🪵 Walking tour · 3 of 3
The Rosedale veterans walk
3.5 km through Rosedale and Moore Park past some of the oldest living street trees in Toronto — best in October for fall colour
The mature canopy in Rosedale and Moore Park is, on the numbers, the second-densest in Toronto — 52% tree cover, second only to Bridle Path. Unlike Bridle Path, you don't need a car to experience it; subways bracket the neighbourhood on both ends. This walk connects five specifically remarkable specimens in a single loop: a 200-cm white oak that probably predates Rosedale as a neighbourhood, a wych elm that lived through Dutch elm disease, a 147-cm red oak on the Moore Park edge, and two smaller landmark trees.
The stops
Start — Rosedale subway
Exit south-west from the station onto Crescent Rd. You're now in the heart of old Rosedale — broad streets, Victorian-to-Edwardian homes, and a canopy that's been maturing for a hundred and thirty years.
The wych elm — Ulmus glabra
📍 75 Rosehill Ave · Street View
132-cm trunk diameter. Wych elm is European, closely related to our native American elm, and similarly vulnerable to Dutch elm disease — but this one is still here. Walk down Roxborough Dr, cross Rosedale Valley Rd via the pedestrian bridge, and you're on Rosehill Ave. The tree is on the south side. It is probably a hundred and twenty years old. You have seen it on a hundred magazine covers without realizing.
MacLennan's silver maple
📍 19 MacLennan Ave · Street View
200-cm silver maple, which is the data cap (meaning it could be measurably larger). Silver maples grow fast — a 200-cm specimen implies the lot has been undisturbed for eighty years. Walk east on Rosehill, then south on Summerhill Ave, across Glen Rd into the small angular streets of east Rosedale. MacLennan Ave runs north from Crescent. The tree is easy to spot.
The Inglewood white oak
📍 91 Inglewood Dr · Street View
This is the one. 200 cm DBH, white oak, almost certainly older than the neighbourhood. White oaks in southern Ontario commonly live 200–300 years; a trunk this size suggests the tree was already mature when Moore Park's blocks were laid out in the 1910s. It is among the largest street oaks the city catalogues. Stand under it for a minute. It was here before all of this.
Walk: continue west on Rosehill to Park Rd, cross Mount Pleasant Rd at Blythwood or Moore, and enter Moore Park. Inglewood Dr branches off Moore Ave.
The Moore Ave red oak
📍 175 Moore Ave · Street View
147-cm red oak — the second-largest red oak in the city, not too far from the first. Moore Avenue runs north from here to the south entrance of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. In October, this block turns scarlet. Red oak's fall colour holds longer than sugar maple — you can catch it well into early November in a normal year.
End — Mount Pleasant Cemetery (optional 10-min extension)
North on Moore Ave and you reach the southern edge of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which is open to the public and has one of the most impressive mature tree collections in the city (cemetery trees, not road-allowance trees, so they don't appear in the inventory we're using — but they are remarkable). Alternatively, walk back west to St Clair station.
Practical notes
Timing: year-round, but best in mid-to-late October when the oaks and maples turn. Mount Pleasant Cemetery is an outstanding walk in fall.
TTC: start at Rosedale station (Line 1). End options: St Clair (Line 1), Davisville (Line 1), or back to Rosedale.
Terrain: mostly flat, some gentle hills crossing Rosedale Valley Rd at the pedestrian bridge. All paved sidewalk.
See also: the Oakwood cherry-belt walk (for spring) and the Roncesvalles rare-tree pilgrimage (for the pawpaw + Dutch-elm survivor + High Park sakura).