Features

Top-class Toronto

29 Feb 2012 by BusinessTraveller

Other cities may get the glory but Canada’s financial capital is rich in culture, teeming with entertainment options and blessed with natural beauty, discovers Sarah Staples.

Toronto is that quintessentially Canuck phenomenon – full of accomplishments that go comparatively unnoticed. The fifth-largest city in North America, it’s Canada’s financial and corporate headquarters, and seat of the world’s seventh-biggest stock market. It’s the third most significant English-speaking theatre capital, after New York and London, has a film festival almost as prestigious as Cannes’, and boasts more than 50 dance companies. The United Nations, says it’s one of the most multicultural cities on earth, with more than half of its citizens born overseas.

Yet Toronto isn’t seen as exotic and up-and-coming like Beijing, avant-garde like New York, or chic like Paris. People have lived along Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Don and Humber rivers since the end of the last Ice Age, and still Toronto lacks the gravitas of Rome or St Petersburg. Hollywood shoots numerous films and television shows here annually, but as a sort of geographic body double – a stand-in for other US capitals.

That actually makes sense, for as James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, once wrote: “Toronto is what many American cities wish they could be.” The city is alive – nowhere more so than in its cheek-by-jowl entertainment and financial districts, where office towers stand steps from theatres and opera houses, sports stadiums, galleries, and restaurants of every ethnicity.

This is the “exuberant diversity” of a densely packed downtown – the kind that US urban philosopher Jane Jacobs envisaged in 1961’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, years before she moved to Toronto and became a champion of the city. Among more recent high-profile supporters, Richard Florida, a US émigré and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, calls it a blueprint for culturally vibrant cities.

And with high-calibre five-star hotels opening, a new C$140 (£89) million film festival HQ, and head-turning gallery additions in the past few years by Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, Toronto may yet draw the world in for a closer look.

There’s perhaps no better gauge for Toronto’s rising arts and culture scene than the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King Street West. This is the Toronto International Film Festival’s complex of five cinemas, restaurants and event and gallery space, which takes up a full city block. The venue opened in September 2010, and has already attracted European royalty (Prince Albert of Monaco and his wife visited for the opening of a Grace Kelly exhibit) and members of Hollywood’s A-list – not to mention a continuous stream of tourists and local film buffs.

In September, Jesse Wente, head of film programmes, wrapped up one of the busiest festivals on record – 336 films screened, 90 per cent of them North American or world premieres, including Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. Then it was back to work organising year-round exhibitions and film retrospectives at the Lightbox. “It’s made downtown feel, culturally, just a little more alive,” he tells me.

It’s easy enough to get one’s bearings downtown. Toronto streets line up in a fairly tidy grid, with the corner of Bloor and Yonge acting as an unofficial centre point. Downtown extends roughly from Bloor Street south to Lake Ontario, and either side of Yonge Street for several blocks, west to Bathurst and east to Parliament.

If I left the Lightbox walking west on King, my first choice of cultural pit stop might be Spin Toronto – a “ping pong social club”, it’s the new Canadian outpost of a hip New York chain co-owned by actress Susan Sarandon. Or I could take the next major east-west thoroughfare, Queen Street, to discover the boho-chic restaurants and avant-garde fashion of Queen West neighbourhood. This is where UK designer Oliver Spencer opened his first Canadian shop, next to the country’s flagship Fred Perry store. It’s also a hub for live music, with venues including the Cameron House, the Rivoli, Horseshoe Tavern and Velvet Underground.

Past Trinity Bellwoods Park, Queen Street morphs into an art and design district dotted with private galleries, antique shops and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Eventually you reach the Drake hotel, which has a popular alternative performance venue in its basement.

But I need to venture east on King Street for my next meeting. Walking past celebrity handprints pressed into concrete on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the theatre row and Roy Thomson Hall – home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – I soon reach the financial district for a tour of the new Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Toronto’s downtown business hotels are undergoing an ambitious makeover. The new Ritz-Carlton received the city’s first five-diamond AAA rating last year. Trump Toronto became its main rival when it opened on January 31, and new Shangri-La and Four Seasons properties are expected this year. Thompson Toronto and Hôtel le Germain Maple Leaf Square are two recently opened boutique options.

Aside from the Four Seasons, all are situated near the Lightbox – and not by chance. “You’re in the heart of the emergent downtown,” says Donald Trump Junior, executive vice-president of the Trump Organisation. “In other major financial capitals such as New York City, business and arts districts are separate from each other – here, they’re intermixed, and there are plenty of leisure options for the weekend. So this is really going to be a seven-day hotel.”

Shows and sports events are on the doorstep of offices around the Toronto Stock Exchange at King and York streets. There’s the Air Canada Centre, hosting rock concerts, basketball and hockey; Rogers Centre for football, baseball and music; and the Second City, a sketch comedy theatre that launched John Candy and Mike Myers’ careers. The Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre showcases opera and ballet, and the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts is an off-Broadway-style theatre.

Even if you’ve lived here all your life, there’s always something to learn about Toronto’s cultural landmarks. Like the fact that after the Second City’s final performance every Saturday, you can watch the cast rehearse future shows. Or that the walls and ceilings of the Princess of Wales Theatre feature the world’s largest collection of mural art by US abstract expressionist Frank Stella. They’re worth a peek at any hour.

At Bloor Street, there are two major attractions – the Bata Shoe Museum, exhibiting international footwear, and the Royal Ontario Museum. This courted controversy in 2007 with its Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition, a vision of jagged aluminium and glass by Daniel Libeskind that burst through the original structure. Not everyone warmed to it, but I find Libeskind’s architecture as engaging as the museum’s collections, which are reminiscent of those in the British Museum.

Midway between the Lightbox and the museum is the Art Gallery of Ontario, which has its own “starchitect” addition. Frank Gehry, creator of Bilbao’s Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, set to open in 2017, grew up on Beverly Street, close to the gallery, where he took art classes in the 1930s. In 2008, he delivered an undulating series of gallery spaces pulled together by a main spiral staircase in blond wood.

Some of the classes Gehry attended were taught by Lawren Harris. One of Canada’s Group of Seven, a depression-era collective of iconic landscape painters, his works are well represented in the gallery’s Canadian Collection. You could easily spend an afternoon here, but it’s gorgeous outside, so I stroll to the waterfront.

Toronto has 8,000 hectares of parkland, beaches, bicycle and hiking trails, and rivers that bend and twist towards Lake Ontario. It’s an expansive, natural-feeling city, a realisation that hits as you reach the water’s edge. This is the smallest of the five Great Lakes that form a freshwater boundary between Canada and the eastern US, though, in relative terms, it’s almost the same size as Wales, at nearly 20,000 sq km.

At Queen’s Quay Terminal – a refurbished port building housing craft stalls, boutiques and art space – I pause at the Museum of Inuit Art to browse antique carvings and sculptures. On a day like this, from the top of the CN Tower, you can sometimes make out the fuzzy outline of Buffalo, New York, in the distance. But my view through the gallery’s sunlit window is of seemingly endless water, and wide-open possibility.

WHERE TO STAY

Ritz-Carlton Toronto

A contemporary-Canadian iteration of typical Ritz-Carlton opulence, the 267-room property opened a year ago and is the closest luxury hotel to the TIFF Bell Lightbox and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Restaurant TOCA by Tom Brodi is a favoured quiet nook for the business crowd, while the hotel’s 2,137 sqm spa is similarly popular. Past the lobby and featuring views of the CN Tower, DEQ lounge is another local hotspot.

  • 181 Wellington Street West; tel +1 416 585 2500; ritzcarlton.com
  • Rooms from C$616 (£340)

 

Trump International Hotel AND Tower Toronto

Suitably Trump-sized, at 65 storeys, this brand new hotel is topped with a New York-style spire. The hotel and condos opened on January 31 as Canada’s tallest residential building and the city’s second-highest overall. On the 31st floor, Stock Restaurant has a balcony for al fresco dining, while Quartz spa offers two floors of treatment rooms, a saltwater pool and a hair salon.

 

Thompson Toronto

The glass-walled rooftop lounge of this 102-room hotel is hugely popular for post-closing-time schmoozing. Only guests and “VIP cardholders” get in, so the word is people are resorting to taking rooms for the night just to secure that all-important seat at the bar. Facilities include a yoga and wellness spa and the Thompson Diner. The hotel’s grey, white and orange colour scheme is anything but boring.

  • 550 Wellington Street West; tel +1 416 640 7778; thompsonhotels.com
  • Rooms from C$338 (£214)

 

Metropolitan Hotel Toronto

Tucked behind City Hall, at the edge of Chinatown, is the first Toronto hotel developed by Hong Kong-born owner Henry Wu. With 427 rooms, its standout feature is Lai Wah Heen, a Cantonese fine-dining restaurant whose dim sum master, Terrence Chan, draws A-listers to its tables.

  • 108 Chestnut Street; tel +1 416 977 5000; metropolitan.com
  • Rooms from C$177 (£112)

 

SoHo Metropolitan Hotel and Residences

The 92-room Soho Met is a home from home for travelling hockey players, rap moguls and visitors to Hollywood North film sets. There is a restaurant, a café/bakery and a Met club gym. The star-studded lobby connects by keycard access to an attached condo building with weekly and longer-term rentals.

  • 318 Wellington Street West; tel +1 416 599 8800; metropolitan.com
  • Rooms from C$265 (£168)

 

Hotel Le Germain Toronto/Maple Leaf Square

Located in the entertainment district, the Hôtel Le Germain Toronto deploys a natural palate with wood, glass and metal accents in its 122 rooms, some of which feature peekaboo glass showers. Its 167-room sister property on Maple Leaf Square is located close to the Air Canada Centre, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ home rink.

  • Toronto: 30 Mercer Street; tel +1 416 345 9500; germaintoronto.com. Rooms from C$300 (£190)
  • Maple Leaf Square: 75 Bremner Boulevard; tel +1 416 649 7575; germain mapleleafsquare.com. Rooms from C$328 (£208)

The Drake Hotel

On the western outskirts of downtown, this 19-room property is a firm fixture of the local arts scene. Film and ad execs – and similarly creative business people – love its rooms, which are full of vintage furniture and quirky art. The Underground, a basement venue, is where talented indie bands gain early recognition.

  • 1,150 Queen Street West; tel +1 416 531 5042; thedrakehotel.ca
  • Rooms from C$225 (£142)
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