The back story

The lakeside city: reading Toronto’s great sights

In depth·Toronto

The CN Tower over the lake, the islands by ferry, the Distillery’s Victorian brick, St. Lawrence Market, Casa Loma on its hill and Fort York, where the city began: how to read Toronto.

By the ULTIMATE Toronto Editorial Team

Toronto faces south, onto Lake Ontario. The CN Tower stands over the railway lands; a ten-minute ferry from the foot of Bay Street crosses to the Toronto Islands, from which the whole skyline lines up across the water. The old town is east of Yonge Street, around St. Lawrence Market and the Victorian distillery of Gooderham & Worts; the British garrison of 1793, Fort York, is to the west, beside the expressway. North, on the old shoreline ridge, stand Casa Loma and Spadina Museum, and beyond the city the ravines and the Rouge, Canada’s national urban park.

The lake and the tower

From the CN Tower’s main pod, EdgeWalk takes you on a hands-free circuit of the outside, 116 storeys above the ground, and the SkyPod is a further 33 storeys up (the tower’s site). Below, Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada holds, in its words, 20,000 aquatic animals. The ferries to Centre Island, Ward’s Island and Hanlan’s Point leave from the ferry terminal at the foot of Bay Street (City of Toronto).

The old town

St. Lawrence Market has fed the city for generations; a few streets east, the Distillery Historic District opened in 2003 in the Victorian buildings of the old Gooderham & Worts distillery, and is today, in its words, an arts, culture and entertainment destination. Fort York, west of downtown, is where the British built their garrison in 1793 and fought the War of 1812, on land shaped for thousands of years by Indigenous presence (City of Toronto).

The ridge

Casa Loma, the city’s castle, and Spadina Museum, home of the Austin family, stand side by side on the old lake ridge north of downtown; Spadina takes its name from the Anishinaabemowin ishpadinaa, “highland” or “ridge” (City of Toronto).