Zhelevo, the Coral Gable Drive Red Oak
roughly 300 yearsNorthern Red Oak
In 2020 Toronto's city council voted to buy a private house on Coral Gable Drive, not to live in it, but to tear it down and save the oak growing beside it. Locals call the tree Zhelevo, after a Macedonian village, and more than 1,300 donors helped fund the years-long campaign that got the city to act before a developer could. The oak predates the city itself. At roughly three centuries old, it stood here before European settlement reached the Humber River in 1793, part of an oak savannah that once lined the old Toronto Carrying Place trail between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe. Its trunk runs nearly five metres round and its crown, at 24 metres, used to dwarf the house that stood beside it. That house is gone now. The city is building a public parkette on the lot, due to open in spring 2027, and until then the oak is visible from the street rather than walk-up, towering over a construction site instead of a front lawn. It has already survived roughly three hundred years of whatever Toronto threw at it. A couple more waiting for a gate to open is nothing.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. Residential Etobicoke street near the Humber River; no specific TTC bus route to the door was confirmed by this pass. Reachable by bus from Islington or Kipling stations on the Bloor-Danforth subway line.
- Species
- Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra)
- Age estimate
- roughly 300 years
- Location
- 76 Coral Gable Drive, Etobicoke, Toronto, Ontario (Humber Heights-Westmount, Etobicoke)
- Access
- Free once open. The City of Toronto bought the private lot specifically to save this tree and is building a public parkette on it; as of the City's own July 2026 project update the house has been demolished and construction is underway, with opening projected Spring 2027. Until then the tree (which visibly dwarfs the former house from the street) is viewable from Coral Gable Drive but the lot itself is a construction site, not yet open ground.
- Getting there
- Residential Etobicoke street near the Humber River; no specific TTC bus route to the door was confirmed by this pass. Reachable by bus from Islington or Kipling stations on the Bloor-Danforth subway line.
Trees nearby
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