Year in Review : 2004 in Canada Part 1

[hkskyline]

Winter in Toronto

It was an unusually cold winter in Toronto. There were many days where the mercury only reached -20C ... in the middle of the day. Yes, -20C for a daytime high.

Contrast that to the early days of Spring :

... and the opening of the brand new Pearson Terminal 1 :

Contrary to their look, the rolling stock is quite new. They were bought from Bombardier in the 1990s :

Besides Cityplace, which is backed by Hong Kong investors, there are several big skyscraper residentials being planned or under construction in downtown Toronto. Trump is in the news now, but One King West is the one under construction :

Canada's Chinese community dates back to the days when the Canadian Pacific railroad was under construction. Recent waves of immigrants include the Hong Kong group in the 1980s and 1990s. The latest group now are primarily from mainland China. However, even with the changing demographics, the signs are still in traditional Chinese - still following the Hong Kong and Taiwanese standard.

Canada has a national Chinese TV channel. It first started out as a Cantonese service broadcasting TVB programs from Hong Kong. Today, it has expanded into 2 channels - Cantonese and Mandarin. Their Toronto studios is in Richmond Hill, a northern suburb where many Hong Kong immigrants live today. In fact, the traditional downtown Chinatown is no longer the core of the Chinese community in Toronto.

To end the Toronto portion of the tour, here is some sprawl from the outskirts.

Montr

[monsoon]

[BigCityAttitude]

I don't know how to convert celcius into farenheit... Can anyone help with that?

Great photo tours by the way.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

[monsoon]

[Allan]

Great photos! I have never been to Toronto before, even though it's only a few hours away. One thing I have noticed is that Canadian sprawl is much more dense than American sprawl.

[BrandonTO416]

Fantasmagoric.