Unheralded but rich in multifarious appeal, Toronto must be the biggest hidden secret in North America, writes Sarah Staples
Toronto, fifth largest city in North America, is that quintessentially Canuck phenomenon: full of accomplishments that go comparatively unnoticed. 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 as prestigious as Cannes’, and boasts over 50 dance companies. According to the United Nations, it’s the most multicultural city on Earth, with more than half of its citizens foreign-born.
Yet Toronto isn’t instantly recognised 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 over 200 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.” Toronto is alive – nowhere more so than in the cheek-to-jowl entertainment and financial districts of the city centre, where office towers stand mere steps from theatres and opera houses, sports stadiums, galleries, and restaurants of every ethnicity and budget.
This is the “exuberant diversity” of a densely packed downtown; the kind that American urban philosopher Jane Jacobs envisaged in 1961’s Death and Life of Great American Cities, years before she moved to Toronto and became a noted champion of the city. Among more recent high-profile supporters, Richard Florida, émigré and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, calls Toronto a blueprint for culturally vibrant cities. And with its high-calibre five-star hotels opening, a new C$140 million (US$137 million) film festival headquarters, and head-turning recent gallery additions by Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, Toronto may yet entice the world in for a closer look.
Cultural hub
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, event and gallery space sprawled over a full city block. Less than a year since it opened, it’s already attracted Hollywood’s A-List, even European royalty – not to mention a continuous stream of tourists and local film buffs. And it’s where I meet Jesse Wente, head of film programmes for a private tour.
In September, Wente wrapped up one of the busiest film festivals on record: 336 films screened, 90 per cent of them North American or world premieres, including Brad Pitt’s smash success Moneyball. Then it was back to work organising year-round exhibitions and film retrospectives at the Lightbox.
On now, for example, is a Grace Kelly exhibition, which Prince Albert and Princess Charlène of Monaco came to open in early autumn. The sole North American whistle-stop for rare memorabilia from the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, it includes the first “Kelly” bag, and the dress Kelly wore for her 1956 civil marriage to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. So this is both a uniquely personal tribute to the actress, and evidence of the Lightbox’s world-class reputation. “It’s made downtown feel, culturally, just a little more alive,” Wente asserts.
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 streets acting as an unofficial centre point for the city.
“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. These east-west streets take an “E” or a “W” after their names.
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” that’s the new Canadian outpost of a hip New York chain co-owned by Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon.
Or, I could take the next major east-west thoroughfare, Queen Street, to discover “boho-chic” restaurants and avant-garde fashion along the aptly named “Queen West” neighbourhood. This is where UK designer Oliver Spencer has opened his first Canadian menswear shop next to Canada’s flagship Fred Perry store. It’s also a hub for live music, at Cameron House, the Rivoli, the Horseshoe Tavern and Velvet Underground (where Alanis Morrisette held the CD release party for her breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill).
Past Trinity Bellwoods Park, Queen West morphs into an “arts and design district”, dotted with private galleries, antique shops and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Eventually – three kilometres or so from the Lightbox – 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 appointment. Past celebrity handprints pressed into concrete on Canada’s Walk of Fame, theatre row and Roy Thomson Hall (home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra), I quickly reach the financial district, for a hard-hat tour of the new Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto.
Down to business
Toronto’s downtown business hotels are undergoing an ambitious makeover inspired by the buzzing entertainment surrounding them. The new Ritz-Carlton Toronto has just been awarded the city’s first five-diamond rating from AAA. Trump Toronto will be the Ritz’s main competition after it opens on January 31, 2012, and a new Shangri-La and Four Seasons are expected next year as well. Thompson Toronto and Hôtel Le Germain Maple Leaf Square are two more recently opened boutiques.
Aside from the Four Seasons, all are situated within walking distance of the Lightbox – and not by chance. “You’re in the heart of the emergent downtown,” explains Donald Trump Jr, executive vice president of The Trump Organization. “In other major financial capitals like New York City, business and arts districts are separate from each other; here, they’re really well 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 clustered around the Toronto Stock Exchange at King and York streets, and these new luxury hotels. There’s the Air Canada Centre, hosting rock concerts, basketball and hockey; Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome) for football, baseball and more music; and The Second City, a sketch comedy theatre that launched the careers of John Candy, Mike Myers and others. There’s also the Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre for opera and ballet, and the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, an Off-Broadway-style theatre and variety specialist.
Even if you’ve lived here all your life, there’s always something to learn about Toronto’s cultural and artistic landmarks. Like the fact that after The Second City’s last Saturday performance, you can stay, free of charge, to watch the cast rehearse future shows. Or the fact that walls and ceilings of the Princess of Wales Theatre are painted in the world’s largest collection of mural art by Frank Stella, an influential New York abstract expressionist. They’re worth a peek at any hour.
Museum hopping
On the northern edge of downtown at Bloor Street, there are two major attractions: the quirky Bata Shoe Museum, exhibiting footwear from around the world, and The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). The ROM courted controversy in 2007 with the unveiling of its Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition, a vision by Daniel Libeskind of jagged aluminium and glass prisms that burst through the original Victorian-era structure. Not everyone warms to the Crystal, but I find Libeskind’s architecture as engaging as the ROM’s collections (which are reminiscent of those in the British Museum).
Midway between the Lightbox and the ROM is the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which has its own “starchitect” addition. Frank Gehry, the creator of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, grew up on Beverly Street in Toronto, very close to the AGO, and took art classes there during the 1930s. In 2008, Gehry delivered an undulating series of gallery spaces pulled together thematically by a main spiral staircase in blond wood, which remains his only Canadian commission.
Some of the classes Gehry attended were taught by Lawren Harris, who was one of Canada’s iconic landscape painters from a depression-era movement called The Group of Seven. His works are well represented in the AGO’s Canadian Signature Collection – I could easily spend an afternoon there. But it’s gorgeous outside, so I decide to stroll south, 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 forming a freshwater boundary between Canada and the eastern US; in relative terms, though, Lake Ontario alone is almost ten times the dimensions of Hong Kong.
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, and works on sale in the gift shop by brilliant living artists of the Canadian Arctic.
On a day like this, from the very 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.
Getting there and around
FLY Cathay Pacific has twice-daily non-stop flights between Hong Kong and Toronto, with easy connections from Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur. Air Canada flies to Toronto daily from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Qatar Airways offers a thrice-weekly service via Doha from Hanoi, Cebu, Bangkok and Southeast Asian locations, landing in Montreal and transiting via Air Canada to Toronto.
TAXI A taxi from Toronto Pearson International Airport takes 45 minutes to downtown during rush hour, and costs around C$50 (US$49) plus tip. Airport limousines cost extra but tend to be cleaner, and drivers give their rate upfront. In town, hail a cab from busier thoroughfares or restaurants.
BUS/SUBWAY Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) day passes cost C$10 (US$9.77), a single adult fare C$3 (US$2.93). The Airport Rocket, aka bus #192, runs to Kipling subway station; from there, ride the Bloor line south.
SHUTTLE Toronto Airport Express shuttles run every 20 minutes to half-hour between Pearson and downtown hotels, and cost C$23.95 (US$23.40) one-way (C$39.95/US$39 round trip), plus tax.
PATH This warren of pedestrian tunnels lined with shops and food courts connects to the streets above, subway stations, parking garages, office buildings, hotels, the bus station and The Toronto Convention Centre.
Stay tuned
There is always something for travellers to do in Toronto. Here is a list of notable upcoming programmes:
Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
Off-Broadway-style musicals, variety shows
Don’t miss: Dec 17 – A Leahy Family Christmas (Celtic-Canadian step-dancing and fiddle); Jan 12-15, 2012 – Shen Yun (classical Chinese dance and music)
n 1 Front St E, tel +1 855 872 SONY (7669), www.sonycentre.ca
Royal Alexandra Theatre
Broadway-style musicals and plays
Don’t miss: Dec 13-31 – Hair, the Musical; Jan 10-Feb 19, 2012 – The Blue Dragon (Robert Lepage’s story of a Canadian expatriate in today’s China)
n 260 King St W, tel +1 416 872 1212, www.mirvish.com
Princess of Wales Theatre
Broadway-style musicals and plays
Don’t miss: Until Jan 8, 2012 – Disney’s Mary Poppins; beginning Feb 10, 2012 – an all-Canadian cast premieres Tony and Olivier award-winning play War Horse
n 300 King St W, tel +1 416 872 1212, www.mirvish.com
The Second City
Sketch and improvisational comedy
Don’t miss: Nov 21-Dec 30 – The Second City’s Dysfunctional Holiday Revue
70 Peter St, tel +1 416 343 0011, www.secondcity.com
Roy Thomson Hall
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, lectures, special music events
Don’t miss: Dec 6 – “Brian Skerry, Ocean Soul: Photographing the Underwater World for National Geographic”
60 Simcoe St, tel +1 416 872 4255, www.roythomson.com
Royal Ontario Museum
World art and artefacts
Don’t miss: Until Jan 1, 2012 – “David Hockney’s Fresh Flowers: Drawings on iPhones and iPads” presented by the ROM’s Institute for Contemporary Culture
100 Queens Park, tel +1 416 586 8000, www.rom.on.ca
Art Gallery of Ontario
Canadian and global beaux-arts
Don’t miss: Until Jan 15, 2012 – “Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde: Masterpieces from the Collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris”
317 Dundas St W, tel +1 416 979 6648, www.ago.net
Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre
Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet of Canada
Don’t miss: Dec 10, 2011-Jan 3, 2012 – Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (James Kudelka’s 1995 version)
145 Queen St W, tel 416 345 9595, www.coc.ca or http://national.ballet.ca
Massey Hall
Mid-size concerts
Don’t miss: Dec 8 – Grammy-nominee, singer-songwriter Tori Amos
178 Victoria St, tel +1 416 872 4255, www.masseyhall.com
Museum of Inuit Art
Artistic focal point of Queen’s Quay Terminal
Don’t miss: Masterworks of Canada’s Arctic in the only public museum of Inuit art
207 Queen’s Quay W, tel +1 416 640 1571, www.miamuseum.ca
Where to stay
The Ritz-Carlton Toronto is a contemporary-Canadian iteration of Ritz opulence, and the city’s first AAA five-diamond hotel. It’s also the closest luxury hotel to the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Roy Thomson Hall and The Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Restaurant TOCA by tom brodi is a favoured quiet nook for the business crowd to entertain clients, while the hotel’s 2,137 sqm spa is popular. Past the lobby and featuring close-up views of the CN Tower, DEQ lounge is another local hotspot. Rates from C$500 (US$488).
181 Wellington St W, tel +1 416 585 2500, www.ritzcarlton.com
Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto is suitably Trump-sized at 65 storeys and will be topped by a New York-style spire. The hotel and condos will open on January 31, 2012 as Canada’s tallest residential building and the city’s second-highest building overall. On the 31st floor, STOCK Restaurant promises 213 metres of balcony for alfresco dining, while Quartz spa will offer two floors of treatment rooms, a six-metre saltwater lap pool, and a hair salon. Rates from C$500 (US$488).
325 Bay St, tel +855 88 TRUMP (87867),
www.trumptorontohotel.com
Thompson Toronto’s glassed-in Rooftop Lounge is hugely popular for the after-closing-bell schmooze. Only guests and “VIP card-holders” get in, so word is people are resorting to taking rooms for the night just to secure that all-important seat at the bar. If you’re thinking of staying over, the hotel’s grey, white and orange colour scheme is anything but boring. Rates from C$265 (US$259).
550 Wellington St W, tel +1 416 640 7778, www.thompsonhotels.com
SoHo Metropolitan Hotel and Residences is a home from home for travelling hockey players, record producers and rap moguls, and visitors to Hollywood North film sets. The SoHo Met’s star-studded lobby connects by keycard access to an attached condo building with weekly and longer-term rentals. Rates from C$275 (US$269).
318 Wellington St W, tel +1 416 599 8800, www.metropolitan.com
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. Its standout feature is Lai Wah Heen – a traditional Cantonese fine-dining restaurant whose dim sum master, Terrence Chan, draws A-listers like Keira Knightley to its tables. Rates start from C$117 (US$114).
108 Chestnut Street, tel +1 416 977 5000, www.metropolitan.com
Hôtel Le Germain Maple Leaf Square is a smartly decorated 167-room boutique hotel located close to the Air Canada Centre, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ home ice. Rates start from C$285 (US$278).
75 Bremner Blvd, tel +1 416 649 7575,
http://germainmapleleafsquare.com
Hôtel Le Germain Toronto deploys a natural palate of taupe, brown and beige, wood accents, glass and metal in 122 rooms, some with Le Germain’s signature peekaboo glass shower. Rates from C$285 (US$278).
30 Mercer Street, tel +1 416 345 9500,
www.germaintoronto.com
The Drake Hotel, on the western outskirts of downtown, is a fixture of the local arts scene. Film and ad execs, and similarly creative business people, love its rooms full of vintage furniture and quirky art. The Underground, a basement performance space, is where talented Indie bands – including Broken Social Scene – gained early recognition. Rates from C$189 (US$185).
1150 Queen St W, tel +1 416 531 5042,
www.thedrakehotel.ca
