landspeed
Aug 22, 04, 12:09 pm
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/travel/22wdtoronto.html
In the spring of 2003, Toronto was reeling from North America's worst outbreak of sudden acute respiratory syndrome. With that, the war in Iraq and post-9/11 anxieties about travel, tourists stayed away from Ontario's capital in droves.
Just a year ago, the Rolling Stones came to town for a celebratory Toronto's-back-in-business concert and announced that the city was "a gas." This summer, their optimism seems justified. Tourists are returning, and taxi drivers and hoteliers are happier, although attendance at big theatrical productions has picked up more slowly than hoped for.
Tourists or not, it's been a lively year. Toronto is in an architectural ferment, with a new Opera House going up, and additions or renovations - or both - moving along at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. At the Royal Ontario, the makeover is designed by Daniel Liebeskind, while Frank Gehry, a native son, is directing the Art Gallery of Ontario's redesign. Although ground hasn't been broken at the gallery and the museum's project won't be finished until 2005, it feels as if every Torontonian has become an architecture critic.
In the spring of 2003, Toronto was reeling from North America's worst outbreak of sudden acute respiratory syndrome. With that, the war in Iraq and post-9/11 anxieties about travel, tourists stayed away from Ontario's capital in droves.
Just a year ago, the Rolling Stones came to town for a celebratory Toronto's-back-in-business concert and announced that the city was "a gas." This summer, their optimism seems justified. Tourists are returning, and taxi drivers and hoteliers are happier, although attendance at big theatrical productions has picked up more slowly than hoped for.
Tourists or not, it's been a lively year. Toronto is in an architectural ferment, with a new Opera House going up, and additions or renovations - or both - moving along at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. At the Royal Ontario, the makeover is designed by Daniel Liebeskind, while Frank Gehry, a native son, is directing the Art Gallery of Ontario's redesign. Although ground hasn't been broken at the gallery and the museum's project won't be finished until 2005, it feels as if every Torontonian has become an architecture critic.