Toronto

The last city that we visited in Canada was Toronto. Toronto is the largest city in Canada, it is also the capital city of the Ontario province. Back in 18th century the indegenious inhabitants sold the land on which Toronto is located for some cash, 2,000 gun flints, 24 brass kettles, 120 mirrors, 24 laced hats, a bale of flowered flannel, and 96 gallons of rum. I would not call it a good deal to be honest. Especially since I realised that it was the price for more than a quarter million acres of land.

We arrived with the Go Transit to the Union Station.

We walked to the Nathan Philips Square, named after one of the former majors of Toronto. It is a scene for concerts, manifestations and gatherings. It has also the peculiarity of facing two Town Halls. The Old City Hall has a distinctive clock tower.

In front of the Old City Hall you will see a memorial of soldiers who lost their lives in the two World Wars and the Korean War.



At the beggining of 1960s te Old City Hall proved to be too small to be able to accomodate all officials. Nowadays it is used as a court house for the Ontario Court of Justice. The city's municipal government is today located in the New City Hall (also called the Toronto City Hall), opened in 1965.

I've shown you the seat of the local government so it's time to show you as well the local legislature,  informally known as the "Ontario Provincial Parliament".

The third place of power in Toronto is of course the Financial District. It is also the financial heart of Canada, with numerous banking companies, corporate headquarters, legal and accounting firms, insurance companies and stockbrokers.

Here you can see the Toronto Stock Exchange, the largest in Canada and the seventh largest in the world (by market capitalisation).

We then walked the longest street in the world (at least people from Toronto have no doubts it is the longest) - the Yonge Street.

We finally arrived at the most important spot of the day - the First Toronto Post Office!

Here we wrote many postcards to all our postcrossing friends. The surprise was that we had a special guide in Toronto, one of the Canadian Postcrossers, Marie.

That was a long day. We still have one important place to visit. But we will go there tomorrow. I will only let you glimpse.