Memories of Toronto
Having left Toronto in 2006 after living there for decades, I have memories of it, but mostly of iconic buildings and scenes, such as....
Toronto's most famous building, the City Hall.
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Kensington Market. I had a client who lived in that community. As well, a soft-rock band I was friends with was called Kensington Market, named after that Toronto area.
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The Casa Loma, Toronto's only real castle, open for tours
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The Flatiron Building - always fascinated me.
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Osgoode Hall, home of the Province's Supreme Court and the law school I attended. It was next to the City Hall on one side and across University Avenue from the American Consulate .
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Queen's Park, the seat of the Ontario provincial government
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The Royal Alexandra Theatre - I spent many evenings there - it was a 3 minute walk from my downtown office. I watched through the window of my office a Sikorsky helicopter plant the main antenna on top of the CN Tower.
You really need to see the lush interior
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University of Toronto, one of Canada's 3 top universities. The other two are McGill University in Montreal and University of British Columbia in the Vancouver area.
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Actually, Toronto wasn't my original Home Town. I was born and grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, which is located at the far western end of Lake Ontario about 40 miles from Toronto. I got my B.A. at Hamilton's McMaster University, famed for having the first experimental nuclear reactor on a university campus in the British Commonwealth.
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Surprised you left out The Royal Ontario Museum
... and the Aga Khan Museum
Then of course there is the area known of as The Beaches.
That monstrosity in front of the museum was built in 2007, a year after I left Toronto. It makes me think of a line spoken by the police character played in the movie The Da Vinci Code by Jean Reno about the glass pyrimid in front ot The Louvre: "It is a scar on the face of Paris." I don't think the Aga Khan museum was there when I was.
Yes, there are other areas of Toronto that for me are memorable. I lived in Hogg's Hollow, a/k/a York Mills Valley, for a couple of decades - we raised our kids there back then, and I hung out a lot in Yorkville.
Chacun ses goûts et ses couleurs ...
Oui, mon ami.
All nice pictures. I think in general Americans dont know as much about Canada as they should.
18 year old Americans know what the drinking age up here is.
LOL Probably true.
I remember that being the age here.
Yes, it's most likely Canadians know a lot more about America than Americans know about Canada.
i dont think there is any doubt about that
The Flatiron Building - always fascinated me.
Interestingly, New York City also has a Flatiron Building as well.
(But I imagine you already knew that because IIRC you had said you had lived in NYC for a while.)
Also-- an area called Yorkville!
Although I have visited NYC many times during my life, starting from when I was 16 years old, I have never lived there. I did know there was a Flatiron Building in NYC, but did not know there was a Yorkville. Yorkville in Toronto was the hippie coffeehouse area in Toronto during the 60s, perhaps similar to Greenwich Village in NYC back then.
Yorkville in NYC is different-- never been a "Hippie neighbourhood". In the past the residents were mostly European immigrants, particularly Germans also Hungarians, Irish, etc. IIRC its centered around East 86th Street which used to be known for some really excellent (and reasonably priced ) German restaurants.
For a while it was also home to the pro-Nazi German American Bund!
Many famous people have lived there including Lou Gehrig, James Cagney,.. I believe even President Obama lived there for a while...
Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the NYC mayor is in Yorkville.
the people in the picture dont look like hippies to me
LOL. Those are the people who came out to SEE the hippies. The hippies are in and are running the coffee houses.
thats a pretty big crowd to gawk at hippies
Did I make a mistake about the name of the NYC hippie area during the 60s? Where is (was?) The Bitter End and Izzie Young's Folklore Center? Izzie once gave me and the girl I was with the keys to his store to run for him when he went away for a weekend. He used to live above the store. We didn't sell much more than some guitar strings, but I can still remember the cockroaches in the bathtub.
Well, okay, maybe Toronto hippies don't dress like San Francisco ones.
The confusion is because both Toronto and NYC have an area called "Yorkville". However the one in NYC isn't (and never was) a Hippie area. The one in NYC used to be mainly blue collar, immigrants from Europe and especially Germans, Eastern Europe. Its centered around the East 80's.
The area you remember that used to be the Hippie/Beatnik area is further downtown on the West side-- it was Greenwich Village (mainly between Houson St and 14th St, from the Hudson (Western) River to Broadway. That was the classic "Hip scene".
Later it continued Eastward from Broadway all the way to the East River. That is called The East Village. (After 1st Avenue there are Avenues A,B,C, and D.)
The East Village used to be mainly Hippies and Puerto Rican gangs, Lots of crime and drugs. But its become gentrified and is now considered a desirable neighbourhood.
The trend in Manhattan is for some of the worst neighbourhoods to become very trendy. For example much of Harlem used to be considered an undesirable (and in parts dangerous) neighbourhood. Now much of it is considered very desirable.
(Same for the Lower East Side)
Okay, then it WAS Greenwich Village. I actually had an elderly cousin who lived there, but he wasn't a hippie or beatnick..
Parts of that area are very nice-- brownstones, tree lined streets. Long ago rents were relatively low, so artists & poets had studios there. Parts of the area attracted hippies. also gays. (Christopher Street was famous for its gay bars.
Further East also attracted creative types as well. There was a famous bar, later turned Music venue you may have heard of: CBGB.
Christopher Street ran all the way West to the river. (At the end of Christopher Street was a bar called "Christopher's End").
Much of the gay scene of the West Village has gone just North to Chelsea.
And in those general areas there were some Off-off- Broadway shows, poetry readings etc
But now rents in most of Manhattan have really gone up. And if you see a Hippie living there they are probably wealthy hippies or have had rent stabilized apartments handed down from their parents.
Here's a really good comparison of the West Village and Chelsea:
Thanks for all the info.
You're welcome
Toronto's most famous building, the City Hall.
That picture looks familiar . . . didn't you use it in a NT Quiz you did with a series of pictures of different places and we had to guess the City or country?
Yes, you are correct.