Swansea's high-end homes are located either at the western edge of High Park overlooking Grenadier Pond, or on Riverside Drive and the Brule Gardens enclave bordering the Humber River.

Along the northern boundary, Bloor Street is a four-lane arterial road with businesses lining both sides.

Along the southern boundary is the Gardiner Expressway which has an interchange with South Kingsway and the CNR railway lines.

[2] It is at this spot between 1615 and 1618 that it is believed that Étienne Brûlé was the first European to view Lake Ontario, with his party of indigenous and French explorers.

[2][3] In the late 1780s, his son Jean Baptiste Rousseau began developing a parcel of 500 acres around the trading post.

[4] When York was first surveyed, the entire area along the Humber River was designated as a Mill Reserve (forest to be left intact for the use of the King's Sawmill.

By the 1880s, the mill reserve in Swansea was still unused and the area was subdivided into 'wood lots' (sections of forest to be sold to families living further away for use as timber fuel).

71 acres (29 ha) of former Ellis lands on the east side of Grenadier Pond were bought by Toronto and merged with High Park in 1930.

[6] To the south, industry developed on Coe's land along the railway line, including the Ontario Bolt Works, just east of the Humber, which replaced a factory on the site of today's streetcar yards at Roncesvalles.

Built in 1882, its cornerstone laying attended by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald,[7] the factory lands extended north to today's Morningside Avenue.

One of the ponds on the former Coe property, on the site of today's Swansea Mews public housing project, was turned into a dump and filled in with tailings.

The largely forested village saw the building of many upper-middle-class homes on the former Ellis estate as a quiet 'leafy' neighbourhood developed.

The Swansea Village corporate seal reveals a great deal about the colourful history of the neighbourhood.

This is symbolic in that it recognizes that First Nations members were the first people to inhabit Swansea, thousands of years ago.

The small strip of industrial land housing the former wire works between The Queensway and Lake Shore Boulevard has been largely redeveloped as a high-density residential mix of towers and townhouses.

High Park features a full day of recreational activities including fishing, theatre performances, train rides, an animal zoo, historical exhibits, a restaurant and a myriad of fitness opportunities.