The airport next door wants Hanlan’s Point’s beach
Ontario's expansion plan puts Canada's only officially designated nude beach east of Vancouver at risk. Federal consultation closes July 24.
Hanlan’s Point Beach in Toronto is Canada’s oldest surviving queer space, the site of the country’s first Pride gathering in 1971, and the only officially designated clothing-optional beach in eastern Canada. It has survived police raids, development schemes, and a decade of shoreline erosion. Now it faces a different kind of threat: an airport expansion plan backed by the Ontario provincial government, enabled by legislation that gives the province power to seize virtually all of the Toronto Islands, and driven in part by a Wall Street investment fund with a financial stake in the outcome.
The federal government is currently accepting public input on the future of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport through an online consultation, with a direct survey link here. The consultation closes July 24, 2026—less than two weeks from now. Any Canadian citizen can submit.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been pushing since early 2026 to extend the runway at Billy Bishop, which sits just north of Hanlan’s Point Beach, to accommodate commercial jets and grow annual passengers from roughly 2 million to 10 million. The Toronto Port Authority, which operates the airport, has put the cost at $4–5 billion over 25 years. To make that happen, the province passed Bill 110, the Building Billy Bishop Airport Act, on May 28. The legislation removes the City of Toronto from the Tripartite Agreement governing the airport and allows the province to seize City-owned lands in the area. At the bottom of the nine-page bill, the province listed eight Property Identification Numbers corresponding to the parcels it could expropriate. Those parcels cover virtually the entire landmass of the Toronto Islands, including Hanlan’s Point, Centreville, Ward’s Island, the Island School, and the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts.
The province says it won’t take all of that land. The promise isn’t legally binding. Bill 110 explicitly exempts itself from Ontario’s Expropriations Act, which would otherwise limit the province to taking only what’s necessary and guarantee the City certain rights. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called the legislation a “pure power grab” and has promised legal challenges. Chris Glover, a New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Provincial Parliament who represents the area at Queen’s Park, said in a press release, “The island beaches, Hanlan’s Point, Centreville and the Island School are now all at risk.”
The runway extension would push 900 metres of new land mass westward into Lake Ontario, directly toward Hanlan’s Point. A 2015 study commissioned for Air Canada by consulting firm Oliver Wyman concluded there isn’t enough space between the current terminal and runway to dock jets, meaning the new runway would have to be located further south, with hangars and infrastructure at the southern end of the airport lands. That configuration, the study found, could eliminate Hanlan’s Point’s ferry dock and much of the beach itself. The airport’s own environmental assessment, commissioned in 2017, withheld from the public, and only released in March 2026 following a freedom-of-information request, found that allowing jets would increase air pollution at levels raising the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory illness for nearby residents, and would double the time required to flush sewage from the central waterfront. Norm Di Pasquale, chair of the anti-expansion group NoJetsTO, told Xtra Magazine: “There will be unbearable construction noise on our central waterfront for 25 years.”
Then there’s who’s driving it. The passenger terminal at Billy Bishop has been operated by Nieuport Aviation since 2015, and by 2019 was fully owned by institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, the largest bank in the United States, via a fund registered in the Cayman Islands. Lobbying records show Nieuport has retained lobbyists to engage both the Ford government and the federal government. NDP leader Marit Stiles has called the expansion “all for Wall Street.”
In 1894, Toronto City Council passed a by-law designating a section of Hanlan’s Point for nude sunbathing and swimming “at all times”, a designation the International Naturist Federation (INF-FNI) has since confirmed predates any other known official nude beach by more than 30 years, making it the world's oldest legally designated nude beach. The city repealed that designation in 1930 during a wave of moral backlash, but nude use of the beach never really stopped. By the 1980s, Hanlan’s was listed in the World Guide to Nude Beaches and Recreation. Official clothing-optional status was restored in 1999 and made permanent in 2002. In 2023, following a successful community campaign, Toronto City Council expanded the clothing-optional zone to the full two-kilometer beach, installed cultural signage, and formally recognized Hanlan’s as a historic queer space. Canada Post issued a commemorative stamp in May 2025. All of that applies to a beach that, under the proposed expansion footprint, may not exist in its current form in the near future. Hanlan’s is the only officially designated clothing-optional beach in eastern Canada. There is no fallback.
Travis Myers, co-founder of Friends of Hanlan’s, told Xtra: “What makes Hanlan’s so special is that it’s a no-cost, barrier-free place for the queer community to gather as a whole. At a time when a lot of our spaces are disappearing, the places that are left are paid-access. Hanlan’s isn’t that. It’s a place where people without cottages can just go and exist. There’s very few places like that globally.” It took over 130 years of recognition, revocation, and restoration to get Hanlan’s to where it is today. The provincial government now wants the land.
The federal government, not the province, holds ultimate authority over whether this expansion proceeds. The Toronto Port Authority is a federal agency, and any runway changes require federal approval. That’s where the leverage is.
What you can do
Submit to the federal consultation before July 24. Transport Canada is accepting public input via the direct survey link here. Critics have called the survey questions skewed toward expansion. Submit anyway. A low response from opponents is worse than an imperfect instrument. More information about the public consultation can be found here.
Beyond the survey, direct contact with your MP carries more weight. If you’re in the Toronto area, MP Chi Nguyen (Spadina–Harbourfront), whose constituency includes Hanlan’s Point, is already on record in opposition. And if you’re in Toronto on July 26, No Jets T.O. is organizing a march and rally at nojets.to.
Planet Nude has covered Hanlan’s Point since 2023, when the beach successfully defeated a plan to build a permanent concert venue on its shores. That fight was won through documentation, coalition-building, and making noise. This one is bigger, and the window is shorter. 🪐
