Canadian police on Tuesday identified a woman whose severed body parts were discovered scattered throughout Toronto as a Chinese-Canadian spa owner and a single mother of three.

Guang Hua Liu, 41, was reported missing by friends on August 11, one day after they said they dropped her off outside of her now defunct spa, Inspector George Koekkoek told a televised press conference.

She was a Canadian citizen of Chinese descent who lived in the east side Toronto suburb of Scarborough.

"We are treating this as a homicide," Koekkoek said, adding that forensic testing had not yet determined the cause of her death.

Over the past week police recovered an arm, thigh and two calves from a creek in Scarborough as well as a foot, two hands and a head belonging to the victim from a park in Mississauga.

Hikers had stumbled upon a foot floating in the Credit River west of Toronto on Wednesday, triggering a massive search by police divers and sniffer dogs at Hewick Meadows Park where more body parts were found.

A passerby, meanwhile, alerted police over the weekend when he spotted an arm and leg in a creek on the east side of Canada's largest city. Those searches have now wrapped up.

"We're looking into a number of avenues, but the investigation is wide open," Koekkoek said when pressed by reporters about suspects in the murder.

Police have dismissed any link to the "Canadian Psycho" case involving Luka Rocco Magnotta, a male ex-porn actor suspected of killing a Chinese student with an ice pick in Montreal in May.

Magnotta, who is in jail awaiting a trial scheduled for early next year, is accused of carving up the victim's body, sexually abusing the corpse and filming the act, before posting a video of the killing online.

He is also suspected of having sent the victim's hands and feet to political party offices in Ottawa and to two schools in Vancouver through the mail.