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Where to Stay in Ajax, Ontario
Ajax is a waterfront town in Durham Region, midway between Toronto and Oshawa in the Greater Toronto Area. Munitions built the place.
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Where to stay in Ajax
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Kingston Road West carries the older side. The stretch holds 479 Kingston Road West, 562 Kingston Road West, and 572 Kingston Road West among a run of heritage addresses, so a bed near it puts the town's oldest fabric on one walk. Traffic is the trade-off.
A room on this side sits closest to Old Kingston Road and to the churches and houses that give Ajax whatever depth it has beyond the streets the plant built. Church Street South runs quieter, and 68 Church Street South and 89 Church Street South mark the same older seam a short way from the Kingston Road frontages. The waterfront is the other choice.
Beds toward the shore trade the heritage streets for open water, which suits anyone here for air and distance rather than for old buildings, and the drive back into the Greater Toronto Area is short either way. Toronto and Oshawa are both close. Staying in Ajax rather than in either one buys space and quiet for anyone whose business is spread across Durham Region.
About Ajax
A munitions plant made this town.
What is Ajax known for?
Defence Industries Limited needed housing for its workers in 1941, so Pickering Township gave up a piece of itself and Ajax began as a purpose-built settlement rather than a village that grew. Older buildings survive among them. Post Manor, Bayly House, and the McKay House belong to the older fabric the new town grew around, and they sit among streets otherwise laid out after Ajax split from Pickering Township.
What are the main landmarks in Ajax?
Ajax keeps its landmarks in ordinary houses. Post Manor, Bayly House, Davies House, McKay House, and the Alan Lishman House carry the names of families rather than institutions, and The Glen and Westglen do the same with property names. Prest Residence and William Hartrick House complete a register built almost entirely from private buildings, with a few churches standing apart from it.
Addresses stand in for names too. 22 Church Street North, 23 Elizabeth Street, and 73 Old Kingston Road are known by their street numbers alone, which says something about how new the rest of the town is.
What is the history of Ajax?
War made this town. Defence Industries Limited built a munitions factory here, and in 1941 the land was split away from Pickering Township so that the workforce could be housed beside the plant that employed it. Nothing about that was gradual.
The site lay midway between Oshawa and Toronto, on the waterfront, close enough to the city for labour and far enough from it for a plant that handled munitions. The name came with the town, not before it. A town appeared where a township had been, laid out for a single purpose.
The factory closed and the town stayed. Ajax kept growing as the Greater Toronto Area spread outward along the shore, and the wartime settlement turned into a suburb inside Durham Region without ever losing the shape its first plan gave it. Older names outlasted both phases.
Post Manor, the Dillingham-Lamorie House, and the Palmer-Voss House carry names from the township era, and Bayly House and Davies House sit among streets that came with the plan. Five of the heritage addresses sit on Kingston Road West alone.
Where is Ajax?
Water sets one limit. Ajax is a waterfront town, and its ground runs back from the shore across roughly sixty-seven square kilometres of Durham Region before it meets the neighbouring municipalities. Oshawa lies one way, Toronto the other.
Ajax occupies the eastern part of the Greater Toronto Area, which ties it to Toronto more than to anywhere else, and the boundary with Pickering Township land is the only edge that carries much history.
What is the climate of Ajax?
The water moderates the edges. Ajax sits in the temperate band on an open shore, so the water on its edge keeps the town a shade milder than the ground inland behind Durham Region, and the difference shows most at either end of winter. Snow still arrives in quantity.
Summer heat carries humidity off the water, and the shore is where most of the town goes when it does.
How do you get to Ajax?
Kingston Road is the old way in. It runs through Ajax as Kingston Road West and Old Kingston Road, and it long predates the routes that tie Durham Region to Toronto. Toronto is the arrival point.
Most travellers reach Ajax from there or from Oshawa, since the town sits midway between the two and the run along the Greater Toronto Area's eastern side is short in either direction.
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Updated August 2026