Toronto Harbour Cruise with Lunch Brunch or Dinner

Queens Quay West and the Toronto waterfront: where you board

The cruise leaves from the pier at 207 Queens Quay West, on the central Toronto waterfront a short walk from Union Station and the foot of the CN Tower. Queens Quay is the boulevard along the Inner Harbour, lined with promenades, the Harbourfront Centre, marinas and the island ferry docks, and easy to reach by streetcar, taxi or on foot from most downtown hotels. Boarding opens one hour before departure, and we recommend arriving early because every cruise leaves on time.

Once on deck, the host greets you and shows you to your reserved table on the dining deck. Tables are communal and mostly seat four to eight guests, which gives the evening a relaxed, sociable feel. The boat then slips out of the slip into the Inner Harbour, and the first thing you see is the full sweep of the Toronto skyline rising above the water, the view that makes a Toronto harbour cruise the easiest way to photograph the city in one frame.

Toronto Inner Harbour and the Harbourfront Centre

The Inner Harbour is the sheltered basin between the downtown shore and the Toronto Islands, protected from the open lake by the islands themselves. It was once a busy working port of grain elevators and freight sheds; since the 1970s the shore has been rebuilt as a public waterfront, with the Harbourfront Centre at its heart, a cultural complex of galleries, theatres, a sailing school and lakeside terraces that fills with people on summer evenings.

From the water you see the whole arc at once: the glass condominium towers of the waterfront, the Harbourfront Centre's piers, the cluster of sailboats in the marina and, behind them, the office towers of the financial district. The dinner cruise circles the harbour slowly, so there is time to move between your table and the outdoor decks. Lake Ontario is calm inside the harbour, and the enclosed dining deck means the Toronto dinner cruise sails in all weather.

The CN Tower and the downtown skyline from the water

The CN Tower is the landmark everyone looks for. Completed in 1976, it rises 553 metres above the lakeshore and was the tallest free-standing structure in the world for more than three decades. Beside it stand the domed stadium, the aquarium and the glass towers of the Entertainment District, with the banks of the financial district behind them. Seen from the harbour, the tower is framed by water in the foreground, a view no street in the city can offer.

On the evening sailing the skyline changes as you dine: the sun sets over the western harbour, the tower's lights come on and by the end of the cruise the whole waterfront is illuminated, which is why the dinner cruise is the favourite of the three options. On the lunch and brunch cruises the same skyline appears in full daylight, better for crisp photographs of the architecture. Either way, a Toronto skyline boat tour is the classic way to see the city.

Sugar Beach and the eastern waterfront

Heading east along the shore, the boat passes Sugar Beach, an urban beach opened in 2010 on a former parking lot beside the working sugar refinery that gives it its name. Its pink umbrellas, white sand and striped rock candy boulders are a small splash of colour against the industrial brick of the refinery next door, where lake freighters still unload raw sugar. It is one of the most photographed corners of the new Toronto waterfront.

This stretch, known as East Bayfront, shows how the city is turning old port land into neighbourhoods, with new offices, a college campus and promenades along the water. From the deck you also look across to the Toronto Islands ferry route and the small island airport at the western end of the harbour. The host or the DJ points out the landmarks as the vessel turns, before it heads back west toward the islands.

Toronto Islands and the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse

The Toronto Islands are a chain of low, leafy islands just offshore, reached by ferry from the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal near Queens Quay. They hold parks, beaches, a small amusement park, a residential community of cottages and the city's best skyline viewpoint. Cars are not allowed, so the islands are a quiet green edge to the busy harbour, and the cruise follows their inner shore for a long stretch.

At the south-western tip stands the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, built in 1808 and the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Great Lakes, a limestone tower that guided ships into the harbour for more than a century. Seeing it from the water is the easiest way to visit, as it stands in a quiet corner far from the island ferry docks. After passing the lighthouse the boat loops back across the harbour to the Queens Quay pier, where the cruise ends.