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| Page 9 | Feature Stories |
May 2006 |
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Toronto,
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By Alidë Kohlhaas Toronto is Canada's cultural capital even if there are no songs to praise it as there are songs that romanticize New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, and Paris. Should we worry? I don't think so. Sometimes, when I walk through the many side streets and byways of Canada's largest city, the beauty of its old neighborhoods overwhelms me. Its quaint little squares and old buildings, its public spaces between the high, modern towers, where at this time of year office workers frequent, often entertained by funky music, pulse with excitement. People sit in sidewalk cafés in the downtown, they mingle at Dundas Square or at the one in front of New City Hall, at Berczy Square opposite the St. Lawrence Centre, in the square next to the CBC building that pays homage to 100 workers who died while working — one each from 1900 to 1999. Torontonians and visitors alike gather in a of myriad other squares, they take the elevators up to the CN Tower, take a game in at what I still think of as the Skydome but which has recently been renamed the rather prosaic Rogers Centre, or take a boat ride from Harbourfront to the Toronto Islands. 19th century architecture
Right now, Toronto hums especially loudly with a cultural renaissance that creates new spaces for museums and other cultural entities. This refutes all the negative images that outsiders, and even some of Toronto's 'intellectual elite' have of one of my most favorite cities in the world.
June will see the opening of two major venues. One is the revised, much enlarged Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Arts at Queen's Park, right opposite the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), which is also undergoing major reconstruction that will be completed in 2008. June 23 will be celebrated as an open house at the Gardiner for the general public. It will show off the wonders the architects have wrought, and how ancient and recent ceramics can be skillfully displayed. There will also be what promises to be an exciting exhibit of modern ceramic sculptures by Jean-Pierre Larocque. Toronto firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) designed the Gardiner, while international star architect Daniel Libeskind designed the ROM addition. The other venue to open its doors will be the city's — in fact, the country's — first opera house, built solely for that purpose. The Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre, home of the Canadian Opera Company (COC), and the National Ballet Company of Canada, will throw its doors open to the public on June 24 and 25 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. There will also be other inaugural concerts and performances during June. I suggest you go to www.coc.ca for details. For one, there will be a special concert on June 14 that will feature the likes of tenor Ben Heppner. Although a gala event, it will be televised live on a huge screen at Nathan Philip Square for all of Toronto to share. The COC's performing season will not start in the building, however, until September 12. Then the COC's first of three complete cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen will celebrate a space designed by the local firm of Diamond Schmidt Architects. Not far from the new opera house is the new wing of the Hospital for Sick Children. I took some foreign visitors there last fall, who were stunned that a hospital could be so charming, airy and delightful in atmosphere. Then I took them to see the Art Gallery of Ontario, which has been redesigned by world renowned Frank Gehry, who was born in this very neighborhood. This redesign and reconstruction will be completed in 2008. Just down from it, on McCall Street, is the new, eye-catching addition to the Ontario College of Art and Design, by British maverick architect Will Alsop. It opened its doors last year to a new generation of artists and designers. It is the sort of building that may not be to everyone's taste — in fact it seems a little out of place in its surroundings — but it is also a space that reflects the rebelliousness of so many art students. Other projects that must not be forgotten are the addition to the Royal Conservatory of Music (by KPMB) on Bloor Street, just down the road from the ROM, also to be completed in 2008. The Distillery District, the city's new artistic hubbub, became home to the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (by KPMB) last fall. It is a place of learning as well as performance because it is a joint project between George Brown College and the Soulpepper Theatre Company. Last November saw the opening of new facilities for one of the country's most important cultural institutions, the National Ballet School (by KPMB). Located on Jarvis St., north of Carlton St., it mixes heritage restoration with modern design that is home not only to the school, but includes well integrated townhouses and condominium towers. And not to forget film, 2008 will see the completion of the Toronto International Film Festival (IFF) Centre (by KPMB) at the northwest corner of King and John Streets. It will be the IFF's year-round home in a five-storey building on top of which will sit an elegant condo tower. This film festival, by the way, is one of the largest in the world, with a far greater star power attention than most European film festivals, except for Cannes. So, if you hear someone say that Toronto is dull, that it has no heart, or that it is drab, just smile. The place is buzzing with creative energy, is filled with charming spaces, has plenty of history to offer, and is so green once winter departs that one foreign visitor, looking south from the top of the Hyatt Plaza could only marvel at the sight of the sea of trees covering the city, bordered by the shimmering waters of Lake Ontario. When I stated that Lake Ontario was the smallest of the five Great Lakes, he sputtered, "But they are oceans!" So, no more agonizing, no more inferiority complex, Torontonians. Your city is world-class! |
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Toronto is a place full of life, where quaint mingles with
architectural magnificence even in the confines of the University of
Toronto, yet it is a city that many people revile, especially those who have
never lived there. Toronto has a reputation of being drab, yet it is
colorful; it has been called dull, yet it hums with cultural activities as
no other place in the nation. Theatre, music, dance, art and literature
abound in this city. Each time I journey there, I come across yet another
film project that turns its architectural richness into a scene set in New
York, Chicago or God knows where. This, of course, can be annoying, because
few realize these films offer a 'counterfeit'. Hence, Toronto gets no
credit for the setting in the public mind, except in very small print on the
end credits, which most people don't read because they rush out of the
cinema to beat the traffic.
