Until September last year the CN Tower in Toronto was the World’s tallest building at 1,815 ft high (as usual nothing is straightforward as that - there has been much controversy over this title, since the tower is not officially a building, so it has been named “World’s Tallest Freestanding Structure”, “Tallest Tower”, “World’s Tallest Freestanding Tower” and so on).

Anyway, if you’re the kind of person that thinks such records should only go to buildings (or structures, or towers, or freestanding towers or structures) that are finished then it still is the “World’s Tallest...<insert your preferred non-controversial term here>” (the Burj Dubai is currently over 2,300 ft high but it isn’t finished yet - who knows, the builders might run out of tea, go on strike and it will never be finished).

By the way, the CN tower was originally built to house a TV/radio transmitter and CN stood for Canadian National, the railway company that built the tower.

It seems that Toronto has a few “almost the biggest” things. Here for instance is “The World’s Biggest Bookstore” in downtown Toronto:

Unfortunately it isn’t anymore. That record goes to a Barnes and Noble store in New York City and if Dubai finds out then it’ll be there soon (well it will at least be under construction).

There may still be one “large” record in Toronto: The Eaton Centre in Toronto may well still be the largest downtown shopping centre in North America (and Dubai will never beat that record).

However the Eaton Centre may be more famous for a law suit by artist Michael Snow.
His sculpture “Flight Stop” consists of a number of fibreglass geese (a “skein” presumably, since they are flying, if you can use the term for flying fibreglass geese) hanging from the ceiling.

One Christmas the shopping centre decorated the geese with ribbons. Snow got upset and sued. The court ruled in his favour and the shopping centre had to remove the ribbons.

Anyway, here are some recommendations if you go to Toronto:

1. Go up the CN tower when the weather is nice. This was the view from 1,122 ft today:

2. Have a few Steam Whistle Pilsners. The brewery is walking distance from the CN tower in the John St. Roundhouse, former home of the Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive repair shop:

    3.Don’t have too many Steam Whistle Pilsners if you want to ride on the Toronto Subway. I spent a while wandering round Union station looking for a ticket machine but all I could find were machines that you use to cancel your ticket (actually take off one journey from your multi-journey ticket). I gave up eventually and walked.

Here are some interesting facts about Toronto:

    1.They spell a lot of words that Americans spell “differently” (or “wrong” as its spelled in England) the same as in England: “Centre” is “Centre” not “Center”, “Defence” is “Defence”, not “Defense” but they do still spell some words the same as the Americans (“tyre” is “tire” for instance).

    2.They sell petrol in litres (approximately 75c per litre today) and they spell that right too.

    3. They are quite keen on recycling. Well, not as much as the Swiss but if you live in Switzerland you can’t move in your house for different recyling containers - that’s why they remain neutral in wars - because they spend all their time sorting through their garbage. But Torontonians certainly are more aware of recycling than their cousins across the border in the USA.

    4.They have black squirrels rather than grey or red: