Toronto
The city that contains multitudes — where every neighbourhood is its own country and the whole thing somehow works.
"Toronto does not have an identity so much as it has identities, plural, layered on top of each other in the most cosmopolitan way I have encountered in North America. You can eat your way around the world in a single afternoon."
— Personal notes, weekend from HalifaxA controlled experiment in urban diversity
Toronto is the most multicultural city I have visited. This is not a marketing claim — it is an observable fact of daily life. Kensington Market, a few blocks of Victorian housing turned bohemian market, sits between a Portuguese neighbourhood and a Chinatown and adjacent to the university district, and somehow this describes the whole city in microcosm. The food alone could occupy a week.
The CN Tower, which dominated the skyline for decades as the world's tallest free-standing structure, is best appreciated from a distance — from the ferry terminal across the harbour, or from the islands of Lake Ontario. Up close, the scale becomes abstract. From the observation deck, the city stretches in every direction to a horizon that is simply more city.
Preserved history and the edge of the lake
The Distillery District is Toronto's most charming quarter — a Victorian industrial complex that has been converted into galleries, restaurants, cafes, and boutiques while keeping the original cobblestone streets and brick warehouses intact. It has the quality of a film set, which is partly because it is frequently used as one, but also because Toronto seems to have decided that the most interesting thing to do with its industrial past was keep it.
The waterfront along Lake Ontario is where the city meets the water in a long boardwalk of parks, harbourfront galleries, and the ferry terminals to the Toronto Islands. The islands themselves — a short ride across the harbour — give the best view of the skyline: the CN Tower, the bank towers, the whole improbable vertical assertion of the city reflected in the water of the lake.
"Toronto is the answer to the question of what happens when you build a major city and forget to give it a chip on its shoulder. The result is a place that is calm, functional, and quietly proud — which turns out to be extremely liveable."