Toronto: The Mini Rough Guide (Miniguides)

INTRODUCTION

The economic and cultural focus of English-speaking Canada, Toronto is the country’s largest metropolis. It sprawls along the northern shore of Lake Ontario, its surprisingly vibrant centre encased by a jangle of satellite townships and industrial zones that cover – as "Greater Toronto" – no less than 100 square kilometres. For decades, Toronto was saddled with unflattering sobriquets – "Toronto the Good", "Hogtown" – that reflected a perhaps deserved reputation for complacent mediocrity and greed. Spurred into years of image-building, the city’s post-war administrations have lavished millions of dollars on glitzy architecture, slick museums, an excellent public transport system, and the reclamation and development of the lakefront. As a result, Toronto has become one of North America’s most likeable cities, an eminently liveable place with a proud sense of itself.

Huge new shopping malls and skyrise office blocks reflect the economic successes of the last two or three decades, a boom that has attracted immigrants from all over the world, transforming an overwhelmingly Anglophone city into a cosmopolitan one of some sixty significant minorities. Furthermore, the city’s multiculturalism goes far deeper than an extravagant diversity of restaurants and sporadic pockets of multilingual street signs: Toronto’s schools, for example, have extensive "Heritage Language Programmes", which encourage the maintenance of the immigrants’ first cultures.

Getting the feel of Toronto’s diversity is one of the city’s great pleasures, but there are attention-grabbing sights here as well. Most are conveniently clustered in the city centre, and the most celebrated of them all is the CN Tower, the world’s tallest freestanding structure, next door to which lies the modern hump of the SkyDome sports stadium. The city’s other prestige attractions are led by the Art Gallery of Ontario, which possesses a first-rate selection of Canadian painting, and the Royal Ontario Museum, where pride of place goes to the Chinese collection. But it’s the pick of Toronto’s smaller, less-visited galleries and period homes that really add to the city’s charm. There are superb Canadian paintings at the Thomson Gallery and a fascinating range of footwear at the Bata Shoe Museum. The Toronto Dominion Bank boasts the eclectic Gallery of Inuit Art, and the mock-Gothic extravagances of Casa Loma, the Victorian gentility of Spadina House along with the replica of Fort York, the colonial settlement where Toronto began, all vie for your attention.

Toronto’s sights illustrate different facets of the city, but in no way do they crystallise its identity. The city remains opaque – too big and diverse to allow for a defining personality. This, however, adds an air of excitement and unpredictability to the place. Toronto caters to everything, and the city surges with Canada’s most vibrant restaurant, performing-arts and nightlife scenes.

Toronto is also a convenient base for exploring southwest Ontario, a triangular tract of land that lies sandwiched between lakes Huron and Erie. Significant parts of the region have been heavily industrialized, but there’s also mile upon mile of rolling farmland and a series of first-rate attractions, the pick of which are within a two- to three-hour drive of downtown Toronto. In "Day-trips" we’ve detailed some of the area’s best excursions, beginning with Canada’s premier tourist spot, Niagara Falls, and nearby Niagara-on-the-Lake, a beguiling town of leafy streets and charming colonial houses. There’s also Goderich and Bayfield, two lovely, small-town places tucked against the bluffs of the Lake Huron shoreline. Finally, Severn Sound is the location of the beautiful Georgian Bay Islands National Park, as well as a pair of top-notch historical reconstructions: Discovery Harbour and Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.

Phil Lee is an experienced Rough Guides author whose taste for adventure began when he joined the Danish merchant navy. He has written Rough Guides to Amsterdam, Brussels, Mallorca and Menorca, England, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Helen Lovekin is a Torontonian, born and bred. She is the coauthor of the The Rough Guide to Toronto.