Leaside-Bennington Water Hardness & Quality Report (2026)

Leaside-Bennington (the residential community east of Laird Drive along Eglinton Avenue East — Leaside is one of Toronto's most affluent and distinctive planned neighbourhoods, developed in the 1910s and 1920s as a model industrial town by Canadian Northern Railway, featuring a grid of uniform brick Craftsman and Georgian revival homes with wide tree-lined streets and the Leaside Arena, historically known for producing many NHL players through the Leaside Hockey Association) receives its drinking water from the City of Toronto, drawing from Lake Ontario via the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. Water is treated using ozonation, biofiltration, UV disinfection, and chloramination, meeting all Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality (GCDWQ) standards. Hardness in this distribution zone is 237 mg/L (13.8 gpg) — classified as very hard by Health Canada, with TDS of 598 mg/L, consistent with the East York supply corridor.

Leaside-Bennington receives R.C. Harris plant Lake Ontario supply through the East York distribution network — the same characteristically very hard Lake Ontario source (dissolved Silurian and Devonian carbonate from the Great Lakes basin) as all Toronto boroughs. The 237 mg/L is consistent with the adjacent Mount Pleasant East (237 mg/L) and Victoria Village (237 mg/L) communities in the same R.C. Harris East York distribution zone.

At 237 mg/L, Leaside-Bennington residents face persistent scale challenges in this neighbourhood's well-maintained 1920s brick housing stock — kettle and showerhead descaling every one to two weeks is typical. The City of Toronto provides water quality information at toronto.ca/water. Leaside-Bennington's 1920s–1930s Georgian and Craftsman brick homes present a high likelihood of original lead service connections, making Health Canada lead service line precautionary guidance and the City's replacement programme particularly important for homeowners.