NorthWest Carrollton

So my brother is in town, together with his wife and 2 friends from my little home town in Austria. It is everybody’s first time in North America and their initiation to Toronto. Just to give you ideas of dimensions: Austria has a population of about 9 million and the country extends about 900 km from east to west while the Greater Toronto area nowadays probably has about 4 to 5 million people and Lake Ontario alone is over 300 km long. The first thing my visitors noticed was the difference in size: the size of the city, the size of the lake, the size of cars, the size of supermarkets, and even of refrigerators.

On Sunday we started off with a little driving tour of Toronto where I first took my visitors down to the lakefront by the historic Art Deco style R.C. Harris Filtration Plant. All of them love water and to have a lake as big as an ocean so close by fascinated them. After a leisurely drive on Queen Street through the quaint Beaches neighbourhood we parked the car close to the St. Lawrence Market and started our walk around.

Since my brother is a chef and always loves to purchase market-fresh food, I initially took him to the St. Lawrence Market which always has an antique sale on Sunday. The food market is actually closed on Sunday. We checked out the wares from old furniture to cameras to various knick-knacks.

Our exploration continued westwards along Front Street past historic 19th century houses and of course past the famous triangular-shaped Flatiron Building which has a mural on its west side. Approaching Yonge Street we walked past the Hockey Hall of Fame, a historic Beaux-Arts former bank building, the magnificent Royal York Hotel, built in 1929, once the largest hotel in the British Commonwealth.

One of the things that fascinated my visitors most was how old and new can coexist right next to each other: shiny skyscrapers are located right beside historic sandstone churches. Our walking tour continued past Union Station, Toronto’s impressive central railway station, built between 1914 and 1927 as a joint construction project by the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway (now the Canadian National Railway). Its monumental scale, classical detail and rational, ordered planning were hallmarks of the style. The station is massive and takes up an entire block on Front Street between York Street and Bay Street. The Great Hall of the Station is 250 ft. long and 84 ft. wide.

Our walk continued further west on Front Street past the Convention Centre to the base of the CN Tower and the entrance to the Skydome, Toronto’s multi-purpose stadium with a retractable roof, now called the Rogers Centre. We then snaked our way up through the Entertainment District to Queen Street where we admired Osgoode Hall, built in the 1830s, and now an oasis of green in the city. An ornate iron fence, built in 1867, renowned for its peculiar “cow gates,” surrounds the property and its beautiful gardens. The cow gates in particular fascinated my visitors.

Our next stop was at New City Hall and Old City Hall, opened in 1899, which racked up construction costs of more than $2.5 million at the time which caused great controversy in those days. Continuing past the Bay Department Store on Queen we passed the Metropolitan United Church, an English style cathedral dating from 1872, whose churchyard was filled with people enjoying the warm day.

Once back in the car we drove through the U of T campus, my Alma Mater and we stopped briefly to check out Hart House and Kings College. Then we headed down to Chinatown at Spadina and Dundas and my visitors marvelled at this exotic, busy market area. Our last stop on the tour was Kensington Market, a lively little neighbourhood full of food and clothing stores and restaurants where we ended up picking up fresh vegetables, dry beans, and a variety of cheeses for some of the scrumptious meals to come. My brother, the chef, marvelled at the variety of food available here, combined with the inexpensive prices a food lover’s dream.

We took our loot home where my husband was waiting for us with a big brunch to strengthen ourselves for attending a birthday party of one of my friends that had the motto of “let out your inner child”. The party was unique in that it involved such time-honoured Toronto traditions as hitting a piñada while a bunch of adults were playing with water guns, chasing one another around the house with buckets of water dropping on the combatants from the second floor.

I think our visitors had a full day, from getting a first taste of Toronto, to participating in a rather eventful birthday party, their first impressions were very positive and they were looking forward to exploring more of this exciting city.

June 29, 2006

Shortly after my arrival in Montreal, right around 1 pm, I met Carole, a licensed professional tour guide from Guidatour in the lobby of the Holiday Inn and she was going to be my local expert on a driving tour through the centre of Montreal. I had only been in Montreal once before 10 years ago, so I really needed a quick overview of the city to familiarize myself with its layout. And although Montreal’s downtown area is very compact and walkable, a driving tour would give me a great introduction to this metropolis.

From my hotel we drove south on St. Urbain Street and our first big sight was one of Montreal’s key tourist destinations: the Place d’Armes and the exquisite Basicilica of Notre Dame, Montreal’s largest and most beautiful cathedral. From there we passed by Montreal City Hall and then made our way up the Boulevard St. Laurent, also referred to as “The Main”, for generations the traditional path of successive waves of immigrants as they made their way north the port area to settle permanently in other neighbhourhoods of the city. We passed by the Hotel Godin, a former garment factory that has recently been converted into a boutique hotel, one of many revitalized historic buildings that has been turned into a modern hotel.

Prince Arthur Street further north is a pedestrian street featuring a variety of reasonably priced restaurants with outdoor patios. This area was a hotbed of hippie culture in the 1960s and today provides a great selection of family restaurants. A little further west we decided to have lunch at Chez Gautier, one of Montreal’s most well-known bistros, established in 1978. Chez Gautier’s Parisian-style décor features beautiful woodwork and a magnificent handcrafted glass dome ceiling in the bar area.

Right next to Chez Gautier and under the same ownership is la Patisserie Belge, a pastry shop offering a wide selection of beautifully designed cakes and baked goods. Carole and I sat down on the beautiful terrace where I satisfied my cravings for an authentic French onion soup as well as a salad with warm goat cheese and toast. It was a delicious light lunch that reenergized me to continue with my explorations.

Our driving tour continued with a trip further north, passing by the Parc des Ameriques, a park that celebrates the city’s Latin American immigrants, until we reached the Mont Royal neighbourhood, just to the east of famous Mont Royal. This whole area is referred to as the “Plateau”, a reasonably flat area just east of St-Denis that is subdivided into several smaller neighbourhoods. This is one of Montreal’s trendiest neighbourhoods.

West of the Plateau is Outremont neighbourhood which covers the area adjacent to the mountain. The mix of ethnic groups was evidenced by the coexistence side-by-side of a synagogue and a Chinese church. Carole pointed out that some of the best bagels can be had on Fairmont Street. Cote St. Catherine is the main boulevard of Outremont and surrounded by a variety of parks and stately homes. Outremont is one of the most desirable areas in Montreal and used to be a Francophone stronghold, while Westmount, the neighbourhood on the southwest slopes of Mont Royal, historically used to the bastion of English speakers.

We passed by the University of Montreal, one of Montreal’s four universities, two of which are geared to Anglophones and two towards Francophones. The UOM is primarily French speaking and its campus was designed by famous architect Ernest Cormier who was one of the first to introduce Montreal to the Art Deco Style. We continued on Cote des Neiges, a multi-ethnic neighbourhood of recent immigrants.

The big attraction on the northwest side of Mont Royal is Saint-Joseph’s Oratory, topped by the second largest dome in the world after St. Peter’s in Rome. The oratory was built as a result of the efforts of Brother André (1845 to 1937), a man of very humble beginnings, who used to be the doorkeeper at the Collège Notre Dame across the street. Many miracles are attributed to Brother André and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. In 1904 Brother André started construction on a small chapel on the mountain side, facing the college. This chapel became too small, so in 1917 a church with 1000 seats was built. In 1924 finally the construction of the basilica started and was finally completed more than 40 years later in 1967. St. Joseph’s Oratory is a magnificent building and one of Montreal’s major landmarks. Driving into the city from the west you can see this glorious structure for miles.

Right around the corner is the …cole Polytechnique where a deranged Marc Lepine killed 14 women in December of 1989 in what has become known the “Montreal massacre”. A permanent memorial has been erected to commemorate this infamous incident and to keep the memory of all female victims of violence alive. The Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, begun in 1855, is Montreal’s largest cemetery and holds many of the city’s most prominent citizens. More than 800,000 people are buried here and many exquisitely carved gravestones bear testimony to many prominent residents. While Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is the city’s largest French catholic cemetery, the Mount Royal Protestant Cemetery right next to it is the last resting place for many of Montreal’s most prominent Anglo residents.

Mount Royal is Montreal’s highest point at 223 m and presents a huge green space for the city dwellers. The park dates back to 1870 when local Westmount residents were concerned about deforestation on the mountain due to the cutting down of firewood. Famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstead, the creator of New York City’s Central Park and many other American public green spaces, was commissioned to design the Parc du Mont-Royal.

Our first stop in Parc Mont-Royal was at Castor Lake, an artificial lake created in 1958 in what was formerly a swamp. The lake is surrounded by meadows and trees and used as a skating rink in the winter. We then parked our car just a bit further up the mountain, right next to the Maison Smith, the last remaining former farm house on Mont Royal which today offers various exhibits and activities. The basement of this building houses a very large gabbro rock which is an example of the igneous rock that makes up Mont Royal and several of the mountains in the Monteregie region of Quebec. Contrary to popular belief, Mont Royal is not an extinct volcano but the result of magma intrusions.

After a brief hike through a forested pathway system we arrived at Montreal’s famous lookout, the Belvédère Kondiaronk (named after a Huron chief) overlooking the downtown skyscrapers. Incidentally, Montreal’s skyscrapers are not as high as those in some other cities, since according to local stipulations, none of the buildings is allowed to be higher than the mountain. The view from this lookout is astounding and I wish every city had a lookout point like that. Just beside the lookout is the Chalet du Mont Royal, a large structure built in 1932 that houses concerts and special events.

Our brief tour of Mont Royal concluded with a tour of the Westmount residential area, an independent city of about 20,000 residents fully enclosed by the City of Montreal. Westmount has long been the traditional residential area of Montreal’s Anglo-Saxon elite and many Neo-Tudor or Neo-Georgian residences attest to the wealth of this area. Greene Avenue is one of the commercial streets in the area and features many of Westmount’s trendiest shops.

Further east along Sherbrooke Street, one of Montreal’s thoroughfares, is the Golden Square Mile, once the enclave of the Canadian upper class between about the 1850s and 1930s. Most of the residents were of Scottish descent and acquired their wealth in the furtrading business. During that era about 70% of Canada’s wealth was concentrated among the residents of the Golden Square Mile. Today only a few of the Victorian houses remain and many of the buildings house retail stores. Part of the Golden Square Mile is McGill University, Montreal’s oldest university, founded in 1821 as a result of a generous donation by Scottish-born fur trader John McGill. On our way back to my hotel we also passed UQAM, the Université de Quebec à Montreal, the city’s youngest university, founded in 1979 and a thoroughly modern addition to the city.

No doubt this was a whirlwind tour, but at the same time these 3 hours were a great introduction to this fascinating city. Something I would be able to mull over during my dinner at Modavie, accompanied by a little jazz….

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What a full day we had yesterday. We had a delightful breakfast in our bed and breakfast at about 8:30 am and shared some nice conversations with a young couple from Sweden and an older couple from Holland, the hostess was participating as well. This is one of my favourite things about bed and breakfasts, usually they offer really tasty filling meals and a great conversation to go with it.

We got going at around noon and hopped off the subway just before the Brooklyn Bridge and ended up exploring the historic Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood a bit, a place with many well-preserved brownstones and expensive apartment buildings with a perfect view of downtown Manhattan. Then we started our walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, and started to soak in the vistas of the famous skyscrapers.

The Manhattan Bridge is very close to the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building is visible on the horizon. Tons of walkers and bikers were making the trekk across the bridge and the weather was pretty decent, sunny with about 16 degrees Celsius.

After the bridge we arrived at NYC City Hall which was blocked off to pedestrian traffic and there was a big congregation of media people on the front steps. Tons of people were sitting around the beautiful fountain just outside of city hall and with the blue sky, the blooming trees and the surrounding architectural arrangements this was just the perfect place to snap away with the camera. I particularly fell in love with the ornate spires of the Woolworth Building.

Then we headed further west, explored the yard of St. Paul’s Cathedral which is right across from the World Trade Center location. As a first place of refuge after the tragedy, the churchyard has many plaques commemorating the events of 911 and it took more than 2 years to clear all the debris from the yard that had fallen down with the collapse of the buildings.

We then proceeded to Ground Zero. The area is fenced off with various posters showing the history of the buildings, the events of 911, and the names of the more than 2700 victims. The tragedy of 911 is very hard to grasp and when you are right there where it happened, you remember all the horrible pictures and the even more horrible events of that fateful day, now more than 31/2 years ago. It is so hard to imagine these 2 enormous buildings collapsing, surrounded on all sides by other highrise towers, and what it must have been like that day, with people running through the streets, debris raining down, rescue workers risking their lives to help the victims. The police presence, by the way, was very strong and we weren’t sure if there was a special reason for that or if that was the case every day.

After reflecting for a while and absorbing the incomprehensible nature of that tragedy we walked south on Liberty Street into Battery Park. Lots of African entrepreneurs were around with suitcases and bags full of merchandise and it seems they were very careful not to be seen by the police. We had a beautiful view across the bay towards the statue of liberty and proceeded to our next destination – the Staten Island Ferry terminal, where our next adventure began…

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The Staten Island Ferry is a fabulous institution. It is a huge ferry that departs from a very modern, glass enclosed terminal, holds several thousand people and in just about 20 minutes whisks you over to Staten Island, very close to the Statue of Liberty, and all this for free! One thing we really noticed about New York City is that we definitely love the public transportation system. With our week long pass we have been hopping on an off subways as we please and we have found the transit system to be very efficient, pretty clean and quite safe (for the most part).

The Staten Island Ferry is a great insiders way of sneaking a peak at the Statue of Liberty since it passes pretty close by Ellis Island. Not close enough to take really great pictures with a simple digital camera like mine, but I gave it a shot anyway.

As we got off the ferry terminal on Staten Island I had a bit of a hare-brained idea: I suggested that we board one of the buses that was waiting there, just to hop on and ride around and see the island. Of course I didn’t have a bus map with me, didn’t have any literature about Staten Island, so didn’t know where we were going or what the major destinations were on the island. So we got on the #46 bus without any idea where we were going or how long it was going to take. (I guess I figured how big can the island be? Well, it’s bigger than I thought…).

But we saw a good chunk of Staten Island’s neighbourhoods and there are some pretty nice residential neighbourhoods, although I had expected a more upscale, more landscaped environment. The ethnic mix in the area seemed to be very much characterized by Blacks and Latinos, at least those were pretty much the only people getting on the bus. School had just ended so a bunch of highschool kids had gotten on with us.

Well, we rode the darn bus until the end, which ended up being a non-descript shopping mall called “West Shore Plaza”, where we ended up having a sandwich and strolling around in a sports store which had amazingly good prices on most merchandise. Then finally another bus showed up and we had to run to catch it.

It was a pretty non-eventful bus ride, people of all ages got on and off, then two young black teenage boys got on, but didn’t pay. The bus driver didn’t question them and we just continued the ride. All of a sudden, I heard a big noise, like someone fists hitting another person and all the people in the bus turned around, and the two young men were beating up a young short Latino teenager. It all took just a few seconds, right before a bus stop. The whole event was too quick for anyone else to react, although I have to say, the crowd showed compassion and shock at what had happened. The minute the bus came to a stop, the two guys jumped out and ran away.

Everybody was shocked. The Latino kid was sitting there, rumpled, stunned, not seriously hurt, but had a very pained expression on his face. After he had calmed down he explained that about 8 kids were trying to extract money form him at the bus stop, he said he didn’t have any and gave them an expired transit pass and 2 of the guys followed him onto the bus.

I have never personally witnessed public violence, so this was very shocking to me and I was glad that the kid wasn’t really hurt. But I did feel very sorry for the victim and the whole event left a bad taste in my mouth, particularly since we had had the impression that New York City had felt so clean and safe. As a matter of fact we had commented on that a number of times, of how little litter there was in the street, how few street people or hustlers there were, how there was no graffiti in the subways, and how safe it felt to be taking transit at all hours of the day. We heard that former mayor Rudy Giuliani as well as current mayor Michael Bloomberg have really been cleaning up the city, and it shows. I guess it still doesn’t prevent all violence from happening.

After our return to Manhattan we subwayed it all the way up to 103rd Street and essentially walked all the way down through Central Park, admiring all the recreational facilities and the beauty of this giant green space. Further south we strolled over to 5th Avenue and then down into the Broadway Area just north of Times Square, where we had some quick Italian food at Ray’s Pizza. The evening was pretty chilly, probably only about 12 degrees or so and past 11 we headed back home on the Q train, processing the memories of another packed day and studying the behaviour of our fellow transit riders all the way back.

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