The Beach is an upper-middle class neighbourhood and popular tourist destination located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The trendy shops of Queen Street East lie at the heart of The Beach community, with the boardwalk by the lake and several large parks being just a few steps south. The neighbourhood is a mixture of single and semi-detached homes, low-rise apartment buildings, and some mansions. The beach itself is a single uninterrupted stretch of sandy shoreline bounded by the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant (locally known as the water works) to the east and Woodbine park (a small peninsula in Lake Ontario) to the west. Although it is continuous, there are four names which correspond each to approximately one quarter of the length of the beach (from east to west): Balmy Beach, Scarboro Beach, Kew Beach and Woodbine Beach.

Originally, The Beach area was considered to be bounded by Woodbine Avenue to the west, Victoria Park Avenue to the east, Kingston Road to the north, and Lake Ontario to the south. The lakefront is divided into three sections; Woodbine Beach to the west, Kew Beach in the centre, and Balmy Beach to the east. It is these beaches which give the neighbourhood its name and defining principal characteristic. Until Lakeshore Boulevard was extended to Woodbine Avenue in the 1950s, Woodbine Beach was not a bathing beach, but rather a desolate wooded area known as The Cut.

   

Kew Gardens                        Leuty station

Today, Torontonians generally tend to view the The Beach neighbourhood as extending to Coxwell, with the area north of Queen Street East and west of Woodbine nicknamed the Beaches Triangle. In addition, the area north of Kingston Road up to the CNR tracks has become known as the Upper Beach.

Still, whatever the definition of its borders, before amalgamation in 1998 the Beach neighbourhood was at Toronto's extreme eastern limit and formed part of the city's border with the suburb of Scarborough. Even now, residents refer to The Beach as being in the east end of the city, though since the amalgamation of city services in 1998, it is strictly speaking part of the east-central district of Toronto.