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Toronto: Difference between revisions
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Toronto is an exceptionally multicultural city: 47% of its population consists of "visible minorities"; soon, "white" will be a "visible minority" by census, and already is within North York, the largest, second most populous, and most multicultural zone in the megacity. Furthermore, Toronto's multiculturalism is exceptionally non-nominal, as the city has the highest proportion of recent immigrants of any of the world's major cities; Toronto is thus thought of as quite immigrant friendly and harbours many distinct cultural communities from diverse regions of the globe<ref>and to any Americans or Europeans who may wonder why "multicultural" comes up so much in discussions of Toronto, remember that in Canada this is ''always'' considered a selling point</ref>. As such, the city is known for all sorts of cultural festivals such as Caribana, A Taste of the Danforth (Greek food) and the world's largest Gay Pride Parade, which is the last of three such parades, including the Trans March and Dyke March, which close off a week long celebration known as Pride Week annually. The city will be host to the World Pride festival in 2014. It even has its own film festival, TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival), an event that is second only to Cannes.
The popular saying is that Toronto has only two seasons: winter and construction. It's not always completely true,<ref>Sometimes there's construction during the winter.</ref> but spring and fall do seem to be pretty short, and sometimes snowstorms are separated from sweltering, smog-filled furnaces by as little as a month. (And yes, there are very hot days during the summer; [[Canada, Eh?|it's not all Eskimos and igloos]]. Come to Toronto in July and August dressed in long sleeves and you will most likely suffer from heat stroke.) As for the construction, because of all the snowfall Toronto has to concentrate all its road work in the summer months, add the fact that Toronto's highways are some of the busiest in the world (the main crosstown route, Highway 401, is by most measures ''the'' busiest highway in the world), so that when construction starts forcing lane closures, things get gnarled very quickly. Luckily there are fewer people in the city during the summer, as many go off to "cottage country" or elsewhere for vacations.
The snow thing is a bit of a sore point. Back in 1999, a particularly huge snowfall had Mayor Mel Lastman so worried, he called in the [[Canucks With Chinooks|army]] to help to clear it away. [[Never Live It Down|This became a goldmine of mirth]] for other places in Canada like Montreal, which gets an average of almost twice as much snow as Toronto does and gets ice storms as well<ref> The concern was at least partially justified as, while Toronto is used to snowfall in general, there's really nowhere to ''put'' all that snow: snowplows would cover the sidewalks, and sidewalk cleaners would push it back onto the roads. The eventual solution was to just dump it all in Lake Ontario</ref>.
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Major Landmarks:
* CN Tower (Canada's National Tower, previously Canadian National Tower) <ref>Named after the CN railway company which paid for it</ref> - Tallest free standing tower in the world (losing the "tallest freestanding ''structure''" title to the Burj Kalifa (aka. Burj Dubai) in 2007) and the very symbol of the city. They forgot to airbrush it out in the original theatrical release of [[Resident Evil]].
* City Hall - Two curved towers that would look right at home in any futuristic show like ''[[Star Trek]]''
** And, in fact, did appear as a "futuristic" building on Star Trek TNG at least once.
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* Exhibition Place, aka The Ex.
* Casa Loma, a late-medieval style castle built by an eccentric millionaire more or less in the middle of the city. While it was originally an actual place of residence, the castle is now (by order of the owner's will) a public museum, complete with tours of the ''many'' rooms. And yes, it has secret passages.
** Casa Loma [[wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Loma#In_popular_culture|sometimes appears in films]], including standing in for the [[X-Men (film)|X-Mansion]].
* The Ontario Science Centre.
* The Royal Ontario Museum, which recently was given an overhaul with the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, an [[Bizarrchitecture|architectural monstrosity]] which sticks out over the sidewalk and is decried by a large population of museumgoers and city residents.
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* ''[[Regenesis]]''
* ''[[Repo Men]]''
* Blown up in episode 19 of ''[[Robotech]]''. <ref>The corresponding episode of ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' doesn't specify which city in the "Ontario Autonomous Region" was destroyed, but since everybody in Canada who lives outside of the Greater Toronto Area hates Toronto, the perception's there.</ref>
* ''[[Murdoch Mysteries]]'', set in 1890 Toronto.
* The ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' comic series, movie, and video game.
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[[Category:Major World Cities]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Canada]]
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