In which we explore the benefits of municipal government in Toronto

We started off the morning by walking over to Union Station, less than a block.  There is a lot of construction going on and the day was cloudy so it was hard to get a photo doing justice to what is an impressive, truly grand building.  It is a block long.

And down at the end of the block you can see the side of the Dominion Building.  This a government building also a block long and also impressively grand.

We went in the depot, figured out where the subway is.  Street level, main concourse.  First level down, trains, like actual trains going to Kingston and Montreal and like that.  Second level down, subway.  Toronto has two major lines, a green cross town line and a two headed yellow line, east branch up Yonge Street, west branch up University but completely a yellow line, Union is the middle stop.  We had help from the fellow in the info/token booth (got a map) and from the red shirted help the confused looking people brigade just inside the token turnstiles.  Pretty soon we were much farther north than we ever could have attempted to  walk, at the Museum stop near Victoria University.

We were not actually interested in the museum at this stop (the Royal Ontario Museum) but we were interested in Queen's Park and the Parliament Buildings.  We intended to walk back south past those attractions to the Ontario Museum of Art.

The first port of call was Queen's Park.  Naturally enough in a green space named for the Queen, the statue at the center of the park where all paths cross is of a King.  OK, here goes.  That's Edward VII.  That statue was originally placed in Edward Park in Delhi by King George V of England and Emperor of India on the occasion of his visit to Delhi in 1911 for the Imperial Durbar.  The statue was placed in Toronto in 1969.

The Park itself opened on September 11, 1860, opened by the Prince of Wales, the later King Edward VII.  He named the park in honor of his mother the Queen, Queen Victoria.

After a couple of days of intensely urban downtown Toronto, Queen's Park was an extremely pleasant oasis.

At the foot of the park we came across the Toronto version of Velib or Nice Ride.  They share bikes in Toronto too.

We walked around the Parliament Building, another extremely attractive old pile of stone that the Province has never felt the need to tear down.  Flag of Ontario flying there on the right, FT walking along looking slightly perplexed there on the left.

So we attended the Art Gallery of Ontario.  All museums are fun, this one is a couple of steps below our favorite museums.  For example, this one was displaying a bronze of the Thinker by Rodin, a bronze about a meter tall.  We have seen a much larger version at the Rodin Museum in Paris.  This one had one painting by the "Rembrandt School".  The National Museum of Art in Washington when  I was there had 11 paintings by Rembrandt.  Based on what I learned from the 11 paintings in Washington, the one painting here includes a head, a white collar and one hand probably painted by the master himself, that style has proven impossible for any other human to duplicate.  The rest of the painting was probably done by his students, hence "Rembrandt School".  It is still a very good painting and the museum itself is still a very nice museum with plenty of things of interest.

They had a room with dozens of really intricate carvings in ivory.  It was dark in there but I rested my camera on another display case and got this.

An elephant died for every one of those.

There was some unbelievably intricate and delicate wood carvings and some extraordinary metalcraft.

They have this, Etretat: L'Aiguille et la Porte d'aval by Claude Monet.

I was drawn to this because on our last trip to France we visited Etretat and saw that very rock formation.  The FT was drawn by the unusual shape of the painting.  It turns out this is one of two paintings Monet did on the doors of a hotel's armoire in lieu of paying rent.

So they have a Monet, they have a Renoir, they have a van Gogh and a Degas, they also have Andy.  This is Silver Liz as Cleopatra.

There is an entire room of original plaster molds by the sculpture Henry Moore, very visually entertaining to actually be in that large room.

And an interior gallery on the exterior wall of the building, nice, lots of natural light, very arresting and impressive.

After that we had a walk through the local Chinatown.  It seemed pretty Chinese in a Canadian sort of way, nearly every sign in both languages, and a definite non-Occidental ambiance.

But we were starting to wind down a little and we each had a subway token in our pocket.  We took kind of an early sit down

We had dinner in the hotel and then took one last walk to try to record a couple of things that I thought were important but for which I did not yet have a photograph.

It was getting a little dark but I think you can still get the idea.  This the juxtaposition of the Rogers Center, the retractable roof domed stadium home to the local baseball club and the CN Tower.

The next photo was taken at a point only about a half block east of the stadium photo.  It is the Air Canada Center, replacement arena to Maple Leaf Gardens. Air Canada Center is the home to the Leafs and the basketball team, just let me think for a minute or two.

The Raptors.

Tomorrow off for Niagara, that's still Canada.

Spoiler alert, the out the window of our hotel room photo promises to be the best of the entire trip.