On our first day we oriented ourselves by taking a hop-on/hop-off bus tour through downtown Toronto. Starting at the bizarre ‘castle’ of Casa Loma– the mix’n’match folly of an early 20th-century entrepreneur– the tour took us south through the self-consciously affluent Yorkville area, the leafy museum and university district, the financial area of Bay Street, and finally the Lake Ontario harbour front.
The city’s architecture is dominated by high-rises built from the 1960s on, peaking in the ‘80s, with many of the older, Victorian buildings demolished to make way for them. Perhaps compounded by jet-lag, we found the overall feel of downtown oppressive and dated in a way that only once-futuristic cityscapes can be.
Close to the waterfront is Toronto’s biggest landmark, the CN Tower, which has suffered the ignominy of demotion from the world’s tallest building, to the tallest free-standing structure, and now to the tallest monolith in the Americas (who knew there were so many categories?).
At the waterfront, we left the bus tour and took a boat trip around the harbour. The construction mania is most intense here, with countless ‘condo’ buildings craning for the best view of the lake. The boat took us to the Toronto Islands, tranquil parklands with minimal development where people come to relax, a world away from the city.
On the second day, we took an 11-hour tour to Niagara Falls. The Falls themselves are spectacular, especially seen from a helicopter, but the resort is quite tacky, crammed with casinos and all-you-can-eat food stops. A single and purely decorative Mountie mans his post (sans horse) in response to the tourist demand for photo opportunities.
On the way back to the city we stopped at the pretty but slightly spooky heritage town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Settled by loyalist refugees from the American War of Independence, it’s lined with clapboard houses now home to shops selling pricey, ‘olde worlde’ goods, including an all-year-round Christmas shop.
On our last day in Toronto, we went to the Royal Ontario Museum, which has a fascinating Native collection, including four huge totem poles, and was hosting the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, and the afternoon was spent wandering around the Queen St shopping area.
The five-hour train journey to Montreal was through a flat landscape of endless cornfields. As we pulled into the city, though, it immediately felt more human-scale and comfortable than Toronto, enhanced by being a little shabby and rough around the edges.
The largest city in French-speaking Quebec, Montreal has retained much of its historical fabric and has an unmistakably European feel. Taxi drivers and restaurant staff all addressed us in French and we responded in kind until we ran out and reverted to English, at which point they would charmingly express surprise that we weren’t native speakers.
We took a walking tour of Old Montreal and saw the gothic Notre Dame Basilica, the silver-domed Bon Secours market and the Place Jacques Cartier. The latter is a pretty square lined with outdoor restaurants with colourful awnings, and the perfect spot for some lazy people-watching, where we noted a curious penchant among male Montrealers for Samurai-style hair buns.
More entertainment is provided by street theatre performances, although there can be congestion at times– a stoical magician was upstaged twice by a Turkish marching band which appeared from nowhere and did a lap of the square.
There was an abundance of spontaneous-seeming public art and cultural activity, from the graffiti art on many of the buildings (much of it by students and sponsored by the city) to an urban garden on a vacant lot with flowers sprouting from an old armchair and a toilet.
While exploring the St Lawrence waterfront, we happened on a modern dance performance on a sailboat at the dock. With the aid of a sheet, the two dancers made clever use of the boat’s rigging in an acrobatic display that was both graceful and funny.
On our second day we went to the Museum of Archaeology and History, which stands at the birthplace of Montreal, Pointe-Calliére, and ingeniously incorporates several archaeological layers from the continuing excavations in its structure.Two French missionaries are credited with founding the settlement in 1642, and the oldest level currently on public view has traces of the town’s wooden palisade dating from 1684.
We spent our final day soaking up the atmosphere in the Old Town and window-shopping (Montrealers’ laid-back attitude extends to opening hours, and many of the shops don’t open until 11 or even 12 o’clock). Calorie-guilt had to be shelved as the city has a huge range of great-tasting and cheap café-style food.
Finishing the trip with a boat tour on the St Lawrence, where we caught a glimpse of the 1976 Olympic stadium, we left Montreal wishing that we had a few more days there, the best recommendation for any destination.
Top: Toronto skyline.
Below: Niagara Falls.