September 7-21, 1975: A Cross-Country Vacation
	May 17, 1975: Florida's East Coast
	Return to Index for 1975

In early June, 1975, we did an installation in Toronto, at Royal Bank, and Jim Baker was my partner, and so, on a Sunday afternoon, I flew up to Canada.

Chicago's North Shore

It was a nice day when the Air Canada flight to Toronto took off on Sunday morning, and as we headed east out over Lake Michigan, I got a really nice view looking south along the lake shore to downtown. Prominent in the picture at left is Lake Shore Drive, and where it curves west and ends in the nearground, it is dead-ending into Sheridan Road. If you look carefully down towards downtown, you will see Navy Pier and Outer Drive East, and Oak Street Beach. Just this side of that, you will see the finger of land sticking out into the lake at North Avenue. My building is perhaps a half inch in from the lake shore right where that finger of land is.

We had a very pleasat, two-hour trip over to Toronto.

My partner on this trip was Jim Baker, and he told me that there wouldn't be any need for a car here, as the hotel he'd picked for us was actually within walking distance of the Royal Bank Data Center where we would be doing the installation and training. So from the airport, I took a cab to the hotel Jim had picked- the Mont Soudan.

In a moment, I'll show you where the Mont Soudan is relative to downtown Toronto, but first I want to say a bit about it. The hotel is just outside the real downtown core of Toronto, which is a lot like Chicago in that there are older brownstones very close in where lots of wealthy folks live. There are also a number of highrises around where people who work downtown and don't want a long commute like to live. The Mont Soudan is in that kind of neighborhood.

The hotel is very simple, but that is the kind of hotel Jim usually picks. He is, rightly, extremely efficient in the way he spends the client's money (since they pay expenses for these installations). In New York City, for example, he found a perfectly serviceable hotel just a block from Times Square, the Seymour, whose room rate is probably a third or less of any other hotel in the area.

The Mont Soudan is also a perfectly serviceable hotel, and it's rate is probably half of the rate charged by any of the chain hotels anywhere nearby. In researching this page, I have discovered that about ten years hence, the hotel will close to the public and be converted to a senior living facility- one with private residences but communal activity and dining areas.

I checked in about noon on Sunday, and immediately went out to spend the afternoon walking around the city, and I ended up walking as far as the new CN Tower, about three miles away, and back, taking pictures of whatever I found interesting on this, my first trip to this Canadian city.

On the map at left, I've marked the location of the Mont Soudan, the new CN Tower, the Toronto City Hall, and some of the other places is saw on my walk this afternoon. As I mentioned, the straight-line distance between the hotel and the CN Tower is just a bit over three miles.

Actually, I wanted to try the rapid transit system here in Toronto, so I asked at the desk about the system. They were happy to give me directions to the nearest station, where they said almost any train/trolley would end up down by the tower. Much of the system is aboveground, but when the tracks get down to the downtown area it becomes a subway- much like Chicago. So my ride downtown was relatively quick, although I chose to walk back to the hotel.

Downtown Toronto

So come along with me on my walk around Toronto this afternoon and I'll show you some of the sights.

When I came up from the subway downtown, I found myself in what seemed to me to be a thoroughly typical downtown core. It was Sunday, and so here in the financial district there was almost no one about.

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario, the most populous city in Canada, and one of the fastest-growing cities in North America. Indeed, on my walk this afternoon, I saw numerous skyscrapers under construction in the downtown core, and a lot of mid-rise buildings in the area around the Mont Soudan. Toronto is an international center of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

People have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, situated on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designated it as the capital of Upper Canada. During the War of 1812, the town was the site of the Battle of York and suffered heavy damage by United States troops. York was renamed and incorporated in 1834 as the city of Toronto. It was designated as the capital of the province of Ontario in 1867 during Canadian Confederation. The city proper has since expanded past its original borders through both annexation and amalgamation and now covers an area of over 200 square miles.

The diverse population of Toronto reflects its current and historical role as an important destination for immigrants to Canada. More than 50 percent of residents belong to a visible minority population group, and over 200 distinct ethnic origins are represented among its inhabitants. While the great majority of Torontonians speak English as their primary language, numerous other languages are spoken by segments of the population. From just my time here, I would think that the next two most-heard languages are French (the province of Quebec is right next door) and Chinese (there is a Chinatown here in Toronto that rivals the one in New York City).

Train Station and CN Tower

The "New York City of Canada", Toronto is a prominent center for music, theatre, motion pictures and television. As with most urban areas with a million-plus people, it has many museums and galleries, festivals and public events, sports events, and tourist attractions; 15-20 million tourists visit yearly. Toronto's downtown core is rapidly expanding outward and upward, with the city home to Canada's five largest banks and numerous corporations. With a diversified economy and a diversivied population, Toronto is a very interesting city to visit.

Down by the lakeshore (Lake Ontario) I came across the Toronto main train station and the new CN Tower. Union Station is the city's major railway station and intermodal transportation hub, located here on Front Street. It is Canada's largest and most opulent railway station, designed in the Beaux-Art style as a joint venture between Canada's railway companies. It opened in 1927. It became a National Historic Site of Canada earlier this year.

Union Station

I ducked inside the building and discovered that it reminded me very much of Union Station in Chicago, which I have been in quite a few times. Today, the commuter platforms were not particularly crowded, but the intercity train platforms were quite busy. Then I went back out to Front Street and walked to the west towards CN Tower. That's when I turned and took the picture at right. It looks back east along Front Street past the facade of the station.

The buildings across the street from the station are the Royal York Hotel and the actual headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada- our client this week. (Like many of our clients that have been in business a long time, Royal Bank does not keep its computer center in its main location, but has chosen to construct a more modern, technology-oriented structure outside of the downtown core. It is actually only about eight blocks from the Mont Soudan.)

The station is an imposing structure. The Front Street façade is laid out in an ashlar pattern, constructed with smooth beige Indiana and Queenston limestone. The colonnaded loggia which faces Front Street features 22 equally spaced Roman Tuscan columns made from Bedford limestone, each 40 feet high. Fourteen three-storey bays, each with severely delineated fenestration, form the façade on either side of the central colonnade for a total of 28 bays. The structures at either end have an additional ten bays. Three rectangular windows fill each bay, lighting the interior hall with plenty of natural light. However, the building's external profile is hard and flat, with a line of huge columns, heavy ornamentation and strong symmetry.

The CN Tower

I wanted to get a better view of the CN Tower, so I walked down closer to it. To actually get a good, unobstructed view of it I had to walk past it to the west and then turn and look back. (I have a penchant for trying to match my pictures to aerial views, but the area around the tower has changed so much in 40 years that I don't think the tall building at right is there anymore. Certainly, there is no open land with a picnic table any longer!

The CN Tower will be 1,815 feet high when it is completed (which, I now know, will be next year), and when that happens it will be the world's tallest free-standing structure. It is a concrete communications and observation tower built on land owned by the Canadian National Railway, the company that built it.

(Here is some information I did not know when I visited. The CN Tower will hold the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure for 32 years until 2007 when it will be surpassed by the Burj Khalifa. That structure will only hold the title for two years until the Canton Tower is completed. Throughout, the CN Tower will remain the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere.)

You may wonder just why the tower is so tall. The original concept of the CN Tower originated in 1968 when the Canadian National Railway wanted to build a large TV and radio communication platform to serve the Toronto area, as well as demonstrate the strength of Canadian industry and CN in particular. These plans evolved over the next few years, and the project became official in 1972.

As Toronto grew rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s, multiple skyscrapers were constructed in the downtown core, most notably First Canadian Place. The reflective nature of the new buildings compromised the quality of broadcast signals necessitating new, higher antennas that were at least 980 ft tall. At the time, most data communications took place over point-to-point microwave links, whose dish antennae covered the roofs of large buildings. As each new skyscraper was added to the downtown, former line-of-sight links were no longer possible. CN intended to rent "hub" space for microwave links, visible from almost any building in the Toronto area.

To ensure its usefulness, the tower needed to be taller than anything else around, and taller than anything else likely to be built anywhere nearby. I am not quite sure how they arrived at 1800 feet, but the tower is today, as I write this in 2019, still by far the tallest structure in Toronto. It has also, like Seattle's Space Needle, become a symbol of the city.

At right and below are two more pictures that I took from the vicinity of Union Station and the CN Tower, and both of the look north from that area. At right, we are looking up the street just to the east of the CN Tower at the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, with Front Street crossing in the nearground. In the picture below, we are again looking north, and you can see the new headquarters building of Royal Bank, as well as First Canadian Place in the background, right.

Toronto's Urban Core

From here, I just started following my nose and walking generally north, back towards the Mont Soudan, but walking through downtown Toronto. It was all interesting, but especially the Toronto City Hall.

Toronto City Hall

About six blocks from the CN Tower, I came across the Toronto City Hall buildings- two iconic, curved structures that are also representative of Toronto. Designed by a Finnish architect, and located at Nathan Phillips Square, it's the city's fourth city hall. The square is on the site of Toronto's Old Chinatown, which was expropriated and bulldozed during the mid-1950s, as much of had moved north and west.

Nathan Phillips Square

While the building's base is rectangular, its two towers are curved in cross-section and rise to differing heights; the east tower is 27 floors, and the west is 20 storeys. Between the towers is the saucer-like council chamber, and the overall arrangement is somewhat like two hands cradling the chamber. From the air, the building is seen as a giant unblinking eye, thus the building's original nickname of "The Eye of Government". When finished, the building generated widespread controversy among many who felt that it was "too futuristic" for the city.

The design for the public space in front of the new city hall, Nathan Phillips Square, was part of the original architect selection competition. The square's reflecting pool and concrete arches, fountain, and overhead walkways were thus also part of the winning submission. It has since seen several monuments, sculptures, and other works of public art added, and was renovated, but it continues to complement the city hall with its original Modernist design elements.

I didn't know it when I arrived at the square, but the taller of the two structures has an observation deck, and on Sunday, admission was free, so I decided to go up to the deck, which is partially inside and partially outside. There, I took a series of pictures looking out over Toronto.

The View East from City Hall

The View to the West

At left, from inside, is a view to the southwest from the top of the taller of the two City Hall buildings. In the foreground, a bit below, you can see the top of the shorter of the two buildings.

The view below looks back south towards Union Station. That's the Four Seasons in the foreground, and Toronto's new "tallest occupied building" going up at left. You can see just a fragment of the CN Tower in the upper right.

I continued walking north, and, eventually left the package of downtown skyscrapers and was back in an area of lower buildings, most of them residential. I passed through a number of parks (Toronto has a lot of them), many of which had bicycle and hiking paths, and from many of these parks, there was no view of the surrounding city, which was really kind of neat.

As far as overall comments go, I was quite impressed with the cleanliness of the city, it being much neater than Chicago. Most of the city, with the exception of the downtown area, is lots like a park in which buildings have been scattered at random, with much open area between them. The transportation system seems very good, primarily a mixture of street cars and subways, although I took buses as well. Toronto was interesting, and maybe I get some return trips here to explore further.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 7-21, 1975: A Cross-Country Vacation
	May 17, 1975: Florida's East Coast
	Return to Index for 1975