Live cameras in Willowdale, Canada

Willowdale is a neighborhood in the North York part of Toronto, stretching along Yonge Street between Bathurst Street on the west and Bayview Avenue on the east, from Highway 401 north to around Finch Avenue. In the nineteenth century this was farm country with three small postal villages, Lansing, Willowdale and Newtonbrook, strung along Yonge. One of the earliest settlers, Jacob Cummer, arrived from the United States in 1797 and ran a mill on the Don River. The 1851 Gibson House, now a museum, survives from that rural era. Today the Yonge corridor is lined with office and condominium towers around North York Centre, and Mel Lastman Square, named for the former mayor, hosts concerts, markets and a winter skating rink. The area is one of the most diverse in the city, with large Chinese, Korean and Iranian communities.

What the cameras show

The cameras grouped under Willowdale are City of Toronto traffic cameras. They are mounted at major intersections on city streets and publish still images that refresh every few minutes. Around Willowdale that typically means junctions along Yonge Street and the big east-west arterials such as Sheppard and Finch avenues. They are useful for checking how busy a corridor is, for seeing snow on the roads, or for following construction detours. The nearby Highway 401 is a provincial highway, so views of it come from other sources on the map.

Toronto is on Eastern Time. Rush hours on Yonge and the cross streets peak between about seven thirty and nine thirty in the morning and four and six thirty in the evening. Winters bring regular snow, and mid-December sunsets come before five, so many winter images show headlights and streetlights. Summer days stay light until almost nine. The subway runs underneath Yonge, with Sheppard-Yonge station linking to the Sheppard line.

Nearby, the green valleys of the East Don River and Earl Bales Park offer a quieter side of North York, and the Yonge and Sheppard area is a short ride from downtown Toronto.

Sources: Willowdale, Toronto - Wikipedia · Traffic Cameras - City of Toronto Open Data · Gibson House Museum - City of Toronto.