Ward 17 — Don Valley North

Don Valley North is a densely multicultural ward in Toronto's northeast, bounded by Steeles Avenue to the north, Victoria Park Avenue to the east, Highway 401 to the south, and the Don Valley Parkway to the west. The ward takes in Bayview Village, Don Valley Village — known locally as "the Peanut" for the distinctive shape of the Don Mills Road divergence — Henry Farm, and Pleasant View. With a population of roughly 110,000, it is one of the most linguistically diverse wards in the city: roughly 70 percent of residents are visible minorities, and 63 percent are immigrants. Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken at home by nearly a quarter of residents, followed by Persian, Korean, Tagalog, and Arabic. The ward's character is shaped by the intersection of established suburban homeownership in areas like Bayview Village with the high-density apartment corridors along Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue.

Bailão won Don Valley North by 244 votes: 8,625 (34.8 percent) to Chow's 8,381 (33.8 percent). Saunders performed relatively well at 11.6 percent, and Furey took 5.9 percent. The combined centre-right vote (Bailão plus Saunders plus Furey) exceeded 52 percent, reflecting the ward's moderate suburban leanings, while the combined progressive vote (Chow plus Matlow plus Brown) reached only 39 percent. Chow dominated advance voting with 911 ballots to Bailão's 245, but Bailão's election-day lead of more than 8,200 to Chow's roughly 7,000 proved decisive. Councillor Shelley Carroll, a veteran politician who had served on council since 2003, was later named Budget Committee chair by Mayor Chow.

Municipal Issues

The Sheppard subway (Line 4), which runs along the ward's southern edge from Sheppard-Yonge to Don Mills station, remained one of Toronto's most debated transit investments. The 5.5-kilometre line with only five stations had been criticized for low ridership and high per-rider subsidies since its opening in 2002, though residential intensification along the corridor had gradually increased ridership. Proposals to extend the line — either eastward to Scarborough Centre or westward to Downsview — remained unfunded, and the debate over whether to invest further in the Sheppard corridor or redirect resources elsewhere reflected a broader city-wide tension about transit priorities.

Fairview Mall and the Shops at Don Mills, the ward's two major retail centres, were both undergoing transitions that illustrated the challenges facing suburban commercial infrastructure. Fairview Mall had added a T&T Supermarket and new restaurant row in a 2023 expansion, adapting to the ward's Asian community demographics. But the broader question of how to accommodate the ward's growing population — without overwhelming the road network and community infrastructure that suburban development was never designed to handle — remained unresolved.