Into the Vale of Avoca This Fall: Which Deer Park Ravine Entrances Are Open, Why Two Stairs Are Still Closed, and What Comes Next

The Vale of Avoca has twelve ways in, and two of them have been closed for years. The Heath Crescent staircase and the St. Clair Avenue East connections are shut "because of poor conditions," according to the panels the City showed at its October 7 open house at Deer Park Public Library. Seventy-three people came to that open house. This fall's news is that one of those closed stairs now has a schedule. Early 2027 is the forecast start and Summer 2028 the forecast finish.

That schedule is much sooner than the one residents were given a few years ago. It also comes with a trade-off for anyone who walks in from Avoca Avenue. The ravine's next two years are mostly about access: which stairs work, which paths hold up, and how people get down to Yellow Creek while crews are working.

The twelve doors, and which ones open

The City and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority are studying improvements to the Vale of Avoca, which the City also calls the Yellow Creek Ravine. The goal is to change how visitors "access, move through and experience" the ravine and to reduce erosion and flooding damage. The City's own survey lists the entrances by name, so here they are in one place.

The panels name the Balfour trail at Avoca and the Mount Pleasant and Roxborough crossing as the busiest entrances, followed by the cemetery and the stairs behind Deer Park School. They also explain why getting in has always been difficult. St. Clair Avenue sits high above the creek, so routes down from the street are long and steep. Some entrances are hard to find or don't connect well to the trails. Steep paths also wear out faster than gentle ones.

How two staircases ended up behind chains

The Heath Crescent closure goes back the furthest. TRCA says a slope gave way after the July 8, 2013 storm. The City closed the pedestrian staircase because of slope instability and erosion hazards, and a TRCA photo dated 2016 shows it already closed. In a 2023 letter to the City, the Moore Park Residents Association described the same damage and said the steep slope needed major stabilization before stair access could safely return.

The St. Clair closure is newer, and less is known about it. In a June 2023 letter on the City's record, the Deer Park Residents Group said the northbound steps from the northwest end of the St. Clair bridge had been chained off since 2020. The letter also said the path from the bottom of those steps to the main trail between the cemetery and the bridge had eroded and could not be used. No City notice found gives an exact closure date or an engineering diagnosis beyond "poor conditions." The site is still unresolved. The residents group's September 17 update calls it a tricky site because of erosion and other issues, and says engineering alternatives go to TRCA in late Q4 2026.

Heath Crescent gets a date, and Balfour becomes the work route

In that same 2023 letter, the Moore Park Residents Association said the City's plan at the time put construction at 2030/31. The October 2026 panels give a different schedule. Crews may be on site this fall collecting technical data. TRCA then plans to start slope stabilization, stair replacement and channel works at Heath Crescent in early 2027, with completion expected by Summer 2028. The residents group's September update lists the steps, with the tender targeted for Q4 2026 and construction starting late in Q1 2027.

According to TRCA's Heath project page, the work stabilizes the valley wall below Heath Crescent and Heath Street East and adds erosion control in the creek channel. The new staircase is built at the same time as the slope works. For Moore Park walkers, the residents group says the rebuilt stairs will make it easier to cross between Deer Park and Moore Park and give a safer way down into the ravine.

People who use the busiest entrance will see the effects first. The panel map shows the David A. Balfour Park Trail as the construction access route for equipment. It stays open to the public outside construction hours. The panels also say:

• some parts of the ravine will be closed to the public during construction
• work will be staged where possible to keep closures to a minimum
• crews will need to build an access road, remove trees and cross the creek to complete the works

All of these dates are forecasts. The City's broader project timeline says it "is subject to change."

Why stairs keep failing here

The staircases are the visible part of a larger problem. The City's Yellow Creek Geomorphic Systems Master Plan, finished in February 2025, divides the creek into reaches. Reach 1 runs from Mount Pleasant Cemetery to the St. Clair bridge, and Reach 2 runs from the bridge to the pedestrian crossing. The plan found 71% of the banks in Reach 1 and 60% in Reach 2 failing or already failed. It recorded rapid bank erosion at the outside bend near the historic sawmill. It also found that erosion and widening in Reach 2 have exposed bridge footings and pipes.

The 2026 panels show the same problem from a walker's point of view, with photos of a scour hole at a pedestrian bridge and valley wall erosion at the old mill site. They also describe how the trails came to be. "The network grew through use, not planning." Paths were not laid out to follow the land's slopes and drainage, so runoff leaves gaps and wet spots, and creek crossings are few.

Some of the creek work is many years away. The master plan was written to protect water and sewer infrastructure, and the City says it did not assess trail conditions. Its top-priority project is an 85-metre retrofit at the storm outfall south of St. Clair Avenue, estimated at five to ten years out. A separate project would remove the failed concrete spillway at the historic sawmill, and another would replace the upstream pedestrian bridge. The lower-priority work falls in a 10 to 20 year window.

The forest above the trail

The trees face their own slow pressure. This summer, the Midtown Ravines Group, which includes the Deer Park Residents Group, sponsored the first ecological survey of the whole Vale since 2013. Urban Forest Associates carried it out with forestry students from the University of Toronto's Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. The survey found that the ravine still holds a significant mature oak forest. In the summer 2026 count, though, Norway maple was the dominant species at 57.1% of trees per hectare. The residents group reports that the oaks are gradually dying off and being replaced by the faster-growing maples, with little oak regeneration in some areas.

This links back to the stairs. According to the residents group, Norway maples suppress understory growth and add to slope erosion. The survey also found that invasive species cluster in high-traffic, disturbed areas such as trails, roadways and the creek edge. The City's panels note that the Vale is a designated Environmentally Significant Area. Species at risk to be considered in the design include butternut trees, chimney swift, eastern wood-pewee and several endangered bat species.

What the City is asking, until October 22

The City's virtual mapping activity and short survey runs from October 1 to October 22, 2026. It asks whether people use the trails to get somewhere, such as school, work or shops, and which entrances and exits they would prefer, up to four of each. Today the ravine has no signs, seating, viewpoints or information about the place, and the panels list rest spots and better wayfinding among the possible improvements. Lighting, playgrounds, sports facilities, washrooms and drinking fountains are outside the project. So are top-of-slope works meant to protect private property directly.

Here is the rest of the schedule:

1. Fall 2026: Phase 1 engagement, with the mapping survey closing October 22
2. Late Q4 2026: engineering alternatives for the St. Clair staircase go to TRCA
3. Early 2027: Heath Crescent construction begins
4. Spring and Summer 2027: Phases 2 and 3 explore design options
5. Summer 2028: Heath Crescent work expected to be complete
6. 2028 onward: wider ravine construction, pending funding

The City says it will post a summary of the feedback on its project page. If your walk starts at Heath Crescent or St. Clair, or you cross the ravine between Deer Park and Moore Park, the survey asks exactly which way in you use.

At SW3.ca, we follow changes like these in Deer Park and Moore Park because walking routes, staircases and construction schedules are part of daily life here. If you'd like to talk about how the Heath Crescent work or the Vale plan touches your street, please contact us.