Toronto: the next-door neighbor with a Heart of Gold

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Because this is our year of visiting North America, we came to Toronto in June for a two-month visit.  We lucked into a comfortable 1-plus bedroom apartment with a balcony view of Lake Ontario, just across from Queen’s Quay. (One-plus means we have a separate small office room). From the moment our VRBO hosts greeted us and helped carry our bags, we knew we were in a friendly place.

Toronto is a bustling city that sits on Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes.  The greater metro area has over 6 million residents.  It is the largest city in Canada, and the 4th largest city in North America.  It is an international center of finance, and has a strong arts presence hosting television & film production and the annual Toronto film festival.

It is proud of its multi-cultural demographics, with large populations of people from all over the world.  Since the 1970’s and 1980’s, notable large diaspora populations include immigrants from India, the Caribbean, Africa, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Before that, in the 50’s and 60’s immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Europe likewise settled here.   Toronto is located in the province of Ontario in Canada, which is a Commonwealth country with a British heritage.  After the American Revolution, it was a place where British Loyalists settled, and just before & after the American Civil War, it similarly became a settlement for many African-Americans escaping slavery.   Before that, French explorers navigated the waterways, trapping animals for fur and fishing and hunting.  Toronto was first populated by indigenous nations more than 4,000 years ago, including Mohawk (which lent the name “Tkronto”, meaning the place where trees stand in the water), Ojibwe, Huron, and others.  The standing sticks reference fishing traps (weirs) at the narrows of Lake Simcoe, north of the city.  Archeologists date some of those ancient weirs back 5,000 years.   The region of what is now Toronto was a portage between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron by way of several other large lakes. Thus, it has long been a meeting place for many cultures. You can read about the weirs here.

When you speak to Toronto residents, they seem proud of this multicultural mix. I wondered how the city came to be a comfortable spot for the mixing of diverse cultures, and whether that mixing is as genuine as it appears to be.  I came across a book chapter from 2022 describing the intentional policy in Canada to embrace multiculturalism by helping immigrant populations retain their distinct cultural attributes and supporting them in their communities. (See Keith Banting, Multiculturalism Policy in Canada: Conflicted and Resilient, Chapter 10 of the book Policy Success in Canada (2022).  According to Banting’s analysis, federal policies encouraging immigrant communities to celebrate their own cultures leads to their having more positive feelings of being Canadian than previous attempts to assimilate into one dominant culture.  The system is not perfect, with racial discrimination still evident in income and employment opportunities, but there are strong indications that Canada is doing better in creating a strong yet diverse citizenry than many other countries. Yesterday morning, I went across the street and saw such a diverse mix of people!

There are interesting neighborhoods everywhere. Below are some photos from the Kensington Market neighborhood.

We see this multicultural perspective everywhere.  We noticed immediately how many different languages we hear while walking in the downtown area.  Just yesterday, while walking about, we passed groups of older Chinese residents speaking in Chinese, and a family speaking what sounded like a French patois, probably Caribbean. A grocery clerk spoke with an East-Indian accent. We see many different ethnicities represented in restaurants, groceries, and people’s attire. 

Here are some of the things we have loved about being in this city.

Walkability

Downtown Toronto is a walk-friendly environment.  We have walked in every direction, along the waterfront, into the banking district, into the theater district, to St. Lawrence Market, to Dundas Square, and to the art museum in Chinatown.  We have walked on wide sidewalks, with clearly marked crossings.  We have a half-dozen groceries within a 4-5 block radius, including one across the street that features great produce and good food selections. There are coffee shops, malls, food courts, restaurants, and retail stores everywhere.  There are also clearly marked bicycle paths everywhere, and public transit.  There is a lot of public art. We see lots of people walking dogs, and the dogs look well-cared for.  And, it is pretty flat.  

Good food

We’ve had really good food.  Our absolute favorite restaurant is called Khazana. We have returned several times as well as ordering from there on UberEats.  Its chef, Sanjeev Kapoor, is a celebrity in India, and we’ve never tasted such smooth, complex spices and well-cooked ingredients. The service is impeccable.

We’ve had good steak, Thai food, pizza, burgers, gyros, Korean BBQ, french croissants, Mexican, and the best sushi outside of Japan at Spring Sushi in Dundas Square and also at Oyshi Sushi on Queens Quay near Yonge.  We’ve sampled several cafes and coffee shops, usually featuring Italian-style espresso and a lovely drink called a London Fog, which is Earl Grey tea steamed and foamed with milk and a little lavender.  We had a wonderful breakfast at Evviva on Lower Simcoe and also at Cafe Landwer on Front Street near the wonderful fountain of dogs! Our favorite ice cream was at Ice Creamology down the street on Queens Quay.

At the St. Lawrence Market, we’ve eaten good Italian eggplant sandwiches, crepes, seafood chowder, and bisque. We even bought some caviar there, but were underwhelmed by that.  We bought pre-made kebabs to cook at home, and amazing steaks. Both at the market and at Farm Boy, a grocery across the street, we have acquired excellent fruit and vegetables.  Rather than having a signature style of cooking, Toronto’s style seems to be its eclectic mix of different cuisines.  There is poutine – a classically-authentic French-voyageur inspired concoction you see everywhere here.  Poutine is basically a big plate of fries and cheese curds covered in hot brown gravy.  It originated in the neighboring province of Quebec, but it is on almost every menu we’ve seen Toronto.  Poutine here is usually offered with variations on the original – with meat or seafood, for example, or with the “gravy” being replaced by something different - Caribbean jerk sauce, or Indian curry, or salsa, for example.  We can see where it might have been beloved by teenagers or people who worked long, hard hours in the outdoors, but we found it too heavy and rich for our taste.  That being said, we’ve eaten well in Toronto.  

The waterfront

Toronto sits on Lake Ontario, and it has a long waterfront.  You can walk or bike for miles alongside the water.  We’ve walked a fair way in both directions.  About a half mile West of our apartment is the Toronto Music Garden, designed by Yo-Yo Ma and others as the first in a series of videos he produced about the Bach cello suites.  Our daughter plays the cello, and she urged us to visit.  It is a lovely series of garden spaces, one for each movement of the suite – Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Menuettes, & Gigue.  There are many public sculptures, public benches, restaurants, and cafes along the waterfront.  Boats for sight-seeing and a dinner cruise leave from there. We took a sunset dinner cruise and it was a wonderful way to see the city from the water, going around the nearby islands.

Events and festivals

We’re staying on Queen’s Quay.  When we sit on our balcony, we often hear music events or see gatherings of people.  We see lots of events advertised – salsa festival, foodalicious, jazz festival, etc.  

The biggest event while we’ve been here was the Pride parade.  There were actually a number of Pride events during June, culminating in the large parade.  The city was decked out with Pride flags everywhere.  I had a front-row stance and got a great view of the parade.  A few things struck me: first, how many diaspora groups were represented.  Second, the Mayor and her administration were in the parade.  Third, there was a lot of joy and welcoming from participants and spectators.

Art

As I mentioned before, there is a lot of public art all around the city.  We also went to the Art Gallery of Toronto, which has a solid collection of Indigenous, European, and Canadian art.  We saw two special exhibits, one on Modernism and one on video art.  We enjoyed the day.  We also went to a Banksy exhibit.  There, we learned a lot about Banksy’s art and his point of view.  I had no idea there was so much of Banksy's art you could see that was NOT on buildings! 

Friendly people

Here in Toronto, we’ve found friendly, interesting people with big hearts.  We had a great meal with Cooley Law alumna Janelle Benjamin, CEO of All Things Equitable, a DEI consulting firm. Her family is part of the Caribbean diaspora in Toronto, her parents settling here in the 1970’s.  We enjoyed the company of friends Mary Ross-Hendriks and John Hendriks, life-long residents of this area.  Mary was an adjunct with Cooley Law School’s foreign study program in Toronto, and a frequent guest speaker in a class on Multicultural Lawyering.  Her family is part of the British diaspora, with Loyalist and Welsh ancestry. We even saw a former classmate of mine from my early school days. We had not seen each other for 40 years (not Canadian but here on holiday)!

People we didn't know - from the staff at the condo who dispense our Amazon packages to waiters and people we run into on the elevator - have also been friendly. Not as chatty as people in Fiji or New Zealand, Toronto folks are good for a “hello, how are you?” in the elevator nonetheless.  This is not a place where strangers don’t make eye contact or converse.  I like that. When we talk to people for any length of time, they express concern for the ills of the United States and wish us well.  They seem a little puzzled by how we have managed to stop talking to each other in the U.S., and can’t seem to create a functional political or social system. But this concern is very good-natured and well-meaning. They genuinely wish us well. They are concerned and well-intentioned neighbors to their friend south of the border.

The weather (at least in summer)

Summer in Toronto has some pretty nice weather.  It seems to mostly hover between the low to mid 70sF, with occasional dips into the high 60’s or low 80’s.  One week it was 90F for a couple of days – a heat wave.  It’s rained a fair bit, but mostly off and on, and not too hard (but for one memorable day, where it rained buckets, water was shooting in spouts from the drains, and the entire CBD lost power, including in our building).  Mostly, we’ve had what feels like pretty perfect temperatures to us.  But, we know in the winter it gets pretty cold, so we’re glad we’re only here in summer.

Music

Toronto is known for its music and musicians.  Gordon Lightfoot, a Toronto favorite & native of Ontario, played Massey Hall in Toronto annually for decades, choosing to live here after he made it big in California.  I sang one of his songs in my last blog post.  We went to see a musical – Tina, about legend Tina Turner – in the theater district. The singing and acting was terrific. We often hear music across from our balcony, on the waterfront.  We went to a Pink Floyd “experience” - sitting under a dome, watching a lights show and listening to the “Dark Side of the Moon” album.  It was great.

Every time I mentioned to friends I was thinking of singing a song to go along with our Toronto blog post, I would get recommendations.  Gord Downie. Nelly Furtado. Feist. Joni Mitchell. K’naan. All good, solid choices, but none of their songs were especially about Toronto itself.  I went looking for a song about Toronto and its diversity, and found it in this energetic song from Lily Singh & Humble the Poet, IVIVI from 2014, (which are the Roman numerals for 416, Toronto’s longstanding area code). That song sent me into a rabbit hole about Toronto slang (for starters, you don’t say the second “t”; the city is sometimes called “the 6”, and so on.  You can read about Multicultural Toronto English here, another nod to the cultural diversity of its residents. But, I couldn’t quite see myself doing this song justice.  

Instead, I landed on singing Neil Young’s master-class in simplicity, Heart of Gold.  Young was born in Toronto in 1945, and lived here several different times in his life.  He lived in the U.S. most of his adult life but has recently returned to reside in Ontario.  Although the song hit number 1 on the charts when Young recorded it on his album Harvest in 1972, which you can hear here , he had played it live in a recorded concert at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1971.  I was in high school when the record was a hit on the radio, and when I was an exchange student in France in 1974, my host brother played it often on his guitar.  He even asked me to translate the lyrics.  I like how the song has evolved with Young’s voice as he actually gets old (mimicking the lyric, “…and I’m getting old.” You can hear him sing it in Toronto earlier this year, in May, 2024. The song is so simple it is hard to sing well. But it is beautiful, and easy to see how it climbed quickly to No. 1 on the charts when it was released.

The song resonates with our life of travel – we, too,  “cross the oceans for a heart of gold” – often finding it in the people we meet or the cultures we experience, and sometimes, in ourselves.  And, we're getting old, too!

There have been a few downsides to living in Toronto.  The traffic downtown is mostly awful, most of the time, and the couple of times we’ve taken an Uber we moved real slow.  But since we walk almost all the time, that hasn’t been a problem for us. The cost of living is on the high side.  Our apartment is about $3,000/month USD, which is the higher end of our budget (but a bit of a bargain for this location). It is a prime location with a view and a decent size, although far from the biggest place we’ve stayed. Food prices are high as well, about 50% higher than where we were staying in Michigan but on par with our stay in Louisville, Kentucky. It helps that the US dollar is strong compared to the Canadian dollar, but things are still a bit high.  Not everything is high – wine from France, for example, is a good deal here.  (except for the past weeks, where we can’t get it at all due to a liquor store strike) And, Paul says he can’t find any good snacks.  He likes certain types of junk food, and he just doesn’t find what he likes here. We've noticed that when it comes to great food, we almost always agree with what we like, but when it comes to junk food, we crave specific things from our younger days. I'm a sucker for a specific type of chocolate chip cookie, and Paul for certain potato chips and candies. It's the junk food we have a hard time finding in many of the places we've stayed. But it’s been mostly positives. 

So how do we like Toronto? On the border with the United States, we find it to be like the best neighbor (or, as they would say, neighbour) you ever had.  One who cares about your welfare, is a little concerned for your well-being, but always there to support you.  Like Americans but calmer, and more polite, and seemingly able to get along with each other.  Maybe we could learn a few things from them.  

To see Kim sing “heart of gold” click here.