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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Ten thousand days of waking up, I pull myself out of the dust
The long arc of the 2020 COVID Pandemic has affected three years of the slideshows in some pretty serious ways. That, coupled with some other fairly big life events happening around the same time, really caused me to hold back most travel unless it was somehow deemed necessary. If it was an AIA Conference or family related it was ok, but otherwise it was delayed or deferred or cancelled for almost three full years. In the past, I have had a history of more selfish travel, of going places because I wanted to, not because I had to or because someone else wanted to go there. That era for me officially ended with this trip to Toronto, the first place since Spring Training in 2020 that I traveled to just because I wanted to travel there.
I flew out Air Canada out of Newark (primarily just to check out the new Terminal A building), landed at Pearson, took the very nice new (for me) Union Pearson UP Express Train, found an ATM to get some Canadian cash that I never needed, dropped off my carry on luggage at my hotel and first headed here to Brookfield Place, the wonderful infill atrium designed by Santiago Calatrava where I used to say that I wanted my ashes scattered at. I have since rethought that, primarily since it’s a little weird to have your ashes scattered inside a commercial building, even if the Stanley Cup kind of lives there. But that doesn’t mean that the space is still not spectacular, even if the Moevenpick Restaurant didn’t survive the long arc of the 2020 COVID Pandemic.
From Brookfield Place, I hopped (not literally) over to Union Station, bought a Presto Card (still waiting for the TTC to join the advanced world by letting me just tap in and out of the turnstiles with my iPhone like I’m in New York, London, Chicago, San Francisco , Washington Dc or Los Angeles) and headed up to ROM, the Royal Ontario Museum, where Daniel Libeskind’s addition looked great under a clear blue sky.
It has been a while since I was in Toronto, and even longer since I visited ROM (or is it “the ROM”?). The basic design and spaces still felt the same, although in person they looked a little beat up, and there was one change that was just awful. At the entry level, there used to be this weird but wonderful contemplative space underneath the crisscrossing bridges above, with the most god awful uncomfortable stainless steel seats. It was a completely unnecessary space but one that was kind of at the heart of the building, and one that really made walking those crisscrossing bridges make more conceptual sense. Over the years, the ROM (or is it just “ROM”?) took that ground floor completely unnecessary space and converted into a gift shop, a boring awful gift shop. an unforgivable piece of architectural vandalism right in the heart of the addition.
From ROM (or is “the ROM”?), it’s an easy walk to the AGO (which is most definitely “the AGO” and not just “AGO”), the Art Gallery of Ontario, which arguably contains the greatest work ever produced by Frank Gehry’s office. His interventions focus on three main areas, two are stairs that connect the lower floors to the contemporary art galleries, and the other is a block long gallery overlooking Dundas Street. We’ll see all three today, starting with the first stair, the one that spirals up and out of Walker Court (or is it “the Walker Court”?).
The two spiraling stairs service both sides of the fourth and fifth floor Contemporary Collection and are an absolute joy to walk up and down, despite having to dodge other people taking pictures and despite the fact that they are really, really warm inside, possibly even hot. I don’t know if the air conditioning wasn’t working that day or if the stairs were designed to be unconditioned, but as much of a joy as it was to walk them, it was even better to get back into the galleries.
As promised, here is the third intervention, the Galleria d’Italia, a great big curved space that defines the exterior and is fun to walk through, even though it is really only just a hallway between other galleries. I don’t know why the museum cafe is not here, or the space is not a lounge filled with Gehry designed furniture, or why the space isn’t programmed better with more artwork. It is wonderful to walk through, but it really is a destination space waiting to become one.
