Henry Farm is a neighbourhood in the City of

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada. It is located in the north central part of the city within the former city of

North York North York is one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of York, Old Toronto and East York, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2016 Census, it had a popu ...

. The City of Toronto has officially designated the neighbourhood of Henry Farm to encompass the Parkway Forest residential subdivision, between Don Mills Road and

Highway 404 The following highways are numbered 404: Australia - Victoria Canada * Manitoba Provincial Road 404 * Newfoundland and Labrador Route 404 * Ontario Highway 404 Costa Rica * National Route 404 Israel * Route 404 (Israel) Japan * Japan N ...

. The neighbourhood is served by the Henry Farm Community Interest Association.

History

Henry Farm was settled in 1806 by Henry Mulholland, a native of

Clones, County Monaghan Clones ( ; , meaning 'meadow of Eois') is a small town in western County Monaghan, Ireland. The area is part of the Border Region, earmarked for economic development by the Irish Government due to its currently below-average economic situation ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. He later sold the farm, but his great-grandson,

George Stewart Henry George Stewart Henry (July 16, 1871 – September 2, 1958) was a farmer, businessman and politician in Ontario, Canada. He served as the tenth premier of Ontario from 1930 to 1934. He had acted as minister of highways while Ontario greatly ex ...

, reacquired it in 1898. Henry was the tenth

Premier of Ontario The premier of Ontario (french: premier ministre de l'Ontario) is the head of government of Ontario. Under the Westminster system, the premier governs with the Confidence and supply, confidence of a majority the elected Legislative Assembly of On ...

from 1930-34. Ten days before his death in 1958, Henry sold his farm for to the developers of the present-day neighbourhood. Henry's house, called ''Oriole Lodge'', still stands as a private residence at 17 Manorpark Court. Henry Farm was developed into a housing subdivision in the 1960s. Most of the neighbourhood consists of low density suburban housing. Along the northeast and southeast are townhouse developments. The latter are primarily

social housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

. There are also two high-rise apartment buildings, Havenbrook Towers, at the southeast corner. There is one church, located at 80 George Henry Boulevard, which houses the St. Matthew the Apostle, Oriole

Anglican Church of Canada The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC or ACoC) is the Ecclesiastical province#Anglican Communion, province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is ''l'Église anglicane du Canada''. In 2017, the Anglican Church co ...

congregation. The church was built in 1969 and dedicated on January 25, 1970. The site was shared with the Covenant

United Church A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations. Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state ...

. Covenant United Church amalgamated with Donway United Church in 1992, and moved out of Henry Farm.

Education

The

Toronto District School Board The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), formerly known as English-language Public District School Board No. 12 prior to 1999, is the English-language public-secular school board for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The minority public-secular franco ...

(TDSB) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

school board A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...

that operates two

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

s in Henry Farm, Forest Manor Public School, and Shaughnessy Public School. TDSB does not operate a secondary school in the neighbourhood, with TDSB students attending secondary schools in adjacent neighbourhoods. In addition to TDSB, three other public school board also offers schooling to residents of Don Mills, the

Toronto Catholic District School Board The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB, known as English-language Separate District School Board No. 40 prior to 1999) is an English-language public-separate school board for Toronto, Ontario, Canada, headquartered in North York. I ...

(TCDSB),

secular school Secular education is a system of public education in countries with a secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religio ...

board; and two French

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

public school board, the secular

Conseil scolaire Viamonde The Conseil scolaire Viamonde (CSV) is a public-secular French first language school board, and manages elementary and secondary schools in the Ontario Peninsula and the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The school board operates 41 elementary schools and ...

(CSV), and it separate counterpart,

Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir ( en, My Future Catholic School Board) is a Roman Catholic French first language public- separate school board that manages elementary and secondary schools in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The school board o ...

(CSCM). However, none of the three school boards operate school in Don Mills, with CSCM, CSV, and TCDSB students attending schools situated in other neighbourhoods in Toronto.

Recreation

The neighbourhood is home to several municipal parks, including Havenbrook Park, and Parkway Forest Park. Havenbrook Park has a baseball diamond, toboggan hill and the Henry Farm Tennis Club, The Park is situated near the Don Valley, which forms a part of the larger

Toronto ravine system The Toronto ravine system is a distinctive feature of the city's geography, consisting of a network of deep ravines, which forms a large urban forest that runs through most of Toronto. The ravine system is the largest in any city in the world, wi ...

. Municipal parks in Toronto are managed by the

Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation (PFR) is the division of Toronto's municipal government responsible for maintaining the municipal park system and natural spaces, regulation of and provision of urban forestry services, and the delivery of recre ...

. The division also manages a

community centre Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

in the neighbourhood, Parkway Forest Community Centre.

Transportation

Several major thoroughfares bound the neighbourhood.

Sheppard Avenue Sheppard Avenue is an east–west principal arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The street has two distinct branches near its eastern end, with the original route being a collector road leading to Pickering via a turnoff, and the main ro ...

is a roadway that bounds Henry Farm in the north, while

bounds the residential neighbourhood to the east. Highway 404 to provides access to York Region to the north and south to the Don Valley Parkway which starts at the 401/404 interchange just south of Sheppard Avenue. Highway 404 serves as a point of division between the primarily residential neighbourhood and the Consumers Business Park a commercial area to the east of the 404. The Business Park runs east to the Victoria Park Avenue.

Highway 401 King's Highway 401, commonly referred to as Highway 401 and also known by its official name as the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway or colloquially referred to as the four-oh-one, is a controlled-access 400-series highway in the Canadian provin ...

is the other major

controlled access highway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

that bounds the neighbourhood from the south. The highway provides east-west access to the rest of

Greater Toronto The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...

, and

southern Ontario Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...

. The Don River's East Branch is the natural border to the west that passes under the Sheppard Avenue and Leslie Street intersection

Public transportation Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...

in the neighbourhood is provided by the

Toronto Transit Commission The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the public transport agency that operates bus, subway, streetcar, and paratransit services in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, some of which run into the Peel Region and York Region. It is the oldest and largest ...

(TTC), operating several

bus routes A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for ...

through the neighbourhood. In addition, the

Toronto subway The Toronto subway is a rapid transit system serving Toronto and the neighbouring city of Vaughan in Ontario, Canada, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). It is a multimodal transport, multimodal rail network consisting of three Pa ...

may be accessed from

Don Mills station Don Mills is a subway station that is the eastern terminus of Line 4 Sheppard in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The station is at the northeast corner of Sheppard Avenue East and Don Mills Road, within the residential communities of Don Valley Vill ...

, located at Don Mills Road, and Sheppard Avenue. Access to bus routes operated by

York Region Transit York Region Transit (YRT) is the public transit operator in York Region, Ontario, Canada. Its headquarters are in Richmond Hill, at 50 High Tech Road. YRT operates 65 full-time, rush hour and limited routes, 35 school services, and six Viva bus ...

may also be accessed at Don Mills station.

References

External links

Henry Farm at TorontoNeighbourhoods
{{authority control Neighbourhoods in Toronto North York