October 6, 2005
Hello from Toronto - A Culinary Tour of
the
St. Lawrence Market & An Exploration of Historic
St. Lawrence Hall
Life works in really strange and wonderful ways. At the beginning
of this week I talked to my brother in Austria on the phone, and
he said he'd been reading this German travel magazine and there
was a big write-up about a Toronto-based tour guide who provides
culinary tours of the St. Lawrence
Market, one of my brother's favourite places that he discovered
on his recent trip to Toronto.
I asked my brother what this fellow's name was and he looked it
up and said "Bruce Bell". I did an internet search and
within a few seconds I had located Bruce
Bell Tours ; and I knew I had to meet this person. Bruce Bell,
the popular history columnist for the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood
Community Bulletin, is also an award winning playwright, actor,
standup comedian and the honourary curator of the most photographed
building in the city of Toronto, the historic Gooderham Building
better known as the Flatiron. Bruce just recently published a book
on Toronto called "Toronto
- A Pictorial Celebration".
Immediately after I hung up with my brother I was on the phone
with Bruce, we briefly introduced ourselves and he said, come down,
join me on Thursday for my culinary tour of the St. Lawrence Market.
Sure enough, this morning, punctually at 10 am I arrived at the
souvenir shop at the main entrance of the market and I met Bruce
and the other participant in our tour, a young architecture student.
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Bruce (center) with Toronto Mayor Miller (left)
and Chicago Mayor Daley (right) on a recent tour of Toronto |
Bruce (right) with Chicago Mayor Daley (left)
in the St. Lawrence Market, sharing his local expertise |
As the official historian of the St. Lawrence Market Bruce has
special access to all sorts of areas of the building that other
people never get to see. Right away he took us up some stairs, pulled
out a special key and led us into the former mayor's office, since
the market building used to be the original city hall of Toronto.
The building has undergone several transitions, and the two side
wings were removed to make way for a steel-girdered shed built in
1904 that was modeled after the Victoria Train Station in London.
From the former mayor's office we had a perfect view of the market
and we also had a beautiful vista of the downtown skyscrapers and
the famous Flatiron Building to the west, and St. Lawrence Hall
to the north. Bruce took us down the stairs in the market hall itself
and shared various tidbits of history with us. The shoreline of
Lake Ontario used to be right at Front Street, and after landfill
was added, the Esplanade became the waterfront, and today several
hundred meters of additional landfill have expanded the city's territory
to a new waterfront.
Under Bruce's guidance we started our tour of the shops which include
bakeries, butcher shops, fish mongers, fruit stands, delis, dessert
places and specialty vendors of all kinds. The first place he took
us to was a bakery that also serves lunches, and we got a delicious
taste treat of smoked salmon and backbacon, each on a small piece
of bread. I am not usually a big fish eater, but this savoury morcel
was delicious. At another store we got to sample "Indian candy"
- smoked salmon cured in maple syrop. What a treat!
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Downttown skyscrapers and Flatiron
Building |
St. Lawrence Market |
We walked by some of the butcher shops, many of which have been
in the same family for generations. I admired the creatively presented
cuts of pork loin stuffed with spinach, cheese and bacon, a perfect
solution for a non-chef like me - just stick it in the oven and
pull out a delicious gourmet meal.
After a brief tour outside the building where Bruce explained the
building's history and early Toronto society to us, we went into
the lower level, where all the dessert shops, fruit stalls and specialty
vendors are located. We got several more samples: a huge variety
of delicious honeys from New Zealand, a sampling of speciality jellies
and jams, tender white chocolate truffles that just melt in your
mouth, and for dessert - after all these sweat treats - Nutella-filled
crepes. All the samples we received were utterly delicious.
Bruce took us into the bowels of the building, today mostly used
for storage and refrigeration, but in previous times these areas
were the men's and women's jails. Bruce explained that in the 1850s
women had no rights and many men simply stuck their wives in prison,
especially after child-birth or during menopause, when they got
a little cranky. The iron hooks that prisoners were chained to are
still visible on the walls.
The basement is also decorated with a number of murals that explain
Toronto's history. As the official historian of the St. Lawrence
Market and a well-known columnist of the St. Lawrence Community
Bulletin, Bruce is actually depicted on the mural. About 15 historic
plaques throughout a variety of buildings in the downtown area provide
insight into noteworthy past events and are titled "A Bruce
Bell History Project". So there is no doubt that this is a
real expert, even a local celebrity.
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Truffles galore |
Some New Zealand honey? |
Nutella-filled crepes |
Just outside the St. Lawrence Market used to be the terminus of
the Underground Railroad, the pier where thousands of the former
American slaves arrived after having made their secret passage from
the American south to Rochester and on to freedom in Toronto. It's
amazing how much history there is, even in a comparably young city
such as Toronto, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Bruce's unique
stories.
From the St. Lawrence Market building we walked north through a
courtyard to another former City Hall of Toronto by the name of
St. Lawrence Hall. It was the former city hall of the City of York,
that was officially renamed the city of Toronto (an Indian word
for "meeting place") in 1856. St. Lawrence Hall is a beautiful
classical building, and Bruce took us inside to show us the ballroom,
the most well-preserved original ballroom in Canada. The chandelier
is original, was originally lit with coal gas and today is illuminated
with natural gas.
This was the heart of Toronto's elite WASP (white / Anglo-Saxon
/ Protestant) society during the 1800s and Bruce shed more light
on the many behavioural norms of the time. Women were not considered
persons and could not walk on the street by themselves or accompanied
by any man other than their husband. Men had to defend their wives'
honour in duels and sometimes ended up having to shoot their best
friend as a result of a harmless (by today's standards) misunderstanding.
The city and country were run by English noblemen, and Catholic
immigrants from Ireland, arriving in masses after the potato famine
of 1849, were despised by the local ruling class.
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St. Lawrence Hall |
Ballroom |
Detail of door |
As a result, the Catholics were segregated, but they did receive
a spot inside St. Lawrence Hall, a big room called St. Patrick's
Hall, where they were allowed to congregate since they were barred
from entering the ballroom which was reserved for the WASP elite.
Irish Catholics had to enter St. Patrick's Hall through a back staircase
since they weren't allowed to mix with the English aristocracy.
The portion on the northeast side of St. Lawrence Hall housing St.
Patrick's Hall incidentally collapsed in 1967 and was completely
rebuilt.
After St. Lawrence Hall we walked through a beautiful Victorian
Garden outside of St. James Cathedral, Toronto's largest house of
worship, and the 5th church in the present location. Bruce took
us inside and shared more historical information with us, about
the original British settlers of Toronto and ruling elite of the
times, which included the famous Bishop Strachan, the creator of
St. James Cathedral. Bruce showed us the various stained glass windows
that adorn the church, all of which were crafted at different times.
Especially stunning are the Tiffany stained glass windows on the
east side which have a particularly intense coloration.
St. James Cathedral marked the end of our culinary and historic
tour of the St. Lawrence Market area. We had received a great introduction
to Toronto's history and enjoyed the diverse culinary delicacies
of Toronto's greatest market. Bruce's entertaining and informative
lessons on a time in Toronto's history when women and men were segregated,
when society was strictly regimented by expectations of etiquette
and social status, and when Irish and English weren't allowed to
mix made me realize how incredibly far Toronto has come in the last
150 years.
Bruce Bell
offers other interesting tours about Toronto's Distillery District,
its Art Deco skyscrapers and a tour called "Comfort and Steam"
that takes you through the Fairmount Royal York Hotel, Union Station,
the Skydome and the Air Canada Centre, among other places. Considering
everything that I learned in the St. Lawrence Market tour, I hope
to have a chance to catch another one of Bruce's tours and broaden
my local knowledge of this city in the near future.
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Victorian Garden |
St. James Cathedral |
Stained glass windows |
Useful Books:
Here is Bruce's brand-new book about Toronto
Useful Links:
Tourism
Toronto: Toronto's official destination website
Heritage
Toronto: Explore Toronto's historic buildings
St. Lawrence
Market: The market's official website
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