3. Severn Creek Park - 100 Rosedale Valley Road

Note: Not Wheelchair Accessible

Severn Creek Park. It feels like a secret place, especially when accessed by the staircase leading down from Crescent Road, just east of the subway entrance. The forested staircase leads to a wide expanse of pleasant lawn and wooded ravine walls with Rosedale mansions perched on top. Down here it’s possible to get a sense of the creek, now buried, that flows below and to see how Rosedale station was built into the ravine walls. It was one of the original stations when the subway opened in 1954, designed by Toronto modernist architect John B. Parkin and historically designated. The hidden creek is now called Castle Frank Brook but the park’s name is an homage to its previous names of “Brewery Creek” or “Severn Creek,” after John Severn, one of the early village of Yorkville aldermen, who operated a brewery in this area, along the stream, beginning in 1835.

Walk the park south, following the buried creek towards Rosedale Valley Road, past a coach house that once served the mansion at the top of the ravine. The creek eventually empties into the Don River a few kilometers southeast of here, connecting this valley with Toronto’s vast ravine network.