5 places in Toronto that changed beyond recognition in 2024

Toronto is coming off another year of profound changes, including the closure and demolition of significant landmarks, the resolution of years-long traffic problems, and even the creation of a new river.

As a city in near-constant state of flux, it can be a tall order to keep track of all the comings and goings of memorable places, but the end of an eventful year offers a great opportunity to reflect on how much Toronto has changed in the past 365 days.

With 2024 now a wrap, here are five places in the city that changed beyond recognition in the last year.

Ontario Place

It goes without saying that Ontario Place suffered the most catastrophic-looking change of any location in the city over the past year as the province presses forward with a contentious plan to redevelop the site with a private megaspa.

The once-bustling public space saw its biggest change in October when the redevelopment plan advanced to wholesale destruction that saw the West Island clearcut of trees seemingly overnight under cover of darkness.

As of late 2024, the site has been largely flattened with the clearcutting of trees and removal of buildings ahead of the controversial redevelopment set to follow in the coming years.

Yonge and Eglinton

Toronto’s most construction-cursed intersection finally reopened fully in 2024 for the first time in what felt like forever. The Yonge and Eglinton intersection has been a mess of closures and obstructions throughout the delay-plagued construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

With major construction works now complete at Yonge and Eglinton and the line now expected to enter service in mid-2025 (we will see about that), a sense of order has finally returned to the beating heart of midtown.

The only visible sign of construction that remains at the intersection are the fences blocking off access to the otherwise complete LRT station just west of Yonge, but, aside from the yet-to-open transit line, Yonge and Eglinton’s sorrows are mostly over.

McCowan Road

If we are talking about dramatically altered Toronto landscapes in 2024, one stretch of McCowan Road in Scarborough is an easy shoo-in.

The removal of the 8,100-tonne Progress Avenue bridge in September was a monumental feat of coordinated demolition that saw the bulky overpass reduced to rubble in the span of just 72 hours.

The bridge was removed as part of the preparation efforts for Metrolinx’s Scarborough Subway Extension, which will tack on an additional 7.8 kilometres to the TTC’s Line 2 Bloor-Danforth from the current eastern terminus at Kennedy Station to a new endpoint at Sheppard Avenue East and McCowan Road.

Cherry Street and the rerouted Don River

The main north-south thoroughfare through the Port Lands area has looked quite a bit different since the start of 2024. Which is bound to happen when you relocate almost an entire kilometre of a street and engineer a human-made river under it.

Cherry Street underwent one of the most significant changes you could imagine for a street early in 2024 when a portion of it was shifted to the west as part of the transformative Port Lands Flood Protection project.

The stretch of Cherry Street south of the Gardiner Expressway closed out the previous year about 115 metres east of its current location but was officially rerouted onto a new alignment in January 2024 that includes a pair of futuristic new bridges and a brand new river that was filled with water in the spring and finally started flowing this past fall.

Ontario Science Centre

Toronto residents were shocked by the sudden demise of the Ontario Science Centre in June 2024 following a bombshell announcement from the Ministry of Infrastructure that the beloved museum and educational complex at Don Mills and Eglinton would shutter its doors forever.

The Science Centre, constructed in 1969 in a definitive example of the era’s Brutalist style of architecture, was ordered closed by provincial officials following a report (that has been interpreted with varying degrees of severity) about the structural integrity of a section of concrete roof.

Fencing was quickly erected in the days after the closure, and by late summer, the Science Centre had become entirely overgrown in weeds and unkempt brush.

The closed attraction’s appearance has also changed on transit maps. All provincial mentions of the Science Centre at Don Mills and Eglinton have been scrubbed from existence.

Metrolinx has all but ceased to refer to the completed Crosstown LRT station at Don Mills and Eglinton by its official Science Centre name, while the forthcoming Ontario Line station is now also being referred to by the intersection’s name.

If you want to visit the Science Centre today, the province will just send you to a suburban shopping mall for some pop-up exhibits.

Several major demolitions and construction projects will further transform the city in the coming years. Will the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRTs finally open? Will a 105-storey megatower finally take the crown of Canada’s tallest building? Only the next 12 months will tell.