There is a specific version of Courtice available in August 2026 that will not be here in five years. The lakefront is still mostly hedged behind private lots. Tooley's Mill Park still holds four cars. The King Street stretch between Trulls and Courtice Road is still a working diner strip rather than a mixed-use frontage. If you live here, this month is worth using deliberately, because the plans approved earlier this year are already rewriting the map.
This is a guide to what is on the calendar right now, which trails and rooms are worth catching before they change, and where to eat on King Street after you have logged the steps.
The August calendar residents actually use
The single Courtice-specific event most families will build a Wednesday around is Movies Under the Stars. On Wednesday, August 5, the Courtice Community Complex hosts a screening of The Wild Robot starting at dusk, with the usual instruction to bring a blanket or lawn chair and pack the good snacks. What makes this year's edition worth arriving early for is the roller skating. Pre-show roller skating runs at select locations, wristbands required and available onsite 15 minutes before each session, with Session 1 from 6 to 6:40 p.m. and Session 2 from 7 to 7:40 p.m. If you have kids who are old enough for the movie but restless before dark, this solves the sixty-minute gap that usually torpedoes the outing. The program is sponsored by Elexicon Energy and The Minto Group, and screenings continue at other Clarington sites through the month if you miss the Courtice date.
For teens and older kids with any interest in what happens inside the buildings east of town, OPG's Take Your Parents to Work Day at the Darlington Energy Complex runs Friday, August 21 from 8:00 a.m. That is a rare open door into the site that dominates the eastern skyline, and it is on a Friday, so it does not eat your Saturday.
Two smaller things also worth logging: all Clarington Library, Museums & Archives locations are closed Monday, August 3 for the Civic Holiday, and the Summer 2026 CLMA program guide covers July and August including the TD Summer Reading Club, which is the cheapest way to keep a school-age kid reading through the second half of summer.
The trail shelf worth walking before the waterfront plan builds out
Courtice has more paved trail per capita than most people who live here realize, and the network has one honest quirk: the best entry points are half-hidden, so casual visitors never find them. That is about to change. Until it does, here is the shelf.
- Farewell Creek Trail, from Tooley's Mill Park. The turn is easy to miss. Look for Old Kingston Road south of the Tim Hortons at Centerfield and Highway 2. The lot holds four to five cars and parking is free. The paved trail runs about a kilometer alongside Farewell Creek and ends at a bridge across the creek, with unpaved forest routes continuing past it.
- Courtice Millennium Trail. A 1.5 km network west of Courtice Recreation Complex that winds through woodlands, meadows, and across Black Creek. Good for a short after-dinner loop.
- Darlington Provincial Park. Four distinct trails, priced at a small day-use fee. Burk Trail runs 1.25 km through fields, meadows and mature forest past a pioneer cemetery to a scenic lookout over Lake Ontario, with Cooper's hawks at the bluff. McLaughlin Bay Trail is a 1.5 km hike through a marsh ecosystem where you may see Great Blue Heron. Robinson Creek is a 1 km loop through a forested ravine of mature willow and maple. The Waterfront Trail here is a 2.6 km segment of a 350 km multi-use route that runs from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Trenton.
The park's other feature, and the one longtime residents guard, is the beach access. After living in Courtice for over two years, plenty of newer residents still do not know the town has its own beachfront. It is small, but the walk along the shoreline is beautiful at sunrise and sunset. Head south on Courtice Road until you see the tunnel leading to the Courtice Beach, then turn right on Darlington Park Road.
One trail note that matters for planning: the rail line runs close to the park and the horns are audible, especially near the park entrance road where the tracks cross. If you are picnicking with kids who spook, sit further from the tracks.
The King Street diner strip, before it becomes something else
Within about a two-block stretch of King Street East, Courtice has an unusually tight cluster of independent, sit-down restaurants that are neither chains nor pretending to be somewhere they are not.
The one to eat at this month is Kosta's Diner at 1405 King Street East. Owner Arjan "Kosta" Arizaj serves a mix of Mediterranean, Canadian and American food, drawing on ten years in Greece before moving to Canada in 1995. Arizaj sold his previous restaurant in 2023 and retired, then reopened at the same location under a new name when the opportunity came back, reassembling most of the original team. The regulars order the full breakfast menu, the homemade Russian vegetable soup, from-scratch cheesecake, and the roast beef and corned beef, both made in house. By the second day open there was a lineup out the door, which is the kind of detail that tells you the customer base was waiting.
A few doors east, at 1413 King Street East, Bistro 238 runs a bistro menu Tuesday through Saturday under owner-chef Simon Bush, with dishes like bread pudding for dessert. It is quieter than Kosta's and takes reservations, which is the move if you want a conversation rather than a counter.
Across Highway 2 at 1427 Durham Highway 2, The Courtyard sits inside the top ten of Courtice's roughly two dozen restaurants on Tripadvisor. The patio is the room to sit in. It is large and busy in summer, and it is the honest recommendation over sitting inside for a drink.
For a faster take-away after a Farewell Creek walk, ohSHAWARMA is a family-owned Middle Eastern grill in Courtice, and the counter model means you are back in the car in ten minutes.
What is changing under your feet
The reason to be intentional about the version of Courtice you are using in August 2026 is that Council already voted to change it. The Courtice Waterfront Secondary Plan sets out approximately 2,500 housing units for about 4,800 residents in a mix of single-detached homes, townhouses, mid-rise apartments and mixed-use buildings, with a maximum height of 15 storeys in the mixed-use core subject to further studies. The plan also carves out a new 16-hectare municipal park along Lake Ontario, larger than the former Bowmanville Zoo lands.
"We're truly fortunate to be a waterfront community, stretching along the beautiful shores of Lake Ontario. I'm thrilled we now have a clear and exciting path forward to an amazing, publicly-accessible Courtice waterfront. One with a big new park where folks can walk lakeside trails, enjoy the serenity of Tooley Creek, grab an ice cream cone on a hot summer day." — Clarington Mayor Adrian Foster
Two practical implications for how you plan an August weekend. First, the trail network you are using now will connect. An active transportation network will link the neighbourhood to the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, Lake Ontario shoreline and Tooley Creek, with multi-use paths, pedestrian bridges and cycling facilities that tie into the future Courtice GO Station. Second, the plan calls for a pedestrian-oriented intersection as a focal point for restaurants, cafés and small shops near the waterfront park, which is the strongest signal yet that the King Street diner strip will not be the only sit-down cluster in town for long.
There is a separate process moving on the north side as well. A Weston Consulting application for 113 Down Road proposes approximately 2,500 low and medium-density residential units in semi-detached homes, townhouses, stacked townhouses and apartment buildings on a 52-hectare, 128-acre site. Public meetings on files like this are the moment residents get heard, so it is worth following the notices on the municipal calendar.
None of this is a reason to rush a movie night or a shoreline walk. It is a reason to pick the trail with the four-car lot before it has a hundred-car lot, and to eat at the diner whose owner personally shook the hand of every regular in the first week back.
If you are thinking about what the next chapter of your street looks like as Courtice fills in, the team at Michael McDougall tracks these plans block by block and would rather have that conversation over a coffee than a listing form. Get your free home valuation when you are ready.
