Kipling Avenue is a street in the cities of

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

and

Vaughan Vaughan ( ) (2022 population 344,412) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located in the Regional Municipality of York, just north of Toronto. Vaughan was the fastest-growing municipality in Canada between 1996 and 2006 with its population increa ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada. It is a

concession road In Upper Canada, Upper and Lower Canada, concession roads were laid out by the colonial government through undeveloped Crown land#Canada, Crown land to provide access to rows of newly surveyed Land lot, lots intended for farming by new settlers. T ...

, 6 concessions (12 km) west from

Yonge Street Yonge Street ( ') is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Great Lakes#Geography, Upper Great Lakes. Ontario's first colonial administrator, ...

, and is a major north–south

arterial road An arterial road or arterial thoroughfare is a high-capacity urban road that sits below highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights o ...

. It consists of three separate sections, with total combined length of 26.4 km. (16.4 mi.). The street travels through the district of

Etobicoke Etobicoke (, ) is an administrative district and former city within Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Comprising the city's west end, Etobicoke is bordered on the south by Lake Ontario, on the east by the Humber River (Ontario), Humber River, on the ...

and serves areas such as

New Toronto New Toronto is a neighbourhood and former municipality in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the south-west area of Toronto, along Lake Ontario. The Town of New Toronto was established in 1890, and was designed and planned as an industr ...

, Etobicoke Centre, Richview, and

Rexdale Rexdale is a neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located north-west of the central core, in the district of Etobicoke. Rexdale defines an area of several official neighbourhoods north of Highway 401 and east of Highway 427. Rexdale was ori ...

, passing through residential neighbourhoods and pockets of industrial and commercial areas. The

Toronto Transit Commission The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the primary public transport agency in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, operating the majority of the city's transit bus, bus and rail services. It is the oldest and largest of the urban transit service providers ...

's 45 Kipling, 44 Kipling South, 944 Kipling South Express and 945 Kipling Express bus routes operate from Kipling Station on the Bloor-Danforth line. These surface routes provide service along the length of the road. Film studio complex Kipling Studio located on 777 Kipling Avenue is part of

Cinespace Film Studios Cinespace Film Studios is a group of film studio facilities in the US and Canada. It was founded in 1988 by Greek-Canadian Nick Mirkopoulos. The studio started with a facility in Vaughan, a suburb of Toronto, which had been in operation since the ...

History

Originally named Mimico Avenue, the street was surveyed in 1795 as a Meridian road south of the east-west Meridian (now Rathburn Road) with lots to the east running east–west and lots to the west running north–south. The street became a central street for the lake shore municipalities of

(in which it is situated) and Long Branch. It is believed (but unproven) that the street was named in honour of

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

, author of such works as ''

The Jungle Book ''The Jungle Book'' is an 1894 collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who ...

'' and the '' Just So Stories'', in preparation for a planned visit to Woodbridge in 1907. Kipling cancelled at the last moment, but the street retained the name. The Kipling Avenue section in the Town of New Toronto also reverted to its alternate name, Eighteenth Street, at least twice. The section in Woodbridge, was named Eighth Avenue. Kipling Avenue was extended south of Lake Shore Boulevard West with the development of the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital grounds. In 2001 City Council renamed the southerly extension as "Colonel Samuel Smith Park Drive", after rejecting the City Surveyor's original suggestion of Eighteenth Street. The Six Points interchange with Bloor and Ontario's early Toronto-to-Hamilton highway, now Dundas has traditionally been Etobicoke's central intersection. In 1953 Etobicoke left York County and joined the newly formed

Metropolitan Toronto The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was an upper-tier level of municipal government in Ontario, Canada, from 1953 to 1998. It was made up of the old city of Toronto and numerous townships, towns and villages that surrounded Toronto, whic ...

launching a period of urbanization which included changing the Six Points intersection to use a number of bridges in 1961. In 2017, construction started on a project to remove the interchange and replace it with at-grade intersections. In March 2019, the interchange was closed and the bridges were removed.

Landmarks

Sights along Kipling Avenue in Toronto (north to south): * North Humber Park * North Kipling Park * North Kipling Junior Middle School * North Albion Collegiate Institute * St. Andrew Catholic School * Albion Centre * Albion Arena *

Toronto Public Library Toronto Public Library (TPL) is a public library system in Toronto, Ontario. It is the largest public library system in Canada, and in 2023 had averaged a higher circulation per capita than any other public library system internationally, making i ...

branch * Kipling Heights Plaza * Toronto Public Library Northern Elms branch * Mississauga Private School * Heatherbrae Middle School, now known as Monsignor Percy Johnson Catholic High School * Etobicoke North GO Station * Westway Plaza * Dixon Grove Junior Middle School * Denfield Park * Islington Golf Club * Six Points interchange * Kipling subway station *

Kipling GO Station Kipling GO Station is a GO Transit railway station along the Milton line rail corridor in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located at 27 St. Albans Road in the Islington-City Centre West neighbourhood of Toronto (formerly Etobicoke), near Dunda ...

* Kipling- Queensway Mall * Mimico Correctional Centre * New Toronto Secondary School, now Lakeshore Collegiate Institute *

Humber College The Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, rebranded as Humber Polytechnic since 2024, is a public Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1967, Humber has three mai ...

Lakeshore campus * Father John Redmond Catholic Secondary School * Colonel Samuel Smith Park

Beyond Toronto

Kipling Avenue remains one of two streets to go north of

Steeles Avenue Steeles Avenue is an east–west street that stretches across the western and central Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. Running from Appleby Line in Milton in the west to the Scarborough-Pickering Townline in the east, where it continue ...

(due to the short southward bend of Steeles) and still be within the City of Toronto (the other being Midland Avenue). It ends abruptly at the Toronto-Vaughan border. North of that border, Kipling is a broken street and appears briefly from Highway 7 to Langstaff Road. Its original alignment becomes Clarence Street until Major Mackenzie Road. It begins abruptly again south of Teston Road before finally terminating at King-Vaughan Road.

References

External links

Google Maps of Kipling Avenue
{{Roads in Vaughan Roads in Toronto Roads in the Regional Municipality of York Transport in Etobicoke

History

Landmarks

Beyond Toronto

See also

References

External links