FROM TORONTO WITH LOVE

As we most summers, Collette have spent a good deal of time enjoying the hot weather and roaming around our city. I always have with me my little Sony HD Handycam.

Over the course of a couple weeks we hit up a few of our favorite tourist traps, either attending a street festival or just taking advantage of the weather we had earlier in the summer

I decided to combine the footage from these separate visits and just have a little fun cutting them together.

So, to the music of The Black Keys, here are impressions of Younge Dundas Square, The Distillery District, Nathan Phillip Square and Harbourfront Centre

Just a little love song from Toronto to you

THE DISTILLERY DISTRICT

On a lovely early spring day during the March Break, Collette and I decided it was a perfect opportunity to take a trip to one of favorite locations in downtown Toronto: The Distillery District.
This is a huge complex of beautiful Victorian industrial buildings that was a distillery opened by Worts and Gooderman in 1859. There are many buildings, cobblestone laneways and a smokestack about 100 feet tall.
The distillery remained in operation, under different owners, right up to 1990. It became very popular as a location for movies. David Crongenburg used it for his version of The Fly among many others. In 2001 it was bought by a real estate development corporation and two years later opened as a tourist attraction, featuring shops, resturaunts and a professional theatre company.
They host a lot of events there but sometimes it's just fun to go down on a nice day and wander around, admiring the architecture and grazing the way too many pastry and ice cream shops, not to mention the Mill Street Brewery, one of my favorite microbreweries in the city.

It was quiet when we went there, which is kind of nice, it gave us time to dally about, taking images of this architecture that was intended as functional but still has a kind of beauty to it

The buildings here are not pretty. At first glance they are big and heavy and perhaps, with their dark brick, even oppressive. But there is a beauty to them, in the arched windows and doors, in the little details in the cornices and the cupolas. And beauty and atmosphere in the brick lanes and gas lamps.
Here's the video of our visit, it doesn't include the lovely lunch we enjoyed, but seriously, who wants to see that

Distillery District Outing from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE DISTILLERY DISTRICT: WINE AMONG THE RUINS

Well, no, not ruins exactly
The Distillery District is a shopping/arts destination in Toronto that occupies the grounds of a Victorian Era distillery that had remained active and in business till the 1990's. Finally ceasing to function as distillery, this huge collection of buildings and structures was used as a location for dozens of Hollywood movies including the remake of The Fly
We love this area, much of the brooding yet stylish Victorian architecture has been maintained from giant smoke stacks to cobble stones bits and pieces of its brewing past. Atmospheric is the word that comes to mind: Red brick, limestone, massive facades with tiny windows, covered walkways, oblique angles; it's the like the imposition of will. It is all function, a place of work and old school smokestack industry but there is craftmaship here, hand hewn and hand cut and in that yes, I find beauty
Nowadays the Distillery is home to shops, restaurants, the Mill Street Brewery and arts spaces. It also hosts many concerts, art shows etc. This weekend we were at the Distillery for an event extremely appropriate to the location: The Toronto Food and Wine Expo.

Yippee. Bottoms up.


It was a perfect night for it, warm with a nice breeze, clear skies. This is one of those deals where you buy food/drink tickets and are a given a sampling glass. This was no little thimble glass too, most of the samples we got were pretty significant


Beer, wines, coolers, cider, spirits, there was a lot of variety, most of it from Ontario. One product that stands out was Victoria Gin, a small family owned business from B.C. As it turns out Collette and I were both gin drinkers in our past and over the years fell out of favour with this spirit. Victoria Gin was good enough to rekindle the romance as it were.


There was live music here and there, stuff to eat, and lots and lots of good stuff to drink. On a pleasant summer night amidst this impressive Victorian architecture what could be better?


Here's a little video, just giving a few highlights of the Distillery. Now I'm going to go wring out my liver. The music is Frank Sinatra. It doesn't exactly go with a massive Industrial Revolution factory, but it was a booze festival, like an extended cocktail hour. Bottoms up.

Distillery District Toronto from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.