Toronto, Ontario — Activities
Toronto Culture
Although Toronto has a reputation as a place of business, it has much to offer the visitor interested in soaking up some local culture - notably its vibrant theater scene. Toronto has the third most theaters of any city in the world, after London and New York, showing everything from high-budget musicals to experimental fringe theater.
Toronto's role as the cultural capital of English-speaking Canada is also evident in its major performing arts companies, with ballet, opera and the symphony all well represented during a season that generally runs from September to April.
Evidence of how seriously the city takes its role as a cultural capital is the C$181 million Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts (tel: (416) 363 8231; website: www.coc.ca/house/house.html), the magnificent new home of the Canadian Opera Company inaugurated in June 2006. Designed by Toronto architect Jack Diamond and located at 145 Queen Street West, the center integrates the best features of the grand European opera houses with innovative technology in acoustics and sightlines. The center is also the performance venue for The National Ballet of Canada.
Foremost among the many classical music companies who play at Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe Street (tel: (416) 872 4255; website: www.roythomsonhall.com), is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Further east, the Sony Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Front Street East (tel: (416) 393 7469; website: www.sonycenter.ca), stages big dance, music and performance productions. It was here that during a 1974 Bolshoi ballet visit a young Mikhail Baryshnikov, on loan from the Kirov, bolted from the center's stage door, down The Esplanade and into a waiting getaway car and a new life in the West. It is currently under renovation and is due to reopen for the 2009-2010 season.
In addition to the daily newspapers, the free weeklies NOW (website: www.nowtoronto.com) and eye (website: www.eyeweekly.com), have listings for major events and obscure fringe offerings. Tickets for most cultural attractions can usually be bought through Ticketmaster Canada (tel: (416) 870 8000; website: www.ticketmaster.ca). Tickets for many of the big musicals are available from TicketKing (tel: (416) 872 1212 or 1 800 461 3333; website: www.ticketking.com) or in person (Tuesday-Saturday 1200-1830) from the TOTix half-price ticket booth, at the southeast corner of Yonge Street and Dundas Street (tel: (416) 536 6468; website: www.totix.ca).
Music: The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (tel: (416) 598 3375 or 593 7769; website: www.tso.on.ca) performs over 125 concerts every year at Roy Thomson Hall (see above), attracting guest performers of international acclaim. The Canadian Opera Company (tel: (416) 363 6671; website: www.coc.ca) has received growing audiences in recent seasons and will no doubt have continued success in its impressive new home, the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts.
Theater: The city's Theater District is focused on King Street West, slightly north of the CN Tower. Built in 1907, the Royal Alexandra Theater, 260 King Street West, is an old, spacious Victorian theater that shows musicals along with the occasional piece of serious theater. The nearby Princess of Wales Theater, 300 King Street West, shows similarly popular fare, generally bringing touring versions of major West End and Broadway shows. Both venues are run by Mirvish Productions (website: www.mirvish.com) and should be booked through TicketKing (see above). The Canon Theater, 263 Yonge Street, restored to its exquisite 1920s design and for many years the Toronto home of Phantom of the Opera, is now also a part of the Mirvish stable.
For a more local flavor, the Poor Alex Theater, 296 Brunswick Avenue (website: www.pooralextheater.com), is one of the best venues offering innovative new theater. The Tarragon Theater, 30 Bridgman Avenue (tel: (416) 531 1827; website: www.tarragontheater.com), specializes in new Canadian writing. The St Lawrence Center for the Performing Arts, 27 Front Street East (tel: (416) 366 7723; website: www.stlc.com), is home to the Canadian Stage Company (tel: (416) 368 3110; website: www.canstage.com), producers of modern Canadian plays and productions. Near the waterfront, the Harbourfront Center Theater, at the Harbourfront Center, 231 Queen's Quay West (tel: (416) 973 4000; website: www.harborfront.on.ca), was built as an ice house in the 1920s but was renovated into a modern theater, showing musicals alongside more serious pieces, in the 1990s.
Further information on drama in the city is available from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tel: (416) 536 6468; website: www.tapa.ca), which represents over a hundred local companies.
It is worth getting out of the city for two of the country's most important theater festivals - the Shaw Festival (website: www.shawfest.com), held in Niagara-on-the-Lake (see Excursions), and the Stratford Festival (tel: 1 800 567 1600; website: www.stratfordfestival.ca), in Stratford, two hours' drive southwest of Toronto. As the name suggests, the focus at the Stratford Festival is on the works of Shakespeare, although the repertoire also includes more recent works by Canadian and international playwrights like Albee and Chekhov.
Dance: The National Ballet of Canada (tel: (416) 345 9595 or 1 (866) 345 9595; website: www.national.ballet.ca), arguably the country's best known dance company, uses the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts, opened in 2006, as its performance venue. The company's most popular show is the annual Christmas production of The Nutcracker. One of the best spots for Canadian and international contemporary dance is at the Harbourfront Center, 231 Queen's Quay West (tel: (416) 973 4000; website: www.harborfront.on.ca).
Film: In recent years, Toronto has gained the nickname ‘Hollywood North', due to the large number of American films that are shot on its streets and in its buildings. Even though Vancouver and Montreal have stolen some of that thunder, dozens of American feature films are still shot in Toronto every year. Recent successes include Hairspray (2007), 16 Blocks (2005), Assault on Precinct 13 (2004), the film musical Chicago (2002), and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). A number of television series, including the US version of Queer as Folk, have also been filmed in the city. Among the films where Toronto actually plays itself are The City (1999), Forever Knight (1992) and Exotica (1994), directed by University of Toronto alumnus Atom Egoyan.
Every September, Toronto is flooded with celebrities and film types; patios are overrun with bruschetta and canapés, as film buffs line up to see major releases and art house works from around the world during the Toronto International Film Festival (tel: (416) 968 3456; website: www.torontointernationalfilmfestival.ca), the second largest festival in the world, after Cannes. A new festival center, Bell Lightbox, (website: www.festivalcenter.ca) is currently being built. The C$196 million project, a five-story podium building of 13,935 sq m (150,000sq ft), with five cinemas, over 1,300 seats, a gallery, multiple learning studios, reference library and archive, retail store and year-round ticket center, is scheduled to be completed in late 2009 or early 2010.
As far as seeing a film in Toronto goes, it is customary to buy tickets at the cinema, which means arriving early if the film is likely to sell out. Seating is always acquired on a first-come, first-serve basis. Cineplex (website: www.cineplex.com) operates the majority of Toronto's mainstream cinemas, with locations throughout the city. The Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West (tel: (416) 516 2331; website: www.bloorcinema.com), is popular for second-run, art house and more obscure international films. Cinémathèque Ontario, at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (tel: (416) 968 3456; website: www.bell.ca/cinematheque), shows a mixture of English-language and subtitled films.
Literary Notes: Toronto is home to two of the English-speaking world's most talented and well known writers, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood. Not surprisingly, their home city features directly in much of their literature. Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion (1987) follows the early history of Toronto, including the building of the Bloor Street Viaduct and the R C Harris Waterworks. Atwood's Cat's Eye (1988) also finds the city as its setting, telling the story of a woman painter returning to Toronto for a retrospective of her work, which brings on a re-examination of her own and her city's past. Other famous Torontonian writers include Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose Fall on Your Knees (1996), a story of love, abuse and incest on Canada's east coast, won the Commonwealth Prize, and Anne Michaels, whose Fugitive Pieces (1997) tells the story of an aging Holocaust survivor's life and friendships in Toronto.
The famous American author John Irving has a particular fondness for Toronto, spending much of his time in the city. His novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), features a private school for girls in Toronto, where the book's narrator is a teacher. And it was also in Toronto that a young American writer, Ernest Hemingway, got his big break - as a journalist on the Toronto Star. Toronto journalist and novelist David Gilmour won Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's (GG) fiction award, for 2005 with his A Perfect Night to Go to China. One of Canada's foremost poets, Dionne Brand, also lives in Toronto. She won the GG award for poetry in 1997 for Land to Light On.
Toronto Tours
Walking Tours
Walking tours of Toronto are available with A Taste of the World (tel: (416) 923 6813; website: www.torontowalksbikes.com). True to its name, the company offers the ‘Kensington Foodies Roots Walk', a three hour 30 minute stroll through historic Kensington Market, sampling both the sights and the local delicacies. Tours are frequently sold out - advance reservation is recommended.
Genova Tours (tel: (416) 367 0380; website: www.genovatours.com) offers a variety of year-round Toronto walking tours that cover all kinds of interests - food in St Lawrence Market, Chinatown and Little India; history at the Mount Pleasant and Necropolis Cemeteries; and star-gazing in the neighborhoods of Yorkville and Millionaire's Row.
Ebullient tour guide Bruce Bell, the official historian of the St Lawrence Market, offers walking tours of that site and many other historic locations through Bruce Bell Tours (tel: (647) 393 8687; website: www.brucebelltours.ca).
Guided tours of the city's natural heritage are available from Toronto Field Naturalists (tel: (416) 593 2656; website: www.torontofieldnaturalists.org).
There are also a variety of signposted, self-guided walks that wind through the city's many parks and green spaces. Alternatively, visitors have the option of exploring the vast labyrinth of interconnected shopping areas that underlie downtown's office towers. The 27km (16-mile) PATH network (website: www.toronto.ca/path) links shopping, services and entertainment venues between the two branches of the Yonge-University-Spadina subway, south of Dundas Street.
Boat Tours
A boat tour of the harbor is a nice sightseeing experience. Toronto Tours (tel: (416) 869 1372; website: www.torontotours.com) offers one-hour cruises of the inner harbor and out to the Toronto Islands, April to October.
Bus Tours
Grayline Tours (tel: (416) 594 3310; website: www.grayline.com) runs hop-on, hop-off tours of the city center in open-topped double-decker buses. A full circuit lasts two hours. The best places for passengers to hop on board are 123 Front Street West (corner of University Avenue) and the corner of Yonge Street and Dundas Street (visitors should call ahead, seeing as the company recommends booking at least 48 hours in advance).
Toronto Hippo Tours (tel: (416) 703 4476 or 1 877 635 5510; website: www.torontohippotours.com) offers an ‘amphibus' (amphibious bus) from May to October. Departing from 151 Front Street West (corner of Simcoe Street), the one-hour tour of the city takes in the CN Tower, the Rogers Center and Toronto City Hall before entering the water at Ontario Place for an additional half-hour tour around Toronto's harbor.
