Spring

Spring is a rather weird season in Toronto.  Weather wise, the snow is starting to melt and while floods can get into the city from time to time, the receding layers of white can be beautiful for photography.  The warming weather combined with the regular breezes from Lake Ontario can create heavenly weather for those that enjoy weather ranges between 5 and 15 Celsius and breezy conditions.

In terms of the attractions, all of the major city attractions are available around the calendar, so you’d be able to see them regardless of when you choose to travel.  However, special events at places like The Canadian National Exhibition usually don’t start until the summer, so if you’re visiting the city in the hopes of going to a lot of events, this is not the best season to do that.

Summer

In my rather humble opinion, Summer has the worst weather of all four seasons in Toronto.  Of course, I’m partial to cold weather and vacationing in a tropical paradise isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.  If you’re partial to warm weather, then Summer is a great time to visit Toronto because the moderating influence of the nearby lake creates temperature ranges that frequently break 25 Degrees Celsius.

Summer is also the high period of tourism in the city, which means that all of the major and minor attractions will be in full swing.  The baseball season is well underway by the time summer comes and the football season is not too far off.  There’s usually extra public transit service in anticipation of higher traveller numbers, but by the same token finding transportation to and accommodation in the city can be harder and end up costing a lot more money.

Fall

Fall is a lot like Spring, except without the great view of melting snow.  Towards the end of Fall however, snow will start to fall on the ground and provide a wholly different set of photographic opportunities.  The weather ranges are about the same as they are for spring, although you can expect more wind in the Fall months.

Fall is a great time to visit Toronto if you’re looking for deals, because it is right after all of the Summer tourism peaks have passed.  Attractions are looking for people to sustain themselves and many airline and hotel companies are doing the same thing.  Rates in a lot of the city’s hotels tend to fall during this period and many of the attractions are silent enough that you can enjoy them alone.  For the various parks, water bodies and beautiful religious structures in the city, this can really make all the difference in your overall experience.

Winter

As a Canadian for the last two decades, I’ve really developed an affinity for cold weather that makes me prefer winter over all of the other seasons.  In terms of weather, you can often expect conditions that are below freezing, with a wind chill factor that can often make temperatures seem like they’re 20 to 25 below zero on the Celsius scale.

The major attractions are all still open, although the number of events that tend to be hosted during this time dips slightly.  However, if you’re a big fan of photography, then getting the chance to take pictures of all of Toronto’s most beautiful buildings when they’re covered by snow might definitely be worth the colder weather.

As I said in the introduction, visiting Toronto is ultimately a personal choice.  There are good points and bad points in visiting the city at different points during the year, but aside from personal opinion there is really no season that is better than the others.

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Hot Dogs and Meal Trucks, Oh My! - While no fast food option is particularly good when it comes to getting a good and nutritious meal, there are certainly ways to save time while improving on going to a fast food restaurant.  This post discusses some options that you can pursue along that road.

The Toronto Traveler Celebrates World Cocktail Week – Have you ever had a Toronto Cocktail?  How about the fictitious, yet hilarious Toronto Toddy?  Check out recipes for both in this post!

The Toronto Traveler’s Submission to the b5media Travel & Culture Theme Day – Take Toronto’s best known landmark and combine it with a well placed ambulance in order to get a picture that captions itself, no editing needed!

Happy Victoria Day from The Toronto Traveler – Victoria Day’s a very important holiday in Canada, so naturally no post about the City of Toronto would be complete without an acknowledgement of this great holiday!

Start off your day with Free Pancakes in Toronto – Pancakes are delicious and posts about them are fun to read

Well, the above five posts certainly represent my most memorable experiences with The Toronto Traveler in May.  What about you?  Do you agree with the above choices?  Disagree with them?  Have other suggestions that you’d like to put forward?  Feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you liked about this month and what you’d like to see moving forward into June.  The more feedback I get, the better I can make the blog for my readers.

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Pancakes are most definitely wonderful things.  Whenever I have a bit of extra time in the morning I love making them just because getting the chance to sit down and devour them is so amazing.

Whether you take your pancakes plain or with syrup and butter however, you can start the day off right with a Free Pancake Breakfast courtesy of the City of Toronto!

Starting at 8:30 in the morning on May 26th, the City of Toronto will be holding the 19th Annual Pancake Breakfast.  It started off as an event to promote the use of environmentally friendly means to get to work, but it has since become much more than that.  They maintain the event on a Monday however in order to allow people to start their work week off in a fun way, but tourists are invited as well!

Breakfast will be served at Nathan Phillips Square which is right in front of City Hall.  It will go until one in the morning, so even if you don’t have time to stop in for breakfast, you can stop in for a delicious late night snack on your way back home.

Not only will pancakes be served, but there will also be fair-trade coffee created organically, croissants, fruit and the condiments to go along with each food or drink item.  All of the plates and utensils will be fully biodegradable, allowing you to eat to your heart’s content without having to worry about how to dispose of the items afterward.

At the same time as the breakfast is going on, there will be an Open Air Fair for people to take in, where you can meet a number of the more environmentally minded people in the local community.  Overall, it promises to be a fun event.  And hey, getting free stuff is always nice!

Photo Credit: Flickr

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

I was looking for a change of pace for The Toronto Traveler, since I’ve been posting a lot of long descriptions of various excellent restaurants, nightclubs and other establishments in the city as of late.  Since those posts have been received so well, I’ve decided to try and branch out a bit to see what else can be blogged about in Toronto and I’ve come up with an idea that might be good.

May 21st is a day that has seen a lot of history in the City of Toronto, so let me acquaint you with just a few of the things that have happened in and around the city on this day.

May 21, 1821: William Allan, a member of the colonial elite, was given a charter for the Bank of Upper Canada and a decade-long monopoly on the production of currency.  The Bank of Upper Canada Building is one of the oldest buildings in Toronto and still exists today, having been declared a national historic site.

May 21, 1871: Alexander Muir’s crowning achievement, The Maple Leaf Forever, has its first public recital.  It has since become one of the most famous songs celebrating Canada ever created, arguably second to the national anthem in popularity.

May 21, 1965: Ontario’s current flag becomes the official flag of Ontario and is displayed in the Toronto parliament buildings for the first time.

May 21, 1986: Keith Alexander, the President of Jetco Manufacturing Limited, is convicted of the crime of dumping toxic materials into the sewers of the city.  His conviction represents the first time that a corporate executive was sent to jail in Canada for endangering the general public.

May 21, 2008: The Toronto Traveler blogs about this day in history

So, there you have it.  Five different May 21s in history…well okay four, I’ll stop tooting my own horn for now.  Four different May 21s in history, each one bearing witness to an important event in the history of Toronto.

What do you think?  Would this enhance your understand and appreciation for the city, or is it something that is better left up to other blogs about Toronto?  Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts – I welcome all feedback and since I try to tailor what I write to the interests of the people reading, I invite everyone to leave at least a short comment in order to state their thoughts.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

The City of Toronto is a very diverse place and even when you are not at one of the major tourist attractions, you have the chance to see something spectacular.  If you’re interested in a way to tour the city as us locals see it, then I’ve come with a way that you might be able to do that for a very reasonable price.

I call it touring the city on the TTC.  All you have to do is get on a bus or streetcar route that goes by a number of places that you want to see and then either stay on the vehicle the whole time (paying just $2.75 for your trip) or get off at various intervals to see different things, getting back on the next bus or streetcar when you feel like leaving.  Because a day pass on the TTC is $9, you’ll never actually end up paying for more than 4 trips, so this is a great way to save some money if you really want to get down into the cultural underpinnings of the city that prop up the great tourism industry it enjoys.

The 506 Streetcar

Route 506 is a streetcar route known colloquially as the Carlton Streetcar.  While TTC copyright prevents me from posting a route map of the streetcar, you can check out a list of TTC routes and select 506 from the drop-down menu in order to get the map of the route I’m talking about.  Essentially, the route starts in the west on College and continues along Carlton and Gerard, covering about 2/3 of the East-West subway line that the city has.  It’s a particularly fun trip to take because of the ease of sitting down on streetcar during off hours and staring out the window at the world going by.

Highlights of the Trip

College and Ossington

College and Ossington is the first place that I’d like to point out.  It’s the first of the highlights that you reach if you’re coming from the West and the last if you’re coming from the East.

What makes this particular intersection so interesting is that it happens to be the heart of the Portuguese community in Toronto and for that reason mixes immigrants from both Portugal and Brazil in order to create a flair that is probably unique to the City of Toronto.  You can eat at both Portuguese and Brazilian restaurants and buy music and drink that originated in both countries.  The people in this area are extremely friendly and I still have the Brazil soccer jersey I purchased at one of the stores here a decade ago.

College and Spadina

Not soon after you’ve crossed out of the Portuguese area of the city, you’ll come to College and Spadina (assuming you’re coming from the West).  There are two things in particular that warrant interest about this intersection and they are both things that I get the pleasure of enjoying whenever I’m at the University.

The first of those things, as the previous sentence implied, is the University of Toronto St. George campus.  If you want to tour the university, then getting off either at this stop or at the next one is a great place to start and even if you don’t want to tour the university you can get some good shots of the campus as it looks from College Street right from the seat on your streetcar.

In addition to that, there is also Chinatown on Spadina south of College.  While getting a picture would be hard from the streetcar (you only get a brief glimpse as the streetcar goes through the intersection), you can certainly get off and walk a bit to encounter restaurants, clothing stores and souvenir shops that all have an Oriental flair.

Gerard and Coxwell

Gerard and Coxwell is the final intersection/area I’d like to draw your attention to, because it is the heart of the South Asian community in Toronto.

Whether you are interested in figures and sculptures such as the ones depicted in the picture or great food cooked in one of the many South Asian culinary styles, Gerard and Coxwell is definitely where you want to start your search.  There are literally hundreds of different establishments with a South Asian theme that are in walking distance of this intersection.  That makes it the final highlight of the 506 streetcar route.

Final Thoughts

While touring the city using public transit is not exactly the most conventional thing for a tourist to do, I think that many people would find it a fun exercise if they give it a chance.  For just $9 (make sure you buy the day pass if you want to get off at all three highlight locations), you can do the following things:

- Start at High Park and take pictures in one of the most beautiful natural areas of the city

- Visit three of the major cultural areas within the city

- Take time out of your day to relax on a scenic trip even if you don’t want to get off the streetcar

- Have access to dozens of different authentic foreign cuisine types

- Fit some genuine interaction with Toronto residents into a 1-2 hour chunk of your day that otherwise would have been spent doing nothing

If you’re up to it, touring the city on a bus or streetcar can be an extremely cost effective and authentic experience.  The 506 is by no means the only bus or streetcar route that gives you this chance, but it is most definitely one of the most intense.

Photo Credit: Flickr (Streetcar Starbucking), Flickr (college/ossington), Flickr (Spadina x College), Flickr (Sacred Hindu Cows)

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Okay, so I’m a little bit behind the ball here since Victoria Day started about 19 hours ago (my time) and ends in about 5 hours, but I still felt it important to convey best wishes on a holiday that is important to Canadians, although not necessarily celebrated in earnest by any other country in the world.  While there are other countries such as Scotland that do celebrate Victoria Day in some areas, all of Canada celebrates it and that makes it an important topic for The Toronto Traveler.

Speaking Victoria Day like a Torontonian

While Victoria Day is most definitely the official title of the holiday in Toronto, you’ll also hear it referred to on a frequent basis as the May Long Weekend, because it happens to be a federal statutory holiday in nine provinces and three territories, with Quebec also celebrating a provincial holiday at the same time.  Other more colloquial ways to refer to Victoria Day are May Long, May Run and The May Two-Four, in honour of the term we use for a case of 24 bottles of beer!

The History of Victoria Day

May 24th is the birth date of Queen Victoria, the first sovereign of Canada after confederation in 1867.  Before that however there was already a tradition of celebrating Victoria’s birthday as in 1854 on May 24th over 5000 residents of what was then known as Upper Canada gathered to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.

In 1901, May 24th was declared Empire Day throughout the British Empire, although because each new sovereign had a different birthday, chaos tended to ensue with people not being exactly sure when each successive yearly celebration of Empire Day would take place.  Eventually, Empire Day became Victoria Day and was settled as being on the Monday on or before May 24th, Queen Victoria’s birthday.

This way the day would be known well in advance every year and there would be less confusion on when to celebrate it.  Incidentally enough, Victoria Day as a holiday often coincides with Memorial Day in the United States, although this year the two dates will be missing each other by a week.

Celebrating Victoria Day

The best way to celebrate Victoria Day in any part of the city is fireworks!  And indeed, there are many public places within Toronto that have fireworks on this day as well as many individuals that go out to open areas and light fireworks of their own.  If you keep your eyes peeled to the sky once twilight and night hit the city, you should definitely be able to see one sweet show.

There are also parades in many cities on Victoria Day, the most famous of which takes place in Victoria, British Columbia.  That city was named after the monarch, so it seems only fitting that the largest parade happen there each and every year.

So once again, The Toronto Traveller wishes you all a very happy Victoria Day!

Photo Credits: Flickr, Flickr

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

A well-placed ambulance means that text doesn’t even need to be added to this picture; you already know it’s Toronto from the markings on the back of the vehicle .  The picture is of course of The CN Tower, one of Toronto’s most popular tourist attractions.

Photo Credit: Personal Collection

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

One of the things I haven’t talked that much about on The Toronto Traveler is the outdoors in Toronto.  Most of the things I mention are either places you can visit or things you can do inside one of the many buildings located in the city, but I have yet to discuss something that you can do outside if you’re just looking for some time to kill or want to get some fresh air.  Well, there are many great places that you can walk in Toronto, but one that should definitely get first mention because of its close proximity to many of the main tourism areas in the city is Philosopher’s Walk.

Beautifully crafted thoroughfares like the one shown to the left are commomplace in Philosopher’s Walk, which is a walkway that starts on Bloor Street West between the Royal Conservatory of Music and the Royal Ontario Museum and continues southward to Hoskin Avenue.  The walk itself is only a few minutes long, but it gives you a chance to bask in a beautiful walkway and take the pulse of the city in a very real way.  It also gives you the chance to encounter a number of people.  University students, music performers, city residents that live nearby and tourists walk back and forth through Philosopher’s Walk all day and with the benches that are available for your use you can just sit there and watch them come and go.  It is a great place to reflect and a great place to relax.

One final point that is worth mentioning about Philosopher’s Walk is the fact that it allows you to branch off and visit many of the other nearby areas.  In addition to being able to visit the Royal Conservatory of Music and the Royal Ontario Museum, you can also go take a look at the University of Toronto’s Varsity Arena and field as well as tourisn some of the nearby campus buildings, most notably the very beautifully constructed Trinity College.

Philosopher’s Walk is also located walking distance from St. George, Bay and Museum Subway Stations; if you check out the subway line map and take a look at many of my past posts, you will notice that these three subway stations form part of the downtown core where most of the action takes place vis-a-vis tourist attractions in Toronto.  That is the main reason why Philosopher’s Walk is shorter than normal, but there are other places in Toronto where you can take a really long walk without stopping that I will talk about in later posts.

Photo Credits: Flickr, Flickr, Flickr

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Believe it or not, there actually is a World Cocktail Week! It’s celebrated by the Museum of American Cocktail in New Orleans and it will be celebrated from May 8th to 13th as the best mixologists around will create their best confections in New Orleans in order to dazzle and tickle the taste buds.  Thanks to my excellent associate over at The DC Traveler, b5media’s Travel & Culture Channel will be celebrating this event through a collective blogging effort of which this post is a part.

Toronto actually does have a real cocktail named after it, although apparently it happens to be more popular in the United States than in Toronto.  I only heard about it when doing the research for this post, but maybe some of you have come across it before.  Here’s what it takes to make a Toronto:

- 2 ounces of rye
- one quarter ounce of Fernet Branca
- one quarter ounce of simple syrup
- two dashes of Angostura bitters

Directions: Place all the materials together with ice, stirring together and then straining into the cocktail glass once stirring is complete before flaming a disc of orange zest into the cocktail, dropping it in afterwards.
Of course, people that know the city well might come up with a different recipe for the quintessential tongue-in-cheek Toronto cocktail and that might look something like this:

The Toronto Toddy

- 1/3 cup of imported tea
- 1/3 cup of bitter tasting beer, flavoured by a disappointed Leafs fan
- 1/3 cup of sweet-sounding promises from local politicians
- a dash of arrogance
- two parts multiculturalism
- two parts envy from the other Canadian cities (wink)

Mix together well, but don’t sweat it if there are still chunks floating around in it when you’re done.  There’s always the next one!
Whatever cocktail happens to be your preference, make sure you check out the other blogs in the channel to see what they come up with for World Cocktail Week.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Post from: The Toronto Traveler