Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507070092
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: TORONTO LENGTH: Long
Do the landmarks. The CN Tower may look like just another waterfront needle with a revolving restaurant on top, but it is 1,815 feet tall. Yonge Street is a largely unremarkable urban artery lined mostly by standard-issue 20th-century architecture, but it does reach more than 1,100 miles into the hinterlands of the Canadian north. And SkyDome Stadium does feature that famed retractable dome, a built-in hotel with rooms overlooking the playing field, an on-site Hard Rock Cafe and tenants who frequently win the World Series.
See a show. The theater district may not remind anyone of New York's Broadway or London's West End (too calm and hygienic) but the volume and quality of productions far surpass those of most North American cities, thanks in part to the high-profile support of local retailer and impresario ``Honest Ed'' Mirvish, who headed the refurbishment of the historic Royal Alexandra Theatre. On the day I arrived, ``The Who's Tommy,'' ``Phantom of the Opera,'' ``Miss Saigon,'' ``Show Boat,'' ``Crazy for You,'' ``Forever Plaid'' and ``The Mousetrap'' were all running, along with a wide variety of smaller productions.
Shop. Bloor-Yorkville, the hippie neighborhood that harbored Canadian folk singers such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot in the late 1960s, has gone upscale and now houses some of the most exclusive shops in the city and the country, along with the high-end Four Seasons and Inter-Continental hotels. Closer to the lake, The Hudson's Bay Co. - yes, the same outfit that set out to lead the European settlement of Canada 325 years ago - has metamorphosed from pelt-peddling into a nationwide department-store chain, which has a retail operation covering a city block at Yonge and Queen streets. Its competition, Eaton's, anchors the 300-store, 17-screen Eaton Centre underground mall a few blocks away at Yonge and Dundas. (Toronto winters being what they are, indoor malls lie beneath most of the major office buildings in town.)
Make a day trip to Niagara Falls. The falls, which roar on the border between Canada and New York state, are about a 90-minute drive around the west end of Lake Ontario. You can watch the water from a tunnel beneath the falls, a tower above them, from a boat, a cable car or a helicopter.
Admire old buildings and open spaces. Nineteenth-century architecture peeks out here and there between glass-walled skyscrapers. The University of Toronto, with more than 150 acres in the middle of the city, includes several handsome stone buildings from the last century. Nearby on University Avenue stand the Province of Ontario's looming sandstone Parliament buildings. Several blocks south and east, at Queen and Bay streets, stands the old 1899 City Hall. Nearby, there's the tall spire of St. James Cathedral. And at Church, Front and Wellington streets, a block from the St. Lawrence Market, stands possibly the most-photographed edifice in Toronto, the 1892 Gooderham Building (better known among locals as ``the flatiron building''), constructed with three sides to accommodate the confluence of three major streets. For greenery there are the 400-plus acre High Park on the west end of town and the Toronto Islands, which lie a short ferry ride from the unfortunately generic Harbourfront's shops and restaurants.
Stargaze. It's cheaper to film in Toronto than in Los Angeles or New York, and many U.S. movie productions land here. Whoopi Goldberg and Peter Ustinov were each said to be working in town during my visit, and at least half a dozen other less-recognizable Hollywood folk were in town. I know this because they sat at the next table during my dinner at Lotus, conversing loudly and coarsely enough about their friends in the industry to appall just about all the rest of us in the rather small dining room.
Go clubbing. A good part of my Toronto Saturday night was spent at the Bovine Sex Club, one of half a dozen popular bars on Queen Street West, which seems to get edgier the farther west you go. For a less edgy after-dinner-drinks experience, one can retreat to the panoramic Roof Lounge at the Park Plaza Hotel in Bloor-Yorkville, or to La Serre lounge at the Four Seasons across the street, where the house specialty is martinis in at least six flavors.
Though the city has long had a reputation for tame night life, the boldest travelers will discover that the night doesn't necessarily end when the bars close at the mandated 1 a.m. Soon after that hour arrived on my big night out, a genial, black-clad Bovine Sex Club regular named Glenn Hughes (``I'm Norm,'' he said, explaining his role at the bar via sitcom metaphor) promised an adventure to me and my party of half a dozen out-of-towners. Then he led us down a deserted street, across an empty lot and through a dark door into a ``booze can'' - that is, an after-hours club.
In the space of a couple of large garages, about 150 young people of various sizes, shapes and colors talked, smoked, sized each other up and occasionally danced. The beer prices were reasonable. And once again, the amity was unfailing. As I remember, the conversations touched upon socialism, local politics, the media and entrepreneurial investment strategies (well, a little). All of which makes me wonder: In a city with these social dynamics, who needs a fully retractable domed roof?
by CNB