Bay Ridges

Bay Ridges is the lakefront community south of Highway 401 between Frenchman's Bay on the west and the hydro corridor and Pickering Nuclear lands on the east, with Lake Ontario as its southern edge. Liverpool Road is the main street, running from the 401 interchange past Bayly Street and Krosno Boulevard down to the harbour, and Sandy Beach Road marks the eastern residential limit before the industrial and generating-station lands. The GO station on Bayly Street sits on the community's northern edge.

The core of Bay Ridges is 1960s and 1970s housing on a walkable grid: semi-detached brick and frame houses on streets such as Krosno Boulevard, Reytan Boulevard and Alyssum Street, ranch bungalows on wide lots closer to the water on Annland Street, Wharf Street and Front Road, and low-rise apartment and townhouse blocks near Bayly Street and Liverpool Road, among them Bayshore Mews at 1230 Radom Street, a 33-unit complex from 1977. Custom infill is common on the streets nearest the bay, where an original bungalow is often replaced by a two-storey house with a rooftop view. Nautical Village at the foot of Liverpool Road added white-clad townhouses over shops in the early 2000s. Bayly Street has become the condominium corridor: San Francisco by the Bay at 1235 Bayly Street is a 17-storey, 275-unit tower completed in 2019 with a second phase at 1215 Bayly, and Chestnut Hill Developments' Universal City at 1480 Bayly Street, completed in 2025, leads a cluster with Universal City Two at 1455 Celebration Drive. Many original semis have been added onto, so ask for permits.

Nowhere in Pickering is better connected. Pickering GO on Bayly Street offers Lakeshore East trains to Union Station and east to Oshawa, every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 30 on weekends, a 1,673-space garage finished around 2014 plus surface lots, GO buses 41, 90 and 94, and the enclosed 250-metre pedestrian bridge opened in 2012 that crosses six tracks, the fourteen lanes of the 401 and Pickering Parkway to reach the mall and the Pickering Parkway Terminal. Durham Region Transit route 101 loops through Bay Ridges on Krosno Boulevard and Alyssum Street to the station, 917 Pulse runs Bayly Street between the terminal and Whitby GO, and 112, 118 and 121 feed it from the north. Drivers use the 401 at Liverpool Road or Brock Road. On summer weekends in 2026 the free Waterfront Route 100 bus connects the beaches. The Waterfront Trail runs along the shore, and the flat grid lets many residents cycle to the GO.

The Durham District School Board assigns most of Bay Ridges to Bayview Heights Public School and Biidassige Mandamin Public School, the latter reportedly the renamed Sir John A. Macdonald school, with some western streets sent to Fairport Beach Public School, and secondary students to Dunbarton High School at 655 Sheppard Avenue or Pine Ridge Secondary School depending on the street. On the Catholic side, Father Fenelon Catholic School at 795 Eyer Drive sends graduates to St. Mary Catholic Secondary School on Whites Road. Francophone families use Viamonde's Ronald-Marion campus in Pickering, or MonAvenir's Notre-Dame-de-la-Jeunesse in Ajax and Saint-Charles-Garnier in Whitby for Catholic instruction. The boards set the boundaries and change them, so check the address before relying on a school.

The waterfront does the heavy lifting. Beachfront Park and Millennium Square at the bottom of Liverpool Road have the beach, the boardwalk and summer performances; Alex Robertson Park on Sandy Beach Road has outdoor fitness stations and lake access beside the generating station; Progress Frenchman's Bay East Park was rebuilt with accessible features; and marinas and a yacht club line the bay, which the TRCA oversees and which is fed by the Krosno, Pine, Dunbarton and Amberlea creeks. Nautical Village supplies restaurants, patios and shops, the Bay Ridges plaza on Liverpool Road covers groceries, a pharmacy and a drive-up burger stand, and The Shops at Pickering City Centre is a walk over the bridge. The Chestnut Hill Developments complex on Valley Farm Road handles pools, arenas and squash. Lakeridge Health Ajax Pickering hospital is in Ajax. Pickering Nuclear, running since 1971, shut units 1 and 4 in late 2024 and is refurbishing units 5 to 8 through the mid-2030s.

Bay Ridges suits GO commuters who want to walk to the platform, sailors and paddlers who want the bay a block from the front door, and first-time buyers who accept a 1960s semi or a Bayly Street condo in exchange for the location. Downsizers like the newer towers with the trail outside. It is less suited to buyers who want a large lot or a quiet cul-de-sac, to anyone bothered by train horns and the 401, or to those uneasy living beside a nuclear station and its emergency-planning zone, which every resident here lives inside.