Not really surprised by the poor reviews.

1) The International pier at T1 is ridiculously boring. Nice and clean and spacious, but the food and shopping offerings are scarce by international hub standards, and they offer terrible value-for-money. The nicest thing one can say about the T1 international pier is that it is the terminal equivalent of watching paint dry. IE - it is completely inoffensive. Like an off-white wall.

2) The International MLL is very ordinary. The magazine offerings are very poor for a flagship lounge (VS Clubhouse, by comparison, has magazines like Esquire, GQ and the Economist). The food offerings are of poor quality (the hummus pot usually contains three different types of hummus - fresh hummus, stale hummus, and aged, cracking, probably unfit-for-human consumption hummus). There's a couple of types of cookies that manage to taste exactly the same (largely because they're so full of sugar, you might as well be eating different coloured sugar cubes - no other flavours are noticeable).

3) CBSA. They're a treat. The younger ones aren't two bad. The folk who're longer in the tooth seem to think that anybody who has gone to vacation outside Canada lacks intelligence. The idea of a red and green channel seems to have escaped them completely - instead they go around interrogating hapless souls about what trinkets they've bought. The new machines should change that.

4) Baggage reclaim. Some claim its because CBSA X-rays bags, but really, I've had the same problem at all Canadian airports, regardless of whether its a domestic or international flight. 40 min is the lower end at YOW (coming off the only international flight arriving at that time) . YYZ is even worse - 45 min - 1 hr even with priority tags. I really don't know why - or how - but even with fast track immigration, LHR manages to deliver my priority tagged bags within moments of getting to the belt. More often than not, the bag beats me. At YYZ, more often than not, I get to the conveyor belt 15-20 minutes before it stutters into life. And thats with the holy unorganized mess (no priority lanes) that is YYZ CBSA.

YYZ has its plus points - free wifi, airy, clean. But I would rather spend time in ORD - better food, better shopping, better value-for-money. But then it depends on how you like to kill time at airports. Wander around? Or watch paint dry? If its the latter, YYZ may be your cup of tea.