The Leslie Street Spit, or officially the Outer Harbour East Headland, is a man-made headland in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, extending from the city's east end in a roughly southwesterly direction into Lake Ontario. It is about 5km long. The Spit is the result of five decades of lakefilling by the Toronto Port Authority. It was conceived as an extension of Toronto Harbour, and has evolved into a largely passive recreation area. Naturalization had not been planned but the process is now actively managed by the Toronto Region Conservation Authority. A large portion of it is classified as an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and it is recognized as an Important Bird Area.Its common name is technically incorrect, since it is not truly a spit, but Torontonians almost never use the official name. The road running along the peninsula is a southern extension of Leslie Street, hence the popular nickname.HistoryThe Spit is a man-made landfill that began in the 1950s when the Toronto Harbour Commission began a project to create a breakwater for Toronto's Outer Harbour. It was part of a plan to expand the capacity of the harbour in anticipation of an expected increase in shipping traffic on the Great Lakes after the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. However, owing to the containerization revolution of the 1960s, cargo traffic began to shift to East Coast ports, and shipping volumes in Toronto fell by almost half between 1969 and 1973. Thus, the need for an outer harbour never arose, and all cargo ships calling at Toronto still use the Inner Harbour, while the Outer Harbour sees only pleasure boat traffic.
