70-year-old Humber River yacht club gets new chance to avoid City of Toronto closure

A 70-year-old yacht club set to close because of environmental concerns has another chance to address them before losing its lease.

The Toronto Humber Yacht Club was supposed to shut down this summer, but the city’s general government committee decided Monday there is not enough evidence to close it, despite years’ worth of complaints about its negative impact on the habitat and surrounding community.

City staff were ordered this week to report back in June with more specific reasons as to why the club may need to be shut down and what opportunities its members have to mitigate outstanding issues.

The decision was a letdown for advocates who wanted to see it shut down, but welcomed by the club, whose members hired a strategic adviser as part of their effort to get the city to change its mind. 

While the committee waits for city staff to report back, the club’s members now have a brief opening to address community concerns, which would include limiting the number of boats and jet skis on the property.

“We’re not going to take for granted the opportunity that we have right now,” said Wilson DaSilva, the club’s vice commodore.

But advocates, including Jason Sills, who started a petition against the club and said it has a history of not addressing public feedback, say they are not convinced.

“There is no way the club is going to honour anything,” he told CBC Toronto.

The Toronto Humber Yacht Club, the city’s only boating club located along a river, has been the subject of complaints over its growing number of jet skis and boats posing a risk to the habitat, as well as bad behaviour from members, including speeding, littering and disrespecting others who use the river.

While the club’s leaders have previously acknowledged some wrongdoing, they have also attributed many of the issues to a public boat launch nearby.

The decision not to renew the club’s lease was posted at its entrance in January 2026, following an “extensive review” that found “a less intensive land use at this location would better support river valley health, ecological management objectives, and long-term resilience to flooding and erosion,” city staff wrote in a Feb. 23 report provided to the committee.

To the dismay of advocates like Sills, who also hoped the city would focus on more than just the environmental impacts, the “extensive review” was not included in the city staff report.

“They discounted the bullying, the threats. They discounted the speeding on the water,” he said.

Local Coun. Amber Morley previously told CBC the club had a laundry list of issues and was not cooperative with multiple noncompliance orders from the city, which club members denied and said they were always willing to work with the city.