A view from the Bluffers Marina


Houseboats at the Bluffers Marina

The Canada Day long weekend provided an ideal opportunity to explore parts of Toronto most of us often overlook. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, then a kind of invisibility. If a destination takes just a few minutes to get to then it can't be good, can it?

We visited Bluffers Park in Scarborough yesterday. It was hot. The parking lots were jammed. Families with kids were everywhere. Yet, the Bluffers Marina seemed abandoned. In a surreal moment a TV crew from China shot one of those "here we are in the Canadian wilderness" spots on the steps of the Marina's restaurant. When it runs in Beijing, viewers will only see trees, bluffs, sailboats, and a mostly empty marina. Two hundred metres away though, out of sight, thousands of people searched for their piece of Canadian heaven.

One of the attractions here is the collection of houseboats. For whatever reason, houseboats are not as popular in Toronto as they are in other water bordered cities. This is the only floating community that I know of. Are there others?