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 vibrant, appealing 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 postwar 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 whose citizens keep a
wary eye on both their politicians and the developers.
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 free-standing structure. Next door 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
and the replica of Fort York , the colonial
settlement where Toronto began, all vie for the visitor's
attention.
Toronto's sights illustrate different
facets of the city, but in no way do they crystallize 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
