What's the difference between Riverdale and Riverside?
TL/DR
Riverdale: Bounded on the west by the Don River, on the south by Queen Street East, on the north by Danforth Avenue and on the east by … depends who’s drawing the map.
Riverside: Bounded on the west by the Don River, on the north by Queen Street East, on the south by Lake Shore Boulevard and on the east by Carlaw Avenue.
The details
City Hall assigns every square metre of Toronto to one of more than 100 named and numbered neighbourhoods for planning, operations and citizen consultation. The boundaries have to be drawn somewhere. They, and official neighbourhood names, don’t always coincide with popular usage.
Also, names evolve. Their currency is influenced by socio-economic trends such as land values and housing prices, industry and commerce, major infrastructure projects, social programs and popular organization.
North Riverdale (neighbourhood 68) is what the city calls the area bounded by the Don, Danforth, Pape and Gerrard Street East, but it’s not a traditional name. This is the posh part of the district south of Danforth. Residents generally just say they’re in Riverdale.
South Riverdale (neighbourhood 70) is a name you’re more likely to hear people in the area use when referring to the area between Gerrard and Queen. The city, however, extends South Riverdale all the way to Lake Ontario. This is an overstretch. It includes Riverside, Leslieville, much of the Portlands and the Leslie Street Spit. No way. Riverdale stops at Queen.
Riverside lies between Queen and Lake Shore Boulevard, from the Don east to Carlaw. From there,
Leslieville stretches further east to Ashbridge’s Bay. But plenty of streets north of Queen identify as part of Leslieville too, as far east as Greenwood Avenue and as far north as Dundas Street, Gerrard or even the CN railway tracks.
North of the tracks, the city gives the name
Blake-Jones (neighbourhood 69) to the area bounded by Pape, Danforth and Greenwood. But the central part of that is
The Pocket, and proud of it. And a few of the streets east of Pape have a good case for being considered part of Riverdale.
School catchments and traditional neighbourhood names are closely related. Riverdale Collegiate is on the northeast corner of Jones and Gerrard, so maybe that extends Riverdale east to Greenwood. But then you have Eastdale Collegiate on the south side of Gerrard at DeGrassi, halfway between Broadview and Carlaw, catching the high schoolers in South Riverdale.
If I had to call it, having lived close by for the better part of 40 years, I’d draw the eastern boundary of Riverdale from Danforth south along Jones to the tracks, east to Greenwood, south to Dundas, west to Carlaw and south to Queen. That might be too generous, but generosity makes fewer enemies than stinginess.
The map
I’m a rank amateur at cartography, but border descriptions make really boring text. Maybe this will help. It’s based on the city’s neighbourhood map.
Toronto - Find your neighbourhood
