by Global Urbanist

Created on: May 25, 2010

Fun Facts about Toronto  

-Toronto became the largest city in Canada, surpassing Montreal in the 1970's.

-The CN tower was built as a telecommunication tower so signals would not be blocked by the financial skyscrapers being built in the downtown.   

-According to the 2006 demographics census of downtown Toronto the largest ethnic group identifies with British heritage... the second largest is Canadian.  

-Cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario is used to air condition several office towers in the downtown.  

-Ernest Hemingway briefly wrote for the Toronto Star newspaper in the 1920's.   

-Superman's co-creator Joe Shuster was a Toronto native that brought the influences of his hometown to the comic.  Newspaper names The Toronto Daily Star (The Toronto Star present day) and Global and Mail were meshed to bring about Clark Kent's employer the Daily Planet.  

-Mountain Dew in Toronto is caffeine free because of a regulation that was recently eased that said only cola's can have caffeine.  

-Most pop is flavoured with sugar instead of corn syrup giving it a slightly different taste.  

-Toronto is in one of the regions in Canada where most people purchase milk in bags at the grocery store.  

-The street car tracks are a unique gauge because they match the old carriage gauge.  This was so in winter snow carriages could follow the street car tracks.  

-The subway runs on the standard railroad gauge tracks which makes them similar in size to those of New York City.  The standard railroad width the subway cars also make them the largest in the world.  

-Subway scenes in New York City are often filmed in the unused lower Bay Station in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood.

-Queen Street crosses Victoria street one block east of Yonge to form  intersection of Queen and Victoria which is the monarch both streets were named after.  

-Attention to bilingualism has resulted in street signs like "ONE WAY", "YIELD", and "DO NOT ENTER" that lack the wording and just have the symbols.  STOP signs however still have S-T-O-P written on them.  

-A flashing green light means you can drive straight or make a left.  

-Toronto's Pearson Airport has night restrictions on different aircraft depending on their noise level.  Between 12:30am and 6:30am scheduled flights are not allowed to take-off or land.  

-The kilometers of parkland running up the Humber and Don rivers

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