There are many reasons to love Toronto. It has a diverse bar, food, arts, sports and outdoor culture that speaks to every citizen residing here. Documenting my narrative through Toronto for the last five years has allowed me to discover why I truly love this city.
There are multiple places in Toronto where I have created memories with friends and family, as well as faced heartbreak and love. There are places which have helped me grow as an individual, and have inspired and taught me many valuable lessons. Thanks to Toronto, I’ve transformed into the active, nature-loving, heritage advocate I am today. Here are just a few of the places which I credit to my personal growth.
5 Places to Visit in Toronto
1. Fika
Located in Kensington Market this lovely café and brunch locale is not only delicious but inspiring and visually appealing. Fika is my go to study café and creative thinking hub. Its façade, patio, daily inspirational messages, food, exposed brick walls and bookroom add to its thought-provoking atmosphere and make it one of the most instagramable cafés in the city.
Even though I’ve had my share of unsuccessful dates here, the staff is amazing and its wall of open books stimulate my mind. My ritual is to walk up to the book wall, pick a random novel and read a passage. Those words guide the work I do for the next few hours I spend at Fika.
2. Brookfield Place
Brookfield Place has a fusion of modern and traditional architecture. The Allen Lambert Galleria is a stellar piece of architecture with a vaulted cathedral atrium. Embedded within its modern fabric are beautiful historical structures including The Heritage Building, an old bank which was dismantled, restored, relocated and rebuilt in the galleria. The complex is a nod to Toronto’s past and is an illustration of its future and how heritage can be integrated into Toronto’s growth.
It was this complex that inspired me to begin researching Toronto’s past and encouraged me to become a heritage advocate that works to educate the public about the importance of preservation.
3. Trinity Bellwoods Park
A summer is not complete without multiple visits to Trinity Bellwoods Park. It is a place that invites artists to perform, dogs to socialize, friends to gather and lovers to picnic.
On the site of the original Trinity College, which was rebuilt at the University of Toronto, the most notable remnants of this building are its majestic gates on Queen Street West, welcoming visitors to the park.
I have experienced love, heartbreak and developed new friendships here. Its multiple festivals have encouraged me to join Toronto’s vibrant bike culture and shop local. Once I finish relaxing in the park, I take a stroll down Queen Street where my dining options vary from Italian to the best of the East Coast’s seafood scene.
4. Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Home to politicians, philanthropists and a number of other famous Canadians, Mount Pleasant Cemetery is the final resting place of those who have shaped not only Toronto, but Canada as a whole.
The cemetery is the final resting place for individuals like the retail giant Timothy Eaton and Eaton’s rival Robert Simpson, the Massey family whose legacy remains etched in multiple Toronto landmarks, and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, among others.
Who were these individuals? What were their stories? The graves provide mystery and intrigue for our past. For me, a man named Captain Fluke caught my attention. This mystery led me to learn he was a merchant, hotel and saw mill operator as well as a divisional court clerk. Why he was referred to as Captain Fluke is still a mystery.
Along with the architecture of the gravestones and mausoleums, the heartwarming inscriptions and the stunning array of trees and plants, Mount Pleasant Cemetery is anything but a creepy graveyard. I consider it a rather beautiful final home.
5. The Cameron House (and the Paradise of Toronto)
I couldn’t really articulate my love for Toronto until one night when I found myself sitting outside the Cameron House after a particularly bad date. This was the kind of date you go on because you tell yourself you should, not because you actually want to. Long story short we had nothing in common and I drank too much to get through it…which is how I wound up on the curb at Queen and Cameron without even noticing the girl smoking next to me. She took one look at me and said “let’s switch places.”
I asked her why and she pointed at the mural on the side of the Cameron House that read “This is Paradise.” She told me how her night had ended perfectly but it appeared as if I wasn’t particularly close to finding my own paradise. I smiled, switch spots with her and she continued smoking and I resumed texting, basking in the message this mural illustrated.
In that moment I understood why I loved this city and why so many flock to Toronto to call it home. It is a paradise.
Paradise to me is a place of beauty, complicated happiness (can’t have the bad, without the good) and stimulation of the mind. Of course paradise means something different to everyone and for that reason alone everything in Toronto can be considered a paradise. Little Italy, the Danforth, Chinatown..any of these culturally themed neighbourhoods may be a paradise for newcomers looking to maintain their own identity within the Canadian landscape. These places provide the beauty of familiar icons from home and the comfort of languages they recognize.
A building can be a paradise. Commerce Court North or the Art Gallery of Ontario could be paradises for lovers who had their first date, first kiss or marriage there. In Toronto, simple structures can be utopias. Everywhere and everything in this city can be a paradise.
The saying, which is painted on the Cameron House exterior, has a history behind it dating back to the 1980s when artist Tom Dean called the Cameron House home. Left homeless after being evicted, he wrote a pamphlet describing how he would go downstairs to the Cameron House bar to drink. According to the now defunct The GridTO, Dean said,
There’s a moment, some afternoons, when the sunlight filtering in from the street fills the Cameron’s front room with a soft paradisiacal light, and the wretched appear at peace. ‘This is paradise.’
He believed in the phrase so much so that he painted it on the wall of his room. Now the phrase lives on the side of Cameron House, to remind Torontonians like me, why we love this city.
