Checking in with Toronto
I’ve added over 60 images to my over-sized Toronto gallery which has nearly become too big to manage! Toronto just seems to have so much diversity within it’s neighborhoods that I always find myself taking more pictures than I intended. If you ever have a few days to spend in Toronto, I will make a few suggestions that I’d tell you not to miss:
-Walk Bloor , Younge, King, Queen or Yorkville, but you can never see it all. There’s always buskers at Dundas and Younge, lots of shopping and restaurants along all of them.
-Visit the most eclectic place in Toronto, Kensington Market. There are nearly 100 shops and restaurants in old single family Victorian homes, of every variety imaginable. Have a locally roasted coffee, or something blended (I had a matcha rooibus iced coffee at MoonBean), you can buy anything from gas masks to cookie monster pajamas here.
-Explore some of Toronto’s older residential neighbourhoods just north of Daventport. You’ll find former gated communities that house the Toronto’s wealthiest for well over a century. It’s a scenic mix of mature, carefully manicured foliage, massive character homes, joggers, and luxury cars. You may also run into Casa Loma, the 64,000 sq/ft , 98 room castle.
-Head to the brewery district for old architecture and a massive variety of tap beer, brewed locally.
-Catch a BlueJays game. Tickets start at 9$.
-Visit the Toronto Islands. Watch the sunset cast upon Toronto’s skyline for an epic show.
-At night, the financial district creates dramatic views from the floor of its canyon. I went to Bay and King St, and a courtyard there allows you get the sense of the grandeur of these buildings. See picture below, though it does no justice.
Click the link here for the gallery of Toronto.
Compositions of Toronto
Toronto never ceases to impress me. It continues to grow, like an urban weed, both vertically and outwards into the rest of the Golden Horseshoe. I’ve got an updated gallery to share, with 46 new compositions of Canada’s big city. Check out a few previews below, and click here for the full gallery, with my full “catalog” of Toronto images.
Mississauga: (false) utopia
Towers of gleaming glass. Green boulevards. Picture perfect parking lots. Is Mississauga the Canadian utopia, or just a suburban dessert?
In 1970, Mississauga began as a suburban exodus of Toronto. In just 3 decades, its population has increased 500%. It’s been debt free since 1979, and hasn’t had to borrow a single penny ever since.
Some things about this place are fascinating. They’ve only had 1 mayor in the cities entire history: 90 year old Hazel McCallion is still serving. The cities downtown is setup as a huge suburban megamall, surrounded by parking lots and private condos. Some of the streets downtown have no sidewalks, making them unwalkable for pedestrians. This is something different. Its the super-sprawl utopian atmosphere that represents the most disturbing aspect of 21st century urbanity.
I tried to find more things to capture in Mississauga, but in all honestly, there wasn’t much to see here. It looked like every picture perfect prefab North American suburb I’ve ever seen – only super sized. I’ve got a few to share from Mississauga’s new landmark, Absolute World. It was the only building I saw that broke the mold of prefab postmodernism – you could call it 21st century structuralism.
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Photos from the center of the universe
Physicists have their doubts, but Canadians have known for a while now, tongue in cheek, that Toronto is indeed the center of the universe. See a more complete collection of Toronto photos here.
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Hamilton and the big, golden horseshoe
“Hamilton is the new Brooklyn”. I’ll start with that. Steeltown, the blue collar neighbour to the Toronto’s skyline of banks.
