Kedron

Kedron is north Oshawa's growth edge, centred where Conlin Road crosses Simcoe Street North, running north from roughly Conlin Road to Highway 407 and taking in land on both sides of Simcoe, from the Windfields lands on the west toward Ritson Road North and Harmony Road North on the eastern side. Britannia Avenue and the extension of Conlin Road are its main internal streets, with Kedron Dells golf course on the eastern flank. The TRREB line between Kedron, Windfields and Samac is drawn differently by different guides, so treat these edges as approximate.

Kedron's housing is almost entirely post-2010. The earliest phases on Simcoe's east side around Conlin Road and Britannia Avenue brought two-storey detached houses on 36 to 45 foot lots, freehold townhouse blocks and semi-detached pairs, brick and stone fronts with siding behind, double garages on the wider lots and single garages with tandem parking on the narrow ones. West of Simcoe, phases across what was Windfields Farm, some sold under the Windfields name, added similar mixes with more townhouse and back-to-back townhouse product. Builders reportedly include Tribute Communities and Delpark Homes among others, and later phases toward the 407 and toward Ritson Road North are still selling from sales centres. Interior finishes are current: nine-foot ceilings, open plans, second-floor laundry, unfinished basements with rough-ins. Lot sizes are small by Oshawa standards and rear yards are short, especially behind townhouses. Many houses were bought as investments and have basement units aimed at students, registered or not, and that history shows in wear.

Highway 407 is the reason Kedron exists as a commuter address: the Simcoe Street interchange marks the community's top edge, and from there the toll road runs west to the 404 and Highway 400 and east to the 412 and 418 links back down to the 401 at Whitby and Clarington. The 401 itself is a twenty-minute drive south on Simcoe or Ritson. Durham Region Transit runs its Simcoe PULSE corridor through the community with frequent service to the university and college, downtown Oshawa and the GO station area, and campus-bound local routes fill in on Conlin and Britannia; the 915 and 916 PULSE lines on Taunton and Rossland are reached by a short ride south. Oshawa GO on Bloor Street is about twenty-five minutes by car or roughly forty by bus. Cycling infrastructure is newer here than in the old city, with multi-use paths along the collectors and the Oshawa Creek trail system reachable from Samac.

Schools are catching up with the subdivisions. Public elementary pupils are assigned by the DDSB to schools such as Northern Dancer on the Windfields side and Seneca Trail or Norman G. Powers to the south, with new schools planned in the Part II lands; the secondary assignment for most addresses has been Maxwell Heights, the school on Coldstream Drive in Pinecrest. Catholic families under DCDSB are served by north Oshawa elementary schools, St. Kateri Tekakwitha among them, with Monsignor Paul Dwyer over on Stevenson Road or Monsignor John Pereyma off Conant Street as the secondary options. French first-language pupils are bused by Viamonde and MonAvenir to their Oshawa schools. Because the area is still being built, attendance areas change often, so pin down the school assignments for one particular house and ask when the local school opens. Durham College, Ontario Tech and the Trent Durham campus are minutes down Simcoe.

Kedron Dells Golf Club, an 18-hole public course in a creek valley on Ritson Road North, is the community's oldest amenity and reportedly one of the older courses in Durham. Inside the subdivisions, parks with splash pads, courts and soccer fields have been built as each phase registers, and the Kedron Part II Plan sets aside a larger community park and school sites. Camp Samac, the Scouts Canada camp on Simcoe Street south of Conlin, is generally counted in Samac but its trails and summer pool serve Kedron families too. Errands mean a drive: the Simcoe and Taunton corner with Five Points Mall and its grocery stores is five minutes south, the Taunton Road strip continues east to Harmony, and newer plazas have reportedly opened along Simcoe near Conlin and Britannia with a grocery store, coffee and medical offices. Lakeridge Health Oshawa is about fifteen minutes south. North of the 407 the land is rural, with Columbus, farm markets and the Oak Ridges Moraine beyond.

Kedron suits buyers who want a new or nearly new house with current finishes, a warranty still in force on the latest phases and a five-minute drive to the 407 for jobs across the northern GTA, and it suits families connected to the university and college or investors who want student tenants close to campus. Townhouses here are a common first purchase. It will frustrate anyone wanting mature trees, large lots, quiet certainty about what will be built next door, or walkable errands; construction traffic, unbuilt lots and changing school assignments are part of the deal for a few more years, and the GO train is a long way south.