Three Days in Toronto
Prior to my my Great Salt Lake dispatch, we had an introduction to the final of the Great Lakes, Ontario. One can’t really write a complete introduction to Lake Ontario without including lengthy content on its largest city, Toronto. It doesn’t need to be stated and yet somehow it does: Toronto is a big, dynamic, global city with approximately 3 million people living within city limits and 6.4 million in the metropolitan area.
Before Europeans arrived, indigenous peoples used the location as a shortcut between the lower and upper Great Lakes. It was relatively late, in the 1720s, that the French developed a permanent settlement in Toronto. Later, after the American Revolution, the British identified Toronto as a strategic location to maintain a presence. Early 1800s saw rapid expansion of industrial built environment on the waterfront.
For much of the 20th century, as transportation options increased, people started moving away from Toronto’s waterfront. In 1999 a coalition of stakeholders launched a new era of planning for waterfront redevelopment in a bid for the 2008 Olympics. Toronto was not awarded the games but moved forward with the plan which has revitalized some areas right on Lake Ontario.
We took a three day trip to Toronto in July 2023. Toronto is just a 4.5 hour drive from Cleveland and we headed there for four nights and three days. It was our girls’ first urban vacation and it was a perfect city for that. We stayed in an AirBnb in The Annex neighborhood near the University of Toronto and right off the famed Bloor Street lined with shops and restaurants. We traveled on foot or on the subway. We loved our itinerary which in snapshot form was:
Day 1
- Food tour in Kensington Market, which is actually a neighborhood of restaurants, food stalls, and vendors that demonstrates the tremendous ethnic diversity of the city. One could find every type of food imaginable. We loved getting to know the city through its food.
- Bata Shoe Museum: A quirky but ideally sized museum for a family visit.
- Chinatown dinner: Must share Mother’s Dumplings, which was a recommendation of our tour guide earlier in the day.
Day 2
- Royal Ontario Museum: This is Canada’s most visited museum and has a collection spanning human and natural history.
- Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada
- CN Tower: This is a touristy spot, but it offers unparalleled views of Lake Ontario and Toronto. The girls had no problem standing on the famed glass floor!
Day 3
- St. Lawrence Market and downtown
- Blue Jays game at Rogers Centre where we experienced them opening the dome to reveal the CN Tower and sky overhead.
Our one planning mistake was not leaving early enough for the ferry to the Toronto Islands on Day 3.
The Toronto Islands Park is made up of 15 small islands. They are all connected by boardwalks and walking trails; there are no cars. The Islands are a very popular recreation destination with beaches, amusement parks, biking trails, and food. Looking northward from the Islands, there is a distinct and dramatic view of Toronto’s skyline.
We arrived close to mid-day and with throngs of people waiting for the short boatride across to the islands, the ferry paused service for a lunch hour. This is very Canadian-civilized (they also had signs on every subway car detailing the Ontario Human Rights Code for Respect & Dignity) and yet it created a very crowded situation without clarity about when we would be able to get on a boat. We decided to skip the trip out and went to St. Lawrence market for lunch instead.
If we had stayed longer, and the girls were older, it would have been fun to visit more neighborhoods around the city like Queen West or The Beaches. If we’d had time to stroll Rosedale more, perhaps we would have seen famous resident actor Eugene Levy on his morning constitutional and coffee outing. That would have been fun. Those eyebrows.
