Finch Avenue

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Finch Avenue is a major east-west principal arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

East of Toronto, Finch Avenue is also referred to as Durham Regional Road 37, while West of Toronto, Finch Avenue is also referred to as Peel Regional Road 2.

Contents

1 History
2 Transit hub
3 Neighbourhoods
4 Street details
5 Side streets
6 See also

History

The street is named after hotel owner John Finch, who operated a hotel at the northeast corner of Finch Avenue and Yonge Street in Toronto. The road allowance was a concession road, and at one time, there were a number of older churches, schoolhouses, and cemeteries on each side of the road. In the 1950s, Ontario Hydro constructed a series of transmission lines around Toronto, and paralleled Finch from Highway 400 eastward into Pickering. This routing is also a compressed natural gas pipeline.

West of Islington Avenue, Finch ended at the Humber River (Ontario). Traffic proceeding west had to travel on Islington, northwards towards Woodbridge, or south across the Humber to Albion Road. As urban development came to the Toronto area, a Finch Avenue alignment was developed in this area, and was completed in the 1980s within Toronto (at Islington), and then briefly into Mississauga with the construction of Highway 427 (Ontario), and Brampton, turning northwestward onto the Gorewood Road concession (formerly Toronto Gore Township Concession 3). The road now ends at Steeles Avenue, where Gorewood Road is cut off by Highway 407. The concession is then called MacVean Drive in northeastern Brampton, north of Queen Street, the former Highway 7.

On August 19, 2005 a freak rainstorm in Toronto caused the Black Creek water level to rise, which caused a section of Finch Avenue West near Sentinel Road (due south of York University between Keele and Jane Streets to collapse, leaving a deep pit that prevented any pedestrian or veichular traffic from passing through. The crater left where a 4 lane roadway once was is approximately 20–25 feet (7 metres) deep. Two lanes reopened in late 2005, and officials expect the other 2 lanes to be open sometime during May 2006.

Transit hub

At the intersection of Finch Avenue and Yonge Street is the northernmost station of the TTC subway network and GO Transit Finch Terminal; formerly York Region Bus Terminal. TTC bus service on Finch runs 24 hours, on the 36 Finch West (318 Blue Night), and 39 Finch East (319 Blue Night). There is also a peak hours 139 Finch East Express bus that serves the Don Mills Station on the Sheppard Subway line.

Neighbourhoods

The Yonge/Finch corridor consists mostly of condominimums and some office buildings. A small Korean community resides in the area, mostly visa students studying in Canada.

The community of Newtonbrook is located just north of Finch and Yonge and the birth place of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Prime Minister Lester Bowles Pearson.

The well-known Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto is centered around the intersection of Finch Avenue West and Jane Street.

At the intersection of Highway 404 and Finch is Seneca College's Newnham Campus, one of Ontario's largest community colleges.

Other sites and neighbourhoods along Finch:

Wild Water Kingdom — at Steeles Avenue East (Brampton), located within Brampton, Ontario.
Humber College Main Campus, near Highway 27
Etobicoke General Hospital
Albion Mall — at Albion and Kipling Avenue
Thistletown Regional Centre for Children and Adolescents
Thistletown
Rexdale
Emery — at Weston Road
York-Finch Hospital — Humber River Regional
Yorkgate Mall — near Jane Street
Norfinch Mall — near Jane Street
Jane Finch Mall — near Jane Street
York University, north on Keele Street and Sentinel Boulevard
Ross Milne Dam, on the Don River (Western Branch), near Dufferin Street/William R. Allen Road
North York Branson Hospital, near Bathurst Street
Herb Carnegie North York Centennial Recreation Complex (opposite Branson)
Esther Shiner Stadium, behind Northview CI at Bathurst
Finch Transit Terminal at Yonge Street.
Finch Parkette — site of John Finch's Hotel and tavern in 1848; demolished in 1873
Historic Zion Schoolhouse near Don Mills Road
Seneca College Newnham Campus at Highway 404
Bridlewood Mall at Warden Avenue
Scarborough Grace Hospital at Birchmount.
Woodside Mall at McCowan Road
[Rouge Park] at the Rouge River
Toronto Zoo

Street details

Despite its length (one of the longest streets in the Greater Toronto Area), few major landmarks are located on Finch; it runs primarily through business and residential areas.

Most of Finch Avenue west of Morningside Avenue is a four to six-lane principal arterial, with a speed limit of 60 km/h (35–40 mph) in most sections. East of Morningside, Finch is a discontinuous collector or minor arterial road (as Old Finch Avenue to Meadowvale) and detours via Meadowvale Road, Plug Hat Road and Beare Road. The road was broken up by residential development and [Rouge Park]. The street continues briefly east of Beare Road, and enters into the Town of Pickering in Durham Region after Scarborough-Pickering Townline.

In Pickering, Finch Avenue is also Durham Road # 37 and continues east to Brock Road (Durham Regional Road 1). It ends at a cul-de-sac at Kingston Road (Durham Regional Road # 2 and formerly Ontario provincial highway 2), and the highway follows this concession line to the eastern boundary of Oshawa, Ontario.

Side streets

Pemberton Avenue is a short local street in the community of Willowdale (or North York) in the city of Toronto.

The section from Willowdale Avenue to Kenneth Avenue consists of single family dwellings, where as the section from Kenneth Avenue to Yonge Street consists of condos of various heights (and many built by developer Pemberton Group).

Kenneth Avenue does not intersect with Pemberton Avenue, rather a small parkette named Bishop's Park separates the two sections of the road.

A third section of Pemberton Avenue is cut off by Finch Station, between Hakim Optical and the station's exit to east side of Yonge Street. In recent years, the TTC wanted to re-connect this missing link to Yonge as an alternate exit or entrance for buses into the station. There is no sign indicating this link is a street, and it appears the link is now either a laneway or part of a parking lot.

Pawnee Avenue, a residential street at the northwest corner of Finch Avenue East and Victoria Park Avenue, is located on an original alignment of Finch Avenue, realigned in the 1970s to entirely bypass this section of road, and to connecting Finch Avenue into Scarborough.