Christmastime is here: Toronto 4

It cannot have been lost on anyone, even in faraway countries, that Christmas is coming up. 

We launched Advent season at an event called Illuminite (T’s choice). This was at Yonge and Dundas Square, which aspires to be but has never quite become a vibrant town centre. Anyway, they lit it up, had elves on stilts, dorky renditions of dorkier seasonal songs, that sort of thing. I guess the early snow put people in the mood. We even found lattes flavoured with pumpkin spice or egg nog for sale in the Eaton Centre, that temple to mammon next to which the Church of the Holy Trinity nestles, hosting its Christmas pageant and memorials to homeless people. Best of all, we could walk down Dundas to Spadina, the heart of Chinatown, for supper.

Spadina brings me to the quirky pronunciation of some Canadian place names. The main intersection of Toronto, Yonge and Bloor, contains two street names neither of which I’ve encountered anywhere else in the world. Yonge is pronounced “Young” and Bloor,  I finally learned from passing a sign on this visit, is named for this guy.

As for Spadina: climbing the Baldwin Steps to Casa Loma, Toronto’s “castle,” was something I’d also never done. You climb the steps from a main road called Spadina, from an Ojibwe word ishaspadena meaning “hill.” Now Spadina Avenue is pronounced with a long I, SpadIna, but the house at the top—now Spadina Museum—is pronounced with a long E. Something similar happens in the name of the capital of Saskatchewan, RegIna, not to be confused with RegEEna (the Queen). Which gives rise to that well-known Gershwin tune: 

“SpadEEna, SpadIna

RegEEna, RegIna—

Let’s call the whole thing off!”

There are two things to visit at the top of the ishaspadena: Spadina Museum and Casa Loma. The former is both cheaper and more interesting, though if you visit Casa Loma first you can get a discount on the museum. On this day I had the guided tour to myself. It was fascinating to see the house all decked out as it would have been in the 1920s, although most of the decor would have been antique even by then.

This easy chair has a built-in desk, drink holder, recliner, and a little side door so you can get out of the chair without messing everything up. All I want for Christmas!

Casa Loma was designed as a grand residence ready to receive royalty (the Windsor Room). But I’m not sure it ever really did. Bizarrely, on the third floor (servants’ quarters), you’ll find the museum of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, who served from World War I to Afghanistan.

The rest of the “castle” was decorated for the holidays in a Nutcracker theme. With the gently flurrying snow we’d been having, it was very Christmasy.

Yep, that's an acrobat.

Another thing you may have noticed, wherever you are living, is the up and down weather patterns. We’ve had snow and well below freezing temperatures in Toronto even before the winter solstice, but then we’ve also had surprisingly mild days, most of those gray if not damp. One day that turned out to be both mild and sunny was the day Marie-Josée led about 25 of us on a Bruce Trail hike. The Bruce Trail extends 890 km to Tobermory, Ontario, but we only did one of the first bits, along the Niagara Escarpment from Queenston. It was a very muddy day.

Our leader next to a Cold War-era radio tower--to warn of incoming Soviet attack

I always think of Marie-Josée as an exceptionally snappy dresser so this was the most casual I’d ever seen her. For my part, I didn’t need my rain pants for rain or cold wind, but it was great to be able to peel off that mud at the end of the day!

We were introduced to the rest of her group as “from the U.K.” When someone asked me about that at the lunch break, it became apparent that my accent is not from the U.K. “Oh yeah, you sound Canadian,” she said. “In fact, like you’re from Toronto!” That made me smile.

The Drake Hotel

That was a highlight, but we can take some nice sunny walks just from our neighborhood, as well. One day we just meandered down [West] Queen Street West as far as a roti shop—a favourite Toronto food. The roti seller asked us if we were sure we wanted medium, but there were three hotter levels than medium listed, so we thought, why not? Turns out he was right: medium was as hot as I ever want to eat!

I have an inordinate affection for public libraries, especially in Toronto. The Toronto Reference Library has long been one of my happy places, as I’ve looked at many old books that don’t circulate there, and I also love photographing the many distinctive neighbourhood libraries. 

This one is near the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. I dropped in for their annual holiday craft fair. A very jolly Native female Santa Claus kept popping out and yelling “Ho, ho, ho!” at me, which set me up for the carolers when I got back to Roncesvalles.

The Lillian H. Smith branch library is on College Street, where I began another long Advent walk. Actually I began it at the Ontario Legislative Building, Queens Park.

I’d already been there around Remembrance Day, only to find that I was there at the wrong time to see the Members of Provincial Parliament at work. That day they were having an extra long lunch break. I have never been successful on any attempt; by the time I came back in December, they were already on holiday break—until February! Can anyone work less than MPPs?

At least they got the menorah up.

Anyway, the farther west you walk on College Street, the more Old World Little Italy (and Portugal) get. 

If you make it as far as Ossington Ave., as I did, you can have “the best falafel” in Toronto, at the imaginatively named College Falafel. The Albanian proprietors make everything from scratch, including baklava and some almond cookies that looked pretty good. I was sorry to be too full for dessert!

As you can see, eating well has not been a problem here. For the most part, though, we’ve enjoyed being able to buy food and fix meals at home. T. has borrowed a slow cooker from Jay, so we don’t feel the absence of an oven. We paid a visit to the St. Lawrence Market one day and T. got some particularly tender meat there. The upstairs gallery of St. Lawrence Market was once the council chamber of city hall, and all the buildings are another good example of architecture that was almost torn down around 1970, but saved by a citizens’ group.

One of the voices that did much to empower people to save their communities like this was Jane Jacobs’s. She started with The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but transplanted to Canada because of her opposition to the Vietnam war. Here, she became a citizen and participated in the saving of Toronto from

even more expressways. There is a tribute to Jane Jacobs at 401 Richmond, a delightful heaven of galleries in what was (in the early 20th century) a lithographer’s warehouse. I found myself wandering past studios, watching people do interesting artistic things, and just wanting to stay. Oh, and they sell bagels too.

A cool way to transition from one washroom to another

At the nearby Canadian Broadcasting Company studios they were getting ready for Sounds of the Season, a day of live broadcasts and food bank collections. I passed the poinsettias and checked out some old radio and film equipment the CBC exhibits downstairs. This is all free, by the way.

Hall named for Peter Mansbridge, longtime (now retired) anchor of The National. Hear his authoritative voice: "Not boys' bridge, MAN's bridge!" 

My climatic preference, for winter anyway, is cold but clear. I much prefer the longer days (counterintuitively, Toronto is much farther south than England) and sunshine on snow to grey, rainy days, but we’ve had some of both. On one of the former, with enough wind chill to need to cover my face, I took one of my favourite walks, from the base of Roncesvalles to Mimico and over the Humber Bay Bridge.

The Sunnyside Pavilion. In the 1920s this was a popular swimming spot for Torontonians (in the summer!)

My turnaround point, in Humber Bay Park, is a memorial to those killed in the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Of the more than 300 people killed in that and a related bombing at Tokyo airport, 29 were from Mississauga, where Toronto’s Pearson airport is located. It was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. Despite or perhaps related to this, the memorial is a peaceful and beautiful place.

"Time flies, suns rise and shadows fall/ Let it pass by. Love reigns forever over all."

One of our friends asked what we’ve doing on our “vacation” in their fair city. Usually it feels like real life, not vacation, but as you can see there have been days I’ve felt like a tourist in my own city. One place I’d never made it into before was the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre. It’s a functioning theatre, run by the Ontario heritage department, but for more than five decades the upper theatre (the Winter Garden) was shut up and forgotten about. The Elgin and Winter Garden is the last remaining double-decker theatre in the world—a glowing relic of the vaudeville era.

It’s a really interesting tour, well worth $12 if you happen to be in town. I’d known the film version of the musical Chicago was filmed in Toronto (naturally) but not that it was filmed at the Elgin Theatre. As was The Shape of Water, that weird film we saw at the drive-in movies in Charters Towers, Queensland. In another Chicago twist, the seats in the Winter Garden Theatre are from the historic Biograph Theatre.

The most interesting thing about the rediscovered and painstakingly restored Winter Garden Theatre is the system of beech trunks, branches, and leaves that decorate the whole place. It surprised me that when the theatre was redecorated after sixty years, real trees were still used. I used to be a volunteer fire marshal at work, and stories were impressed upon me such as such as the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, the deadliest in history (it killed far more people than died in the Air India bombing). But it was only a few years ago that the Winter Garden Theatre was finally redecorated with fake leaves, less of a fire hazard. 

My favourite moment of the tour, though, was down in the lobby, when I looked up and was photographing the names of various artists and art forms engraved around the edges of the ceiling. I noticed that the name of composer Franz Liszt was misspelled. Sure enough, we were told later that there was a typo, so to speak, in the original decor and it had been faithfully restored. Could any of us spot it?

Hey, I’m a proofreader.

I mentioned in my first post how Jay told her students about different traditions: for example, her background is Hindu so she celebrates Diwali, whereas her husband’s is Catholic (as is T’s) so she also celebrates Christmas with him. And lucky she does, too, as that’s where we’re spending Christmas Eve and Day! Should be a blast.