Joshua's Creek Trail Is Really Two Trails, and the Best Part Isn't on Either One

Ask someone who lives near Arkendo Drive where "the trail" goes and they'll describe a walk that starts at a park overlooking Lake Ontario. Ask someone who lives up near Dundas and Ninth Line the same question and they'll describe something completely different: a wooded stretch that empties out near the Crosstown corridor, nowhere close to the lake. Both are talking about Joshua's Creek Trail. Neither is wrong. They're just describing two separate trails that happen to share a name, follow the same creek, and never actually meet.

That disconnect is the first thing worth knowing about this neighborhood's namesake waterway, because it changes how you should plan a walk here. The second thing worth knowing is where the creek actually starts, upstream of both official trail segments, on a twelve-acre property that most residents drive past on Burnhamthorpe Road without realizing it's open to the public.

Two Trails, Two Trailheads, No Connection Between Them

The Town of Oakville's own trail records split Joshua's Creek Trail into a North section and a South section, and they don't overlap. The South section starts at Arkendo Park, where you get a clear view of Lake Ontario, and runs north through Joshua's Valley Park to Brookmill Road, just past Ford Drive. The North section starts in a different place entirely: Dundas Street, just west of Ninth Line, running down to Parkway Park near the Crosstown Trail.

If you've only ever walked one of these, you've walked half the story. If you've walked both, you already know there's no signed path connecting Brookmill Road to the Dundas Street trailhead. The neighborhoods in between fill that gap, not the trail system.

For the South section specifically, AllTrails logs the out-and-back route at 3.6 miles with about 101 feet of elevation gain, roughly a 1 to 1.5 hour walk depending on pace. It's rated easy, though anyone who's taken the staircase down into the valley near Joshua's Valley Park knows "flat" is doing some work in that description. Parking is available across the street at the Maplegrove Village lot, which matters more than it sounds like it should on a Saturday morning when the small lot at the trailhead itself fills fast.

If you want the natural history context instead of just the scenery, there's an information kiosk at the South East Sports Field, where Lakeshore Road crosses the creek. It covers the valley's shift from farmland to the estates that eventually lined the waterfront, which is a more interesting five minutes than most trail signage manages.

Where The Creek Actually Starts

Here's the part that surprises people who've lived in Joshua Creek for years. The Town's trail documentation notes that the creek itself continues north past the official North trailhead, beyond Dundas Street, up to the grounds of the Joshua Creek Heritage Arts Centre at 1086 Burnhamthorpe Road East.

This isn't a park department facility. It's a working art centre built around a farmhouse and a restored heritage barn on a family property, founded by artist Sybil Rampen, who was born in 1929 and has lived on that land her entire life. The centre is volunteer-run, has no admission fee, and keeps public hours Tuesday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. Exhibitions rotate through the barn's gallery space, and recent shows have included work from Sheridan College students alongside pieces from the centre's own member artists.

None of this is hidden. It's not gated, there's no membership requirement to walk in, and the address is a five-minute drive from most of Joshua Creek. But because it sits north of where either signed trail officially ends, it doesn't register as part of "the trail" in most people's mental map of the neighborhood. It registers as a building you pass on the way to somewhere else, until the day you don't.

If you're planning a fall visit, check hours before you go. A volunteer-run gallery on a family property doesn't always keep the schedule of a municipal facility, and exhibition changeovers can mean a closed gallery on an otherwise open day.

The Residents Association Behind The Upkeep

The trail and the parks around it don't maintain themselves, and the Joshua Creek Residents Association has spent real effort making sure they don't fall apart quietly. Their volunteer cleanup days pull litter from the trails and public walkways every spring, one recent cleanup alone collected 18 bags of trash.

The same association pushed for something less visible but more useful to families with kids: a weekly public skate slot at Maple Grove Arena. After advocacy from JCRA and Ward 3 councillors, the arena added public skating on Saturdays from 2:45 to 4:15 p.m., a small addition to the community calendar that exists specifically because residents asked for it and followed through.

This matters beyond the arena schedule itself. It's a sign of how this neighborhood actually functions day to day. The parks, the trails, the small conveniences that make a Saturday easier, none of it happens by default. It happens because a group of residents keeps showing up to meetings, cleanups, and council sessions to make sure it does.

Rounding Out The Day

Maple Grove Arena sits roughly midway along the creek corridor, between the two trail sections, and nearby you'll find Harpers Landing, open since 2013 and known locally as a community hub with floor-to-ceiling windows and a three-season covered patio added in a recent renovation. If your walk takes you anywhere near the arena, whether you're finishing the South section or just cutting through on a connector street, it's a reasonable place to end the morning with brunch or come back to later for dinner.

It doesn't require a walk to justify a visit, but pairing it with a few hours on the trail is the kind of low-effort plan that makes a Saturday feel intentional without requiring much actual planning.

The Takeaway

Joshua's Creek Trail isn't a single, continuous experience the way its name implies. It's a lakeside walk in the south, a separate wooded stretch in the north, and, upstream of both, a small art centre on private land that most residents have technically had access to for years without ever walking in. Treating it as one trail means you'll probably never see all three. Treating it as three separate mornings means you actually will.

That kind of local detail, the gap between what a trail is named and what it actually does, is the same texture that goes into every neighborhood report we put together at Robertson Kadwell. Whether you're a longtime Joshua Creek resident planning your next walk or thinking ahead to your next move in the neighborhood, we're glad to talk through what's changed here and what hasn't. Request your complimentary home valuation whenever you're ready, and we'll bring the same level of detail to your property that we bring to a Saturday morning trail guide.