Toronto

Toronto Is the Most Culturally Diverse City on Earth and It Wears the Distinction Without Making a Fuss

Half of Toronto’s 2.9 million residents were born outside Canada. Nearly 180 languages are spoken across the Greater Toronto Area. The United Nations has cited it as the world’s most diverse city. What that means on a Saturday is a city that functions less like a single culture and more like a working confederation of neighbourhoods, each with its own food and weekend rhythm, linked by a practical streetcar system and the green edge of Lake Ontario along the south.

On a single afternoon you can have dim sum in one Chinatown, peameal bacon at St Lawrence Market, Korean BBQ on Bloor Street, Jamaican patties in Little Jamaica, and Ethiopian injera on the Danforth – all within a ten-kilometre radius. Toronto does not sell this as a tourism product. It simply is it, and visitors who figure that out early have a better trip than those who spend their time at the CN Tower and the waterfront.

The Essential Sights

The CN Tower stood as the world’s tallest free-standing structure from 1976 until 2007 at 553 metres. The glass-floor observation level, the outdoor Sky Terrace, and for the genuinely committed, the EdgeWalk – a hands-free harness walk around the 116th-floor exterior ring, 356 metres above the street – are all available. Rogers Centre, the retractable-roof stadium directly below the tower, is home to the Blue Jays; a summer game with a cold Canadian beer is an uncomplicated pleasure.

The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada’s largest museum: Daniel Libeskind’s 2007 crystal extension grafted onto a 1912 Beaux-Arts building, with world cultures, dinosaur galleries, reconstructed Chinese imperial tombs, and a bat cave. The Art Gallery of Ontario has Frank Gehry’s 2008 redesign and the strongest collection of Canadian art anywhere: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven painters, whose northern Ontario landscapes defined what “Canadian” meant visually for most of the 20th century.

St Lawrence Market has operated since 1803. National Geographic called it one of the world’s best food markets. The peameal bacon sandwich from Carousel Bakery is the single most essential food purchase in Toronto.

The Toronto Islands are fifteen minutes by ferry from the foot of Bay Street. The view back at the city skyline from the water is the photograph everyone takes, but it genuinely earns it.

Neighbourhoods

Kensington Market: a bohemian quarter of 19th-century houses turned vintage shops, global cafes, and taquerias, pedestrian-only on the last Sunday of each summer month. The Distillery District occupies 47 red-brick Victorian industrial buildings from a former whisky distillery. Greektown on the Danforth for outdoor terraces. Little Portugal, Little Jamaica, Koreatown, and Little India – each a serious eating neighbourhood worth an afternoon.

Practical Notes

The TTC subway, streetcar, and bus system covers the city; a PRESTO card or contactless bank card works throughout. The UP Express train from Pearson Airport to Union Station takes 25 minutes. June through September is the most sociable time; TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in early September brings the city’s most concentrated cultural energy of the year. Winter is genuinely cold – minus 15 degrees Celsius is normal, and Lake Ontario winds make it feel colder. The city functions through it without much complaint.

Day trips: Niagara Falls is 90 minutes by GO Transit and regional bus, essential. Stratford, two hours away, runs the Shakespeare Festival from April through October. Algonquin Provincial Park, three hours north, is Ontario’s benchmark wilderness destination for canoeing and autumn foliage.