Toronto, part 2 the city

While in TO, Ash and I decided to knock off some of the sights and sounds; we visited City/Much, the CBC buildings and, of course, the CN tower. The tower is actually pretty darn big...the highlight for us though was stopping by the University of Toronto campus...magnificent; we were thrilled to find a university like this in Canada. Granted, it's no Oxford but it wasn't bad, not bad at all...and the UofT remains a possibility for both of us in our graduate studies.
One of the first sights to greet us in Toronto...this is why I love the playoffs in Canadian hockey.











St. Andrews Cathedral, right across from the Hilton, where we were staying. Very Scottish and very Cathedral...I'm fascinated by how fascinated Ash was with this place; she's a Buddhist but still gets draw to any Scottish culture icon.



University College at the University of Toronto; built in 1859 as a government effort to prove that advanced education could be supported by the secular government without interference from religious bodies. I still feel the urge to call it Balliol, though of course it's about 600 years out of date. At the far left, a young couple are having professional photos of themselves taken in a small shrub; we visited during convocation and photographers snapping rich kids abounded like bunnies in the grass.





A picture of the CN Tower from the grounds in front of University College. Unlike Calgary, the tower stands alone so you can actually see it from a distance; it isn't dominated by corporate head offices extolling business over civic exhibition.











Glenn Gould patiently listens while Ash and I take turns talking his ear off. I have to say, his accomplishments as a musician and composer aside, he is also one hell of a conversationalist.









The old and the new...the first pic shows the old TO city hall...


and like the city of Calgary, right across the way is the new city hall. I wonder; do they still use the old building for municipal government or has it just become a culture site, like Calgary's? This shot comes from the City building...I suppose the point is that their news staff are always hot on the scene for a story...perhaps a little too hot, though the job they did making this look realistic is quite impressive.
I took some pics from the CN Tower; we got lucky, the visibility was fantastic that day. So the total height of the tower is some 550 metres. We were up about 330 metres of that total height, or about 120 stories. The Hilton, where we were staying, sits in the centre left of this photo. The Hilton, some 4 blocks away from the tower, is 32 stories high. Very cool...we could see well past Toronto and scope out the clusters of towers that marked the central districts of other "cities" from Etobicoke to York.




Of course, you can't do the tower without taking the requisite shot of the ground through the glass floor. I had hoped that the glass floor would be, in fact a glass floor - that would have been very cool. But no, it comprised a few glass panels embedded in the floor. Pretty boring, though still too much for some of the people who were there. Ash herself couldn't work up the courage to stand on it even though she weighs much less than 14 grown hippos.