Toronto is a pretty city, and has some weird areas too!
For this video, we drove into Toronto after crossing into canada near the Port Huron border crossing in Michigan, and then drove across the vast Canadian farmland areas into the city of Toronto.
Toronto’s weather was WAY warmer than usual. On this day, it was 33 degrees fahrenheit. It snowed lightly for the several days we were in Toronto, but it never got below 23 degrees at night. Typically, this time of year, it’s closer to 17’.
Toronto sits at the edge of Lake Ontario. Everyone we talked to said they couldn’t remember the last time Lake Ontario wasn’t frozen.
We’ll begin the driving tour of Toronto. But we’ll preface it by drawing whatever generalizations we could surmise after three days in Canada’s largest city. It’s very modern, clean and diverse. All over downtown are newish looking condos, which dominate the Toronto skyline. We only saw one police officer the entire time we walked the city, and outside of a few sketchy homeless people - I saw no problems to speak of.
We also spent a lot of time staring out the window at Toronto’s crown jewel, the CN tower. This building is 1800 feet tall, and every hour, it goes through a rapid light transition show which lasts for close to 10 minutes.
We’ll begin this driving tour of Toronto on King Street in the center of downtown, and then drive the perimeter.
We saw Front Street, on the far south side of downtown Toronto, which abuts Lake Ontario on the right.
Toronto’s population is very diverse. Nearly half the population is considered European. About a third of the population is Asian, and 10% are black. According to the official census numbers, only 1% of the population is Arab, but that number seems very low according to numbers I saw on the ground. Perhaps they are not long term residents.
Toronto’s overall population is close to 3 million people, putting it just about the same size of Chicago - our third largest city here in the US.
Toronto is a very walkable downtown, evident by the look of its residents. While two-thirds of all Canadian residents are considered at least overweight, here in Toronto, you hardly ever saw someone overweight.
This is the financial district in Toronto, where most of the large business offices are located. Half of the largest companies in the entire country are located in this one district alone. Toronto is home to the Canadian headquarters of many large banking and technology companies, including Apple, Coke, Citibank, Google, McDonalds, Microsoft and Intel.
Now, we’re going to make a left and head west into old Chinatown, located towards the northern end of the metro downtown area. Toronto has many Chinatowns, but this one is old Chinatown. Which makes it better Chinatown.
While on a stroll in Chinatown one evening, I made three purchases: a selfie stick which I would later use to film this drive, a candy bar from a seedy shop which was surprisingly very easy to obtain, and dim sum.
Dinner took place at Dim Sum King on Dundas Street. It was very good and I ordered too much. I wound up putting a dumpling in my pocket for later.
While at Dim Sum, I also spotted a fellow social media superstar, an Asian Tik Tok star named Kinda Korean, which would also be a great name for a Korean BBQ food truck.
Canada is actually officially a bilingual country, with English and French the official languages. Some of the first European settlers here were French, and the French culture still impacts Canada today. While here, I also tried poutine, a French dish which consists of gravy, cheese, and french fries.
Now, we’ll take a turn into the Kensington Market neighborhood of Toronto. Kensington Market is a walkable bohemian neighbourhood that draws artists and tourists to its indie shops, vintage boutiques and arts spaces. The Market is also home to a wide array of specialty grocers, bakeries and cheese shops. Hipsters frequent trendy bars, cafes and international restaurants that range from casual to fine dining. Students and families populate Victorian houses along tree-lined streets.
That was borrowed from Wikipedia.
Now, one final street we’ll visit is Queen Street West. Which goes west to east through the heart of downtown Toronto.
Queen Elizabeth is still the Queen of Canada. Canada is both a constitutional monarchy and a federal parliamentary democracy with the Queen as the head of state. Canada was once a colony of Britain, but unlike many of England’s other colonies, Canada never experienced a sharp, clean break with the motherland. Though Canada now has full political independence from the U.K., the British monarchy is still part of the Canadian political system to this day.
As such, technically Queen Elizabeth owns like 90% of all Canadian land. And, a lot of the money here in Toronto has Queen Elizabeth on it.
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13 янв 2020
