The best walks and hikes around Ajax

Waterfront Park is a large lakeside greenspace, and is part of Ajax’s six-kilometre waterfront corridor, with open lawns, beaches, wetlands, and picturesque shoreline views. The park is connected by a paved multi-use section of the Waterfront Trail that passes through natural and maintained areas, making it popular for walking, cycling, jogging, birdwatching, and lakeside recreation, and is one of Ajax’s main outdoor gathering places.

Veterans’ Point Gardens is a beautiful memorial park along the waterfront that honours Canadian veterans through monuments, commemorative features, and interpretive plaques, all set within well-manicured gardens overlooking Lake Ontario. There are open lawns, flower beds and benches with expansive views across the shoreline.

Paradise Beach is a small lakeside spot with beautiful views across Lake Ontario, a sandy shoreline, and easy access to the Waterfront Trail. The beach has a quieter feel than some larger waterfront parks, with picnic areas and space for walking, cycling, and fishing along the lakeshore. It’s an ideal place for a break or lunch, with several benches to relax and stay a while.

Waterfront Trail follows the shoreline of Lake Ontario, and is part of the larger 900-kilometre Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, connecting waterfront parks, beaches, wetlands, and scenic viewpoints across the city. This paved, flat section follows a quiet stretch of shoreline, passing marshy areas, with plenty of panoramic lake views, and waterfront greenspace with a more relaxed, less developed feel than the busier central waterfront.

Millers Creek winds through a narrow green corridor of forest, wetlands and parkland before eventually flowing toward Lake Ontario. Slower moving sections of the creek attract ducks, red winged blackbirds and other wetland birdlife, especially in the calmer marshy areas beside the trail.

Millers Creek Trail follows a fully paved multi use pathway through forested green space, neighbourhood corridors and naturalized creek areas, creating one of the longer connected urban trail routes in the area. The trail meanders alongside Millers Creek through sections of woodland, small bridges and open parkland, with relatively flat terrain making it popular for walking, cycling and running year round. Despite passing through suburban areas, parts of the route feel surprisingly sheltered beneath the tree canopy and along the creek corridor.

Millers Creek Park combines sports fields, playgrounds and paved multi use pathways with a natural creek corridor running through the centre of the park. Sections of the trail follow Millers Creek beneath pockets of mature trees and small pedestrian bridges, creating a greener and more sheltered atmosphere than the surrounding suburban neighbourhoods. Facilities within the park include playgrounds, sports courts, washrooms and picnic areas, making it a popular community recreation space year round.

Established in 1972, Lynde Shores Conservation Area offers a network of flat, easy trails that wind through marsh, meadow, and lakeshore forest. Boardwalks and wide paths take you through the mix of wetlands and wooded pockets that draw in waterfowl, deer, and plenty of songbirds creating a relaxed environment near the shore of Lake Ontario.