Toronto Islands
Toronto Island was formed over thousands of years by wind carrying sand. By the time the British arrived to establish the Town of York in 1793, Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the Governor, would take her horse and gallop out onto the wilds of this her favorite sands as she noted in her diary.
In 1858 a huge storm ripped through it's eastern gap and thus created an island. Today Toronto Island is made up of approximately 18 lesser islands and of those, only two are inhabited year round.
Soon campers began to migrate over to Wards when the city banned camping overnight at Hanlan's. In 1904 there were 10 campers who pitched their tents for the entire summer, by 1906 the numbers grew until 1912 when 685 campers summered on Ward's. From this rustic setting a community was born.
Toronto Island has the oldest structure in Toronto, the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse built in 1808, with an increase to its height completed in 1832. Now situated inland due to landfill, this the oldest lighthouse on the Great Lakes was in use up until 1959. It's also the scene of a grisly murder.
On a bitterly cold night in January 1815 lighthouse keeper JP Radermuller the Island's first permanent resident was beaten to death by two drunken soldiers visiting from Fort York. They were acquitted for lack of evidence as the body was never found. Some say to this day they can hear a hollow thud slowly descending the 
winding staircase.
Across for the lighthouse is the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, an arts co-op, writers retreat and conference centre remodeled from the old Island school house itself first built in 1888. From a First Nations healing place to a playground for Toronto's elite and plain folks alike, Toronto Island from the very beginning has always been evolving.
But what was to come next was to change not only the tranquility of this generational retreat but part of its intention as well. In 1894 the Toronto Ferry Co. began an ambitious landfill operation and set out to create an enormous addition to the existing Hanlan's Point. On this newly built plateau they constructed an amusement park and a few years later a ten thousand seat baseball stadium where a young visiting American player named Babe Ruth was to hit his first professional home run in 1914.
In 1937 the Toronto Harbour Commission had a plan. They demolished the stadium, filled in the surrounding lagoons and paved over the site. While Hanlan's Point as a beautiful park with a long windswept beach didn't vanish completely, it's nickname as Canada's Coney Island with its beach side cottages, dance halls and moonlit walks on the boardwalk, was to be no more. It was now going to share its space with a very 20th century innovation, an airport.