Over the past few years, I wrote a few articles looking at where things stand with Ontario’s trails. It started with a review of the rail trail gaps in June 2023; followed by a follow-up piece in June 2024 and revisiting Toronto’s 2012 Trails Plan in August 2025. I also made a case for a different kind of cycling campaign for Toronto in Spacing earlier this year. Let’s check out some of the recent trail progress.
Earlier this month, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned last year’s decision by Justice Paul Schabas in favour of Cycle Toronto; meaning the proposed bike lane removals on Bloor, Yonge, and University could go ahead. There was also an announcement from mayoral candidate Brad Bradford stating that he would remove the Bloor bike lanes in Etobicoke. Given these developments, a Critical Mass ride was held last night which easily saw more than 1000 cyclists in attendance. Some even cited attendance as high as 1500 or 2000 which would make this ride amongst the largest ever in Toronto!
If you take your bike on GO Transit to Barrie, there are three main trails you can get to. Among these, I rode the Thornton Cookstown Trail last year, as well as the Barrie-Collingwood Rail Trail back in May. This left the Simcoe County Loop Trail which Helen and I did a small part of it from Barrie to Orillia back in 2019. Yesterday, I finally got to complete that Simcoe loop which also marked my first Imperial century ride which is 100 miles or 160 kilometres.
On Tuesday, August 11, I published Part 1 of my experience hiking the Alay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. If you haven’t read that post yet, I suggest you do to get caught up on the first four days on the trek before reading on to Day 5. 😉
This was the first time during our trek when we had pancakes for breakfast, while we also had Ayran and another kind of porridge. My left leg felt a lot better than the prior day but going downhill was still a bit stressful. Meanwhile, the day started with our first yak spotting of the trek.
This week has been a stinker for Toronto’s cycling community. On Tuesday, mayoral candidate Brad Bradford called for the Bloor bike lanes in Etobicoke from South Kingsway to Resurrection Road to be removed. Earlier today, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Justice Paul Schabas’ ruling from July 2025 in favour of Cycle Toronto by arguing the bike lane removals along Bloor, Yonge, and University were unconstitutional. While it remains unclear whether Cycle Toronto will choose to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada – which only hears a limited number of cases deemed in the national interest – I used my day off work today to explore the Bartley Smith Greenway. I’ll also explain how it fits with the larger Vaughan Super Trail initiative.
During our trip to Kyrgyzstan, our focus was the eight-day Best of Alay Mountains Trek hosted by Visit Alay from July 19 to 26. They offer several trekking, horse, and cultural tours within Kyrgyzstan, as well as tours along the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan and within Uzbekistan. Our group had six trekkers including Zoe and Braden from Australia, Danilo from Italy, and Leila from Canada; as well as two guides Simon and Daniel. Our trip started and ended at the Visit Alay office in Osh, while most of our evenings were spent at yurt camps. Given the amount of content, I will split this post in two.
Last week, the City of Toronto confirmed the West Toronto Railpath had finally reopened to the public; a closure which has happened for the past four years as part of improvements to Bloor GO station. I also found out from the Urban Toronto forums that a new multi-use path is currently under construction along the Barrie GO line which would connect with the West Toronto Railpath Extension. This afternoon, I checked it out as well as some other infrastructure in the area.
