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401 Richmond
Inside an early 20th-century lithographer's warehouse, restored in 1994, the 200,000 sq foot 401 Richmond bursts forth with 130 diverse contemporary art and design galleries displaying the heartfelt works of painters, architects, photographers, printmakers, sculptors and publishers. The original floorboards creak between the glass elevator, ground-floor café, leafy courtyard and rooftop garden.
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Air Canada Centre
Guided tours of the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs (hockey) and Toronto Raptors (basketball) take you where the players go, even into the dressing room sans players. But you'll enjoy the hi-tech arena more if you can actually score tickets to a game. Tours run hourly, events permitting, highlighting remnants of the 1941 moderne Toronto Postal Delivery Building incorporated into the structure of the ACC, which opened for business in 1999.
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Allan Gardens Conservatory
The jewels of this scruffy city park are its six early-20th-century greenhouses, filled with huge palms and trees from around the world divided into arid, cool and tropical plantings. On a cold day it's a great place to warm up - check out the spiky golden barrel cacti in the arid garden and pretend you're in Death Valley. Limited free parking is available off Horticultural Ave.
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Amsterdam Brewing Co
Steam Whistle's poor relation hangs out in a seedy redbrick building under the Gardiner Expwy. But without Amsterdam, Toronto's first microbrewery (1986), the local microbrew scene would never have scaled such light-headed heights! House specials include a Dutch Amber Lager, a seasonal Spring Bock brew, a lighter Summer Wheat Beer and a British-style Nut Brown Ale. Tour reservations essential.
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Anshei Minsk Synagogue
This 1930 Russian Romanesque masterpiece will be a real gem after restoration work is complete. Sadly, the synagogue was vandalized by arson in early 2002, when thousands of holy books were damaged. Restoration is ongoing, but you may be able to sneak a peek inside if the doors are unlocked. Orthodox Jewish services are held daily, while shared Friday night kosher meals attract everyone from long-time market stalwarts to travelers and students.
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Art At 80
Across the road from 401 Richmond, this small gallery complex houses six contemporary galleries - Albert White, Leo Kamen, Moore, Ryerson, Trias and Toronto Image Works - spread over four levels. Photography and painting are the focus here.
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Art Gallery Of Ontario
The AGO's art collections are excellent and extensive - unless you have a lot of stamina, you'll need more than one trip to take it all in. This dilemma may be solved by the gallery's ongoing renovations, overseen by famed architect Frank Gehry, which continue to require the temporary closure of various wings and exhibits.
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Bata Shoe Museum
It's important in life to be well shod, a stance this museum obsesses over. Designed by famed architect Raymond Moriyama to resemble a stylized shoebox, the museum displays over 10,000 'pedi-artifacts' from around the globe, collated by Sonja Bata of Canada's famous Bata shoe family. Peruse some 19th-century French chestnut-crushing clogs, Aboriginal Canadian polar boots or famous modern pairs worn by Elton John, Indira Gandhi and Pablo Picasso.
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Black Creek Pioneer Village
Toronto's most popular historical family attraction re-creates rural life in 19th-century Ontario. Workers in period costume care for the farm animals, play fiddlin' folk music and demonstrate country crafts and skills using authentic tools and methods. Shops sell the artisans' handiwork - everything from tin lanterns to fresh bread to woven rugs. Souvenir postcards can be mailed from the old-fashioned post office.
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Campbell House
This formal Georgian mansion dating from 1822 was one of the city's first brick buildings, belonging to Chief Justice William Campbell. It's been beautifully refurbished in 19th-century style by the Advocates' Society, which uses the premises as its clubhouse. Tours are run by friendly costumed guides. In 1972 the whole house was shifted here from its original location on Adelaide St, 1.5km away - a slow-and-steady six hour voyage.
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Canada Life Building
Push through the huge doors of the megalithic stone Canada Life building and front up to the lobby desk where you can collect a weather card that explains the mysteries of the 1950s beacon on top of the building. If it's flashing white, get ready for a big dump of snow.
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Canada's Walk Of Fame
True to its nickname 'Hollywood of the North,' Toronto has its own walk of fame, with a collection of subdued red granite stars set into the concrete sidewalk beside Roy Thomson Hall. You'll see a few names you recognize (and some you wish you didn't), though not many of those honored were actually born in Toronto.
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Canadian Broadcasting Centre
Toronto's enormous Canadian Broadcasting Centre (CBC) is the headquarters for English-language public radio and TV programming across Canada. The French-language production facilities are in Montréal, which leaves the president, in a truly Canadian spirit of compromise, stranded in an executive office in Ottawa.
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Casa Loma
Literally the 'House on a Hill,' this mock medieval castle towers above The Annex on a cliff that was once the shoreline of the glacial Lake Iroquois, from which Lake Ontario derived. Climb the 27m Baldwin Steps up the slope from Spadina Ave, north of Davenport Rd, past flowering gardens and benches.
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Centreville Amusement Park
From the Centre Island ferry terminal, wander past the information booth and first-aid station to quaint Centreville. Squeezed together on a few hundred acres are an antique carousel, goofy golf course, miniature train rides and a sky gondola. Far Enough Farm zoo presents kids with plenty of opportunities to cuddle something furry and step in something sticky.
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Chum/Citytv Complex
Inside the historic industrial gothic Wellesley Building (1913), the progressive Citytv network films its foibles and broadcasts outtakes from their infamous Speakers Corner on the John St corner. Here, anyone can step inside the public video booth, drop a loonie (around C$1 ) in the slot, wait for the five-second countdown then record themselves saying or doing pretty much anything for two minutes.
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Church Of The Holy Trinity
On the west side of the Eaton Centre is the oasis-like Trinity Square, named after this welcoming Anglican church. When it opened in 1847, it was the first church in Toronto not to charge parishioners for pews, thanks to an anonymous English benefactress who was reportedly quite taken with the bishop.
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City Hall
Much-maligned City Hall was Toronto's bold leap of faith into architectural modernity. Its twin clamshell towers, flying saucer-like central structure, sexy ramps and funky '60s mosaics were completed in 1965 to Finnish architect Viljo Revell's award-winning design. An irritable Frank Lloyd Wright had called it a 'headmarker for a grave,' and in a macabre twist of fate, Revell died before construction was finished.
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Cloud Forest Conservatory
This unexpected downtown sanctuary is a steamy tropical greenhouse, crowded out with enormous jungle leaves, vines and palm trees. Built vertically as a 'modernist ruin,' it features exposed steel, a waterfall and a mural depicting the trades of construction workers. Information plaques answer the question 'What Are Rainforests?' for temperate Torontonians, distracting financial workers from their spreadsheets and sums for a few minutes.
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Cn Tower
Having recently turned 30, this funky spike remains every bit as cool and iconic as it was when it opened in 1976. Its primary function is as a radio and TV communications tower, but relieving tourists of as much cash as possible seems to be the second order of business. Sure, it's expensive, but riding the great glass elevators up the highest freestanding structure (553m) in the world is one of those things in life you just have to do.
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David Dunlap Observatory
Just north of the Toronto city limits, the David Dunlap Observatory,a major player in the cut-throat world of international stargazing, presents introductory talks on modern astronomy, followed by interplanetary voyeurism through Canada's biggest optical telescope (the reflector measures 1.9m). If the skies are clear, tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis (cash only). Kids under seven years old aren't permitted for safety reasons.
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Design Exchange
The streamlined moderne Design Exchange building served as the original Toronto Stock Exchange from 1937, its grand opening pushing Toronto ahead of Montréal as Canada's financial centre. Check out the art deco stone friezes and the medallions on the stainless steel doors detailing stern-faced communist pick-wielders and jack-hammer operators.
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Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre
A restored masterpiece, the Elgin & Winter Garden is the world's last operating double-decker theatre. Built in 1913, the stunning Winter Garden was built as the flagship for a vaudeville chain that never really took off, while the downstairs Elgin theatre was converted into a movie house in the 1920s.
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Enoch Turner Schoolhouse
Dating from 1848, this restored one-room classroom is where local kids are shown what the good ol' days were like. Wealthy brewer Enoch Turner opened it as Toronto's first free school so poor children could learn the three Rs. Gothic church-style windows emphasize the seriousness of it all. Visitors are only allowed inside when school tours aren't scheduled.
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Exhibition Place
Each year these historic grounds are revived for their original purpose: the Canadian National Exhibition. During 'The Ex' millions of visitors enjoy carnival rides, lumberjack competitions and more good, honest, homegrown fun than a Sunday School picnic in June. Presiding over the main entry to the grounds is the beaux-arts Princes' Gate - one of the few buildings in Toronto that will make you stop and say, 'Wow!'.
