Toronto Old Town

Saturday, 29 July, 2023

It’s nice when there’s a not-so-hot day in Toronto during the summer. Krish was off for his phototherapy and we said we would meet afterwards. This takes some discussion about where we will go, but we settled on King Street East without much of a plan other than Krish mentioning the amazing almond croissants that we’d had some years ago (it was closed that day – a Wednesday) a possible pizza place and perhaps go into Toronto’s First Post Office.

I started my journey and changed to the College streetcar. This is now familiar to me. I love the Alice mural and I had a bit of  a wait – also becoming too familiar. There was a lovely smell of baking nearby and I wandered over to a small bakery – Janelle’s and Southern Accent. The latter has meaning to me. The restaurant Southern Accent was undoubtedly my very favourite in town. It was Cajun and Creole and the owner prided himself on having taken the staff down to New Orleans every year to make sure they knew what the food was supposed to taste like. Later in New Orleans myself I didn’t have any food like it, but then I couldn’t get Cajun food so I won’t know how alike they might have been. Southern Accent had a lovely vibe – dark with coloured lights over the bar, cosy with two floors and some nice private alcoves with curtains to draw, with a Zydeco backing track. The server would come and explain the dishes, help you choose, and then bring them to you, always smiling. And it was delicious. Like most places, it fell on harder times, the menu shifted a bit and then the street was redeveloped. They moved, but never made a real success in their new spot. Portions had become smaller, more expensive, and the vibe just wasn’t there – none of it.

However, Janelle was pleased I was buying the spices. I asked her why Southern Accent. She said that they had been her neighbours, hadn’t survived the pandemic, but had befriended her. Good thing too. Janelle was also pleased to hear me ask about her still-warm scones. ‘I’m known for my scones,’ she told me with that broad Toronto accent where the ‘o’ sounds are different. I vowed to go back, ate the scone at the streetcar stop until my ride showed up.

After meeting we started off at Queen Street. I wanted to take a look at the construction for the Ontario Line there. Things are fenced off and there are ‘guards’ around but no work was going on. This is going to take a long, long time to complete – estimate is 4.5 years but no one expects this to stick. It’s the latest transport controversy for Toronto, and there are many of them.

We also took a little detour into the Eaton Centre. Those flying geese overhead looked lovely but my photos just won’t capture the detail no matter how much I play with editing. It feels like this flock of sixty has been flying up there to who knows where for a very long time. Flightstop was installed in 1979 and was crafted by Canadian artist Michael Snow.

We don’t walk east that often. Yonge Street is the major divide in Toronto. Streets that run off from there are numbered at zero and there’s East and West. Like most cities there are people who love one side of town and those who love the other. I’m a West person in Toronto (East in London, but you knew that). But this time we headed east to see what we could see.

I asked Krish if he thought there was more construction going on in London or here in Toronto. He thought Toronto probably had. Anyone know? We were looking at a pizza place but it wasn’t open yet, the sun was shining down at full force now and we just moved along.

The hot sun can really slow me down so we walked on the shady side as much as we could.

The area called Old Town is just that. It’s the oldest part of Toronto, and in 1793 was called the Town of York. There are just ten blocks of the original York. The entire Old Toronto is made up of neighbourhoods: St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood, Town of York, Corktown,
King East Design District, Historic Queen East, and the Distillery District. We touched on a few.

Next we came upon The Old Fire Hall on Lombard Street. You could see the back of it and the tall tower near the gate pictured here. The building has the rough Ontario stone embedded. I’ve always disliked this feature but it’s on most old and important Toronto buildings. The Old Fire Hall was built in 1886 and was the headquarters of the Toronto Fire Department until 1910. When it was emptied out in 1970, it became the original Toronto Second City (from 1973 until 1997). I remember going there in the 70s with a group of friends and for some reason had remembered it as being on the South, not North, side. Included in its original case were Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Mike Myers, Catherine O’Hara, Gilda Radner, Martin Short and Dave Thomas. I no longer remember who was in the performance I saw there but I am almost certain Gilda and Catherine were on stage. I also discovered my aversion to improv comedy that day! I note that in 1973 a ticket would have cost me $5.95. By the time I got a chance to go to the original Chicago Second City, things had become quite a lot slicker and it wasn’t as enjoyable. The fact improv was taking up more of the performance time might have had something to do with it, although of course the names above can’t really be beat. Perhaps some of the Chicago cast have gone on to great heights but, alas, I remember none of their names.

Along the same street was the St James Parking Garage. I don’t have a good photo of this building and, to be honest, it’s quite plain. The St. James Parking Garage, which opened in 1925, was one of the first multi-level parking garages in Toronto. The building has a popular architectural style of the time, a simplified Art Deco. It had originally been the Home District Grammar School, also known as the Blue School, then it was home to various factories before it became a parking garage and was converted to condominiums in 1982. It’s the last of the 1920s parking garages still standing in Toronto. I’ve borrowed this old image:

The oldness of this area of town can put me in mind of London sometimes. I’m sure whoever built these streets and structures had that and other major UK cities in mind.

Another goal for this walk was to visit Toronto’s First Post Office on Adelaide Street. It was a great place to rest, cool down, and see a little bit more of the town of York’s history. It is the oldest purpose-built post office in Canada, built in 1833 in the Georgian style. It’s since been a Roman Catholic boys’ school,  a cold storage building and now a museum, learning centre, and fully operational post office again. There are tables inside where you can write letters or cards with a quill pen and you can put a seal (with sealing wax) for a price. I noticed now that you can buy some adhesive seals to stick on your post, but far too many to contemplate in that package. Sitting there, while Krish was being regaled with history by one of the staff there, I wrote a postcard to my brother with the quill pen, dipping it in ink and feeling completely transported back to dipping my metal pen into the inkwell at school. No blotting paper here though, just some sand to sprinkle on the writing. I made a proper mess of the table doing that and not sure if it was horrifying or satisfying but my writing was really blobby with that quill.

The front of the post office faces the back of one of George Brown College’s buildings and I wanted to check out their chefs’ area. In there you can find cafes and take out food and we arrived as lunch time hit and there were many students in there. The atmosphere is casual and I love walking by the teaching kitchens to see the students in their chef outfits eagerly learning. I really wish I had the legs and patience to take a whole course here, and these days I know that one-on-one or close to it training is more my speed. I used to think I’d love to be a chef but have learned I prefer to cook for fun and pleasure than on demand.

Getting tired and hungry now, we were looking for lunch. We hadn’t felt we wanted to stay at George Brown at the busy time and we’d left the pizzeria far behind. I decided to give the popular veal sandwich place, Una Mustachio, a go in the basement of St Lawrence Market. We walked over, with a quick stop at the Bulk Barn for some spices, and found the spot downstairs. I hadn’t been to Uno Mustachio for years and remember it being extremely busy with a decent sandwich, although not comparable with my favourites to the west. I queued up and chose a veal and eggplant sandwich, and the usual Brio, to share with Krish. We ate it in a nearby concrete parkette. More than enough for the two us. It was, as I remembered, decent but not the prize-winner.

I was really ready to turn back now, but my friend Anita had sent me a walking tour plan and it included one of the two remaining Banksy’s in town, quite close by. We walked over there before finding our streetcar back to Ossington. Banksy had come to Toronto and left several stellar works behind. Sadly, Toronto wasn’t impressed. Those pieces were very quickly tagged and defaced by other street artists and at least one was obliterated by clean-up crews. Just two escaped, probably because they were a bit out of the way. Now they are behind protective glass, which is good but such a shame. This is not how street art should be. Toronto has a street art scene for sure, but the style isn’t for me, and there are many that fall really short of the mark. It makes me sad, that’s all.

If the weather cooperates I’ll try another section of Old Toronto soon.