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Photo: Brian, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Gothic-style cathedral that is one of the oldest churches in Toronto.
St. Michael's Cathedral Basilica is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, and one of the oldest churches in Toronto. It is located at 65 Bond Street in Toronto's Garden District. St. Michael's was designed by William Thomas, designer of eight other churches in the city, and was primarily financed by Irish immigrants who resided in the area. The cathedral has a capacity of 1600. John Cochrane and Brothers undertook the work on the stone and stucco ornamentation of the interior.
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Mackenzie House, built in 1830, was the last home of William Lyon Mackenzie, the city's first mayor. Mackenzie lived here from 1835 to 1837. Today the house has period furnishings and there is an exhibit of many 19th century printing presses in a nice mock-up of an old printing office. (Mackenzie was editor of his own newspaper, The Constitution.) Mackenzie abandoned the house after participating in a failed rebellion in 1837.
A performing arts theatre with renowned acoustics, Massey Hall opened in 1894 and is today a designated National Historic Site of Canada.
This theatre opened as the Pantages Theatre in 1920, hosting films and Vaudeville acts. In the 1970s it was split up into several cinemas to form a modern multiplex. It was restored and reopened as a theatre in 1989, most famously hosting Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera for more than ten years.
These two theatres are the last remaining Edwardian stacked theatres in the world. They were opened in 1913, showing mainly Vaudeville acts. After the decline of Vaudeville, the upper level Winter Garden closed and the lower level Elgin was converted into a cinema. By the 1970s the Elgin was showing a mixture of B-movies and pornography, but in the 1980s the Ontario Heritage Foundation bought both theatres and restored them to their original glory. They now show mainly Broadway plays and musicals and serve as venues for the Toronto International Film Festival.
Yonge-Dundas Square
Sankofa Square (former name: Yonge-Dundas Square) is a bustling outdoor public space & live-event venue hosting free concerts, movies & community events. The square has fountains and sitting areas and is surrounded by buildings with colourful electronic billboards. The city renamed the square in 2023 to distance it from the namesake of Dundas Street, Henry Dundas, a Scottish politician who had argued for an eight-year delay of the British abolition of slavery, against those who supported immediate emancipation.
A small museum with exhibits about prominent Canadian musicians and singers, from jazz to opera.