city guide

Between the towers of Toronto’s Financial District lies a neighborhood that’s full of surprises.

When the 28-story Royal York Hotel (left) opened in 1929, it was the tallest building in the British Commonwealth. Now it’s dwarfed by the forest of towers comprising Toronto’s financial district. They house the corporate headquarters of banks, legal firms, insurance companies, stockbrokers and accounting firms—but this is also a neighborhood rich in history, architecture and anecdotes. If you’re in Toronto for business, you’ll probably stay in or nearby the district. Each tower has its own story to tell.

A logical place to start a brief walking tour is at the Fairmont Royal York. This is where author Arthur Hailey lived while researching Hotel. Today, the owners are embracing the 21st century and going green: 60,000 bees have recently taken up residence on the 14th-floor roof, steps from a flourishing 10-year-old organic herb garden maintained by the hotel’s apprentice chefs.

When the bees aren’t in their hives (known as the Honeymoon Suite, the Royal Suite and the V.I. Bee Suite), they fly off to pollinate plants in city parks and on the Toronto Islands. More than 40 herbs flourish in the garden, ranging from coriander to lemongrass to curry leaves. Along with providing award-winning honey, the roof is a resource for fresh ingredients for hotel cuisine. The most recent addition? Grape vines, so someday you may be able to sample the Royal York’s own rooftop wine.



A golden city

The streets of Toronto’s financial district aren’t paved with gold, but two towers next door to the Royal York are coated with it. The 14,000 windows of the Royal Bank Plaza glitter with more than 2,500 ounces of gold, which was baked right into the glass. That technique provided insulation, thus reducing the need for air conditioning—a process that itself has a unique twist in Toronto. More than 140 of the city’s office towers are cooled with water from the bottom of Lake Ontario via a system called Enwave. It has three pipes that stretch several miles into the lake, drawing water from its bottom into a conversion facility, where the liquid’s coolness is transferred to an alternative air-conditioning system that services buildings in the financial district and nearby, including the Air Canada Centre, home of the Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Step across Bay Street, and you’ll find one of the most photographed sites in the city: the entrance to Brookfield Place, a stunning six-story, cathedral-like glass hall known as the Allen Lambert Galleria. Inside is a preserved 1945 bank facade, the popular market-style Richtree Restaurant (a good light meal stop with free Wi-Fi) and a ROOTS casualwear store. Downstairs is the entrance to Canada’s Hockey Hall of Fame, located in a former branch of the Bank of Montreal, built in 1855. It’s home to the finest collection of hockey artifacts from around the world, including the Stanley Cup—the oldest professional athletic award in North America and one of the few major athletic trophies you can actually touch. The original Lord Stanley’s Cup bowl, created in 1892, can be seen in the refurbished bank vault.

Whether the mercury is melting or a winter storm has blown in, you can work your way between the towers without having to step outside using the city’s underground PATH system (toronto.ca/path). This labyrinth of walkways spreads out over 16 miles and links 1,100 stores, shops and restaurants, 50 office towers, seven hotels and five subway stations. It’s quite a maze to navigate, but ceiling signs indicate the building you’re under, hotels provide maps, and color-coded arrows guide the way. The Guinness Book of World Records has called this the world’s largest underground shopping complex. On weekdays, it’s a destination, but you can expect some peace and quiet after the shops have closed for the evening or weekend.

Room with a view

You can also follow PATH into the Toronto Dominion Bank Centre complex, whose six black buildings were designed by master architect Mies van der Rohe. For a quiet drink, ride up to the 54th floor of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower to Canoe, one of the city’s top restaurants, known for its Canadian cuisine and spectacular view. Perch yourself at the window bar for a breathtaking view to the south, including the Toronto Islands. At the east end of the islands is the largest urban, car-free community in North America. In the early 1900s, this was the site of Toronto’s ballpark, where 19-year-old Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run in 1914. Legend has it the ball is still in the lake.

The northwest corner of Bay and King Streets was originally home to the 22-story Toronto Star building, erected in 1929. As a boy, Joe Shuster, the eventual co-creator of Superman, worked for the namesake paper. Then his family moved to Cleveland, which didn’t have skyscrapers at the time—so legend has it that the early Toronto skyline inspired Shuster’s design for Metropolis. In 1971, the Star building was demolished (the newspaper moved), and in 1975, First Canadian Place rose on this site as Canada’s tallest skyscraper. Finished with 600-ton slabs of Italian white marble, it houses the headquarters of the Bank of Montreal and the Toronto Board of Trade. In 2008, Canadian rocker Burton Cummings, of The Guess Who fame (with hits like American Woman) chose this venue to launch his latest album, Above The Ground, with a free concert in the lobby.

On the east side of Bay sits Scotia Plaza. This complex has the distinction of employing its own art curator. Enter at 40 King West for a glance at the 130-foot atrium, with its 15-story, full-scale mural of a waterfall in Johnson Canyon, Alberta. When it was created by Alberta artist Derek Besant in 1989, it was the largest indoor mural in Canada. Exit, face east and look up: carving through the city like a giant white knife blade is One King West, the world’s narrowest residential tower. Most towers rise four to six feet for every foot of width at the base—this one rises 11 feet. The base of the 51-story condo/hotel structure is the 1914 original head office of the Dominion Bank of Canada, complete with meeting spaces in the Grand Banking Hall and the huge basement bank vault.

As you reach Queen Street, to your right will be the Bay, Canada’s largest department store. Originally incorporated as the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, it is the oldest corporation in North America. Back in our country’s fur-trading days, it owned a swath of land larger than Europe, known as Rupert’s Land. It was recently sold to the U.S. firm NRDC Equity Partners, which owns Lord & Taylor.

Beam me up, Scotty


Now glance across Queen Street to the north, and you’ll see the glass dome atrium of the 285-store Eaton Centre. West of Bay Street is Toronto’s iconic city hall (above), with its two towers surrounding a Council Chambers that looks like a spaceship. (This city hall has the distinction of being the one such building ever to appear in Star Trek.) Its courtyard, Nathan Phillips Square, is a popular venue for festivals, markets, concerts and such.

For a bird’s-eye view, book yourself into a north-side room at the Sheraton Centre. From here, you can also see the city’s barometer: the weather beacon atop the Canada Life Building. It shines red for rain and white for snow, and its lights run up or down to indicate a change in temperature. It’s updated four times a day with information from Environment Canada.

A tour of Toronto’s towers wouldn’t be complete without stopping at the tower of Toronto, the iconic CN Tower (left). In 2007, its owners introduced a programmable, energy-efficient LED lighting system that can produce millions of colors and effects. The tower is also one of about 70 in the city that participate in FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program), which means dimming exterior lighting during spring and fall bird migration periods. The Toronto-based program, founded in 1993, wants to get its message out to office towers: Turn out your lights at night.



What to buy: A Tilley Hat

They say you can spot a Canadian around the world, just look for a Tilley Hat. More than a million of the sporty wide-brimmed hats have been purchased. A limited selection is offered in The Polar Bear, a Canadian gift store in the Sheraton Centre.

What to eat: Peameal

Check your breakfast menu for the real Canadian bacon: Peameal. Juicy, lean and not smoked, it was originally soaked in brine and then rolled in ground yellow peas—hence its name. Today, it’s covered in cornmeal.

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For additional information, read our earlier guide to the city of Toronto.
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Lucy Izon is a freelance writer in Toronto.