatment. Today, the act is a stark reminder of how different amusement parks once looked.
3. The Islands were once attached to the mainland
The Toronto Islands were not always islands. A severe storm in April 1858 broke the land connection near present-day Woodbine Avenue.
The breach created the Eastern Gap and permanently separated the landmass from the mainland. A familiar part of Toronto’s shoreline began with a single destructive storm.
4. Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run here
On September 5, 1914, a 19-year-old rookie Babe Ruth played for the Providence Grays against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Hanlan’s Point Stadium.
He hit a three-run home run over the right-field fence and into Lake Ontario. The story that the ball remains at the bottom of the Inner Harbour is still a legend, not a confirmed fact.
5. Island homeownership follows a long, regulated process
Living on the Toronto Islands is not a standard open-market real-estate purchase. Homes and land leases can be transferred through the Toronto Islands Residential Community Trust Corporation.
The process includes a 500-person waiting list that opens every two years through a lottery. Applicants can wait 20 to 30 years, making island residency a long-term commitment rather than a typical property search.
6. Gibraltar Point Lighthouse dates to 1808
Built in 1808, Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is described as the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes and one of Toronto’s oldest landmark structures.
The lighthouse is also linked to the story of its first keeper, John Paul Radelmüller, who was murdered in 1815. The belief that the building is haunted by his presence has become part of its folklore.
7. The park replaced a much larger community
By the early 1950s, the Toronto Islands were a seasonal community of more than 8,000 residents. The area included more than 600 homes, along with hotels, stores and a baseball stadium.
Much of that community was demolished beginning in the late 1950s to create public parkland. The open spaces visitors know today sit on top of a far more built-up chapter in the Islands’ history.
That layered past is what makes the Toronto Islands more than a quick escape across the harbour. The same landscape has been a transportation route, amusement district, baseball ground and home to a tightly regulated residential community.
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