I'm off to Toronto and Montreal in a couple of weeks and looking for sightseeing tips. All I've heard of is the CN tower! Any pointers would be appreciated.

Wish I could help, but I'm a student and haven't made it out of Alberta yet. I'd love to go to Montreal. I believe that Quebec city is beautiful as well.

If you are in Montreal,

You have to take a walk up Saint-Laurent Street from the Old City up to Mont-Royal street ( about 1hour ) . It will give you the opportunity to see and experience a lot of Montreal different atmosphere and cultures.

Mont-Royal street is the main street of the Plateau Quarter that is the most popular quarter.

As you are from Dublin and probably like beer, You have to stop at LE RESERVOIR, a pub on Duluth street just beside Saint-Laurent. They serve the best artisanl beer in the world...especially the Black and the Amber.

After you can of course see the architectural landmarks: buckminster fuller dome, olympic stadium, habitat 67 , westmount square by Mies, place ville marie by Pie,...

but first go up the Mount-Royal to see the city from atop...it is the first thing to do in any City.

regards!

Jean Beaudoin

This exhibition in Toronto may be worth seeing

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1063882851559&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630

Jean - merci pour les renseignements. Bit of a sweeping generalisation with the Irish/ beer thing, but, inevitably, true.

Paul - thanks for that!

Hey Andrew,

General Sightseeing: Definitely check out the ROM as per Bus's recommendation. If you have time take a scoot around the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) at Dundas & Beverley as well. The Bata Shoe Museum (http://glasssteelandstone.com/CA/ON/TorontoBataShoe.html) at Bloor and St George is also inexplicably popular, but the building itself is the most interesting part for me.

There's more stuff on the official city site at http://www.toronto.ca/events/index.htm. I've been here too long, I don't know the touristy stuff any more...

Events Listings - There are two free papers, both out on a Thursday which list all the gigs, clubs and general merriment for that week. Look for the Eye and Now newspaper boxes on the street. Alternatively you can check out Now online at http://www.nowtoronto.com.

Architecture Geekdom:
CBC (http://www.vitruvio.ch/arc/contemporary/1946-2000_01/cbcbroadcastingcentre.htm) headquaters designed by Philip Johnson is worth a look for the atrium. It's übereighties. BCE Place (http://glasssteelandstone.com/CA/ON/TorontoBCEPlace.html) has a Calatrava mall. The UofT Graduate Residence at Spadina south of Bloor, by Morphosis and Steve Teeple, is a personal favourite but not to everyone's taste. The TD Centre (http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/tdcentre/) by Mies is right in the middle of downtown so it's pretty hard to miss. The trick is to go into the parkelet between the buildings and lie down on one of the stone benches for four-sided vertiginous miesian fun. And more travertine than you can shake an extremely large stick at.

We have a few superstar buildings on the way - there's not much to see of Liebeskind's ROM extension or Foster's Pharmacology Building yet, but you should definitely swing by Alsop's OCAD (http://www.ocad.on.ca/) extension on McCaul north of Queen. Bigass steel box on five storey spindly coloured legs... Has to be seen to be believed (carefully not making any value judgements here).

There's more, of course, but I should *really* get back to work. Have fun over here, but be warned November can be quite chilly...

Also here's some eclectic suggestions from d'other place...

http://www.p45rant.net/boards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35869

Thanks again for the pointers - though my sightseeing ended up being of the typical tourist variety, due to time constraints.
The differences between Toronto and Montreal are far more extreme than I expected - not just the languages and culture; the look and feel of the places. Architecturally, Toronto has to be the blandest big city I've ever seen and in the parts where old terraces are left standing amid the high-rises, you get a real sense of a built heritage that must have been just wiped out in the name of progress.
It's still a very likeable place and a pleasure to walk around compared to, say, Dublin. Oh, and the streetcars are great - Luas, you've a lot to live up to.