CANADA: TORONTO, THE TRINITY COLLEGE NEIGHBORHOOD

September 28, 2018

(NOTE: The only advantage of not being able to travel because of the COVID pandemic is that it gives me some space to go back and catch up on recording some of our previous travels that I had not been able to get to. This is one such trip.)

In September 2018 Bob had a Friday business meeting in Toronto, Canada. I wanted to go along, so we decided to add an extra day, then fly home on Sunday. We took a red-eye flight from LAX to Toronto, arriving at 6:46 am. We had time to check into our hotel and shower before heading to Bob's meeting, which was held at Trinity College, part of the University of Toronto.

While Bob was in his meeting, I had a couple of hours to wander around. I started by going off the campus to see what was nearby. 

1. The Church of the Redeemer is an Anglican Church that was built in 1879. Sadly, the church administration had to sell of some of its land in the 1980s, and a massive Four Seasons Hotel was built on the property. However, the money from the sale allowed the church to remain solvent and to complete necessary renovations.

It doesn't have a particularly spectacular interior, but it does have some really beautiful stained glass windows. They were gifts to the church during the early 20th century.

The central window behind the altar depicts Christ on the Road to Emmaus.

These are the windows on either side of the above window. They show scenes from the life of Christ and parables: Christ and the children, Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, and the Good Samaritan.

There are also depictions of a woman feeding the poor from a basket, Christ with children, and a woman draping an old man with a length of cloth ("naked and ye clothed me").

Other scenes from Christ's life are depicted in windows around the chapel perimeter, including the Nativity, the calling of Peter and Andrew (shown with their boat and nets), and Christ with the rich young man.

There are also scenes showing Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, Christ and the Centurion, and an angel (seated on an empty tomb) announcing the resurrection.

My favorite window in the church was this one. Two young soldiers in World War I are being watched over by Christ.

A dedicatory plaque notes that the window honors a 19-year-old soldier who accidentally drowned in 1915 at Kapuskasing Internment Camp (built on the shores of the Kapuskasing River, where this young lieutenant must have drowned). I had never heard of this camp. Apparently it was one of the largest of Canada's internment camps and held over 1,300 German, Austrian, and Turkish prisoners--the majority of which were Canadian residents of Ukrainian descent.

Such tender expressions.

2. A few blocks from the church is the Royal Ontario Museum, which is affectionately known as the ROM. It is a crazy piece of architecture. The main building was finished in 1914, and an addition was completed in 1932. 

The geometric protuberance you can't miss in the photos below is called "The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal." I believe Lee-Chin, a Canadian gazillionaire, financed the new addition, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind (who also designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and part of the Denver Art Museum).

Completed in 2007, the Crystal has been a very controversial addition, with some calling in "oppressive, angsty and hellish," and others praising its unique design.

The ROM is a one-stop-shopping museum, covering art, world culture, and natural history. It is the largest and most-visited museum in Canada and one of the largest museums in North America. When Bob and I were reunited later in the day, I brought him back here to look around, but with 6,000,000 items and 40 galleries, we only saw a fraction of what is there.

Having spent some time riding camels, we are always drawn to them in museums.

This guy was one of my favorites. He isn't someone (something?) I would want to meet after dark in the woods.

One of the reasons the museum was expanded in the 1930s was to provide a place for four totem poles, the largest of which stands 81 feet and is the tallest known totem pole of the 19th century.  It is named the "Pole of Sagaween" and was carved by indigenous peoples to commemorate a local chief by that name. I stood on a central landing and filmed this video, first looking upwards and then moving down the pole to the floor.

Here is a view of the top 20 feet or so:

The smaller totem poles are still impressively tall. This is the top of the "Shaking Pole of Kw'axsuu."

I liked this diorama of a Mohawk family group.  Look closely. Do you notice anything strange about it?

The woman is balancing a camera on a tripod, the man on the left is wearing a modern t-shirt and reaching for a drill, and the standing man on the right is wearing earbuds and has a digital device in his hands.

Information at the site states, "The updated installation of the A Mohawk Family Group diorama incorporates new objects and new imagery to add cultural and historical perspective to counter the old stereotyped presentation. . . . New objects and art works represent modern life in Iroquoian communities.  [It] reminds us all that First Nations cultures remain vital today."

Here is another of my favorite displays. It is hard to see because I took the picture through the glass, but this is a coat made of eider feathers by the Inuits in the early 20th century. Ingenious. 

The next photos come from the Art Deco, Byzantine-inspired rotunda, part of the 1933 addition. The mosaics and stained glass are stunning.

Have you ever wondered what a million dollars looks like? The ROM has a gold coin on display with a face value of $1 million.  It weighs 100 kg and is made of 99.999% pure gold. With the fluctuating price of gold, it might be worth even more than a million. In fact, in 2017 it was valued at $4 million! In 2007, the Guiness Book of World Records certified that this is the world's largest gold coin. That's Queen Elizabeth on the front.

The coin gets its name, "Big Maple Leaf,"  from the back side.

In another wing, I was excited to see a dodo skeleton.  I've heard a a lot about dodos, which became extinct in about 1693, but I think this is the first skeleton I've seen.

My personal favorite display in this section was this bird from East Africa called a "shoebill."  His bill looks like a comfy pair of loafers.

Did you know that Toronto has been named the "Raccoon Capital of the World"? One estimate puts the city's raccoon population at over 100,000 raccoons! They first invaded in 2002 when Toronto started an "organic bin" program. It was like an open smorgasbord for the raccoons. Sadly, the only raccoon we saw was hanging out in the ROM--and it was the taxidermied kind.

This is the world's largest flower. (It may grow up to 40 inches in diameter and weigh up to 22 pounds.) Called Rafflesia, they only "bloom" for a few days, and during that time they emit a foul odor to attract pollinating flies. I don't think they would make a very good wedding bouquet.

I like the juxtaposition of the "Baby Nursing Area" with the Assyrian "lamassu," a protective diety with a human's head, a bull's body, and a bird's wings. With it as the gatekeeper, I think I would feel safe taking my baby into the back room.

I could have spent a lot more time looking at the art, but we were running out of time. Check out this gorgeous carving from the Netherlands, late 1300s or early 1400s.  It would have been placed behind the church altar.

Here is a close-up of the center panel. I like those miniature angels in the right foreground, the oversized boy blowing some kind of horn in the window behind the sweet nativity scene, and the curious shepherds on the right.

The right panel shows the three kings/wisemen coming to pay their respects and drop off gifts. They look like they walked off the stage of one of Shakespeare's plays.

3.  Bob and I like to visit notable universities, and lucky for us, the reason we were in Toronto was because he had a meeting at Trinity College, which is part of the University of Toronto.

Trinity College, founded in 1851, serves about 1,800 undergraduate and 100 postgraduate students. As of 2020, Trinity has produced 43 Rhodes Scholars, an unusually high number for such a small institution. Its campus and facilities feel very British, or at least very Ivy-like.

The founder, Johannes Strachan, was the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto. His stern image can be found in the Trinity quad. He is introduced with the not-so-humble words: "Pause a moment, friend, and look around. All that you see began as a gleam in this man's eye."

I much prefer the dedicatory plaques found on the benches in the quad to Strachan's memorial.

My favorite. Gordon Bruce Cummings and I share a birth year, which makes it even better.

We were there in early fall, and hydrangeas were everywhere on campus.

There is something so enduring and calming about a stone building.

Instead of gargoyles, the faces of academics (professors? deans?) embellish the wooden door above, keeping watch over any who walk by. I suppose some students might say this is the same thing as gargoyles.

I'm not sure what this metal chicken is doing on the window sill, but it is very cute.

We stopped in the Gothic-style chapel, which is 100 feet long and 47 feet high

Two more wonderfully expressive carvings:

A memorial tablet in the chapel is dedicated to members of Trinity College who were killed in "The Two Great Wars."

We were invited to have lunch with the students and faculty in Strachan Hall.

See the tapestry in the photo above? Here is a close-up. It is a medieval tapestry depicting the Queen of Sheba arriving in the court of King Solomon and is believed to have been woven in Flanders in the 16th century.

Five large stained glass windows represent different periods of history.  That's Biblical David on the left, representing the Hebrew world. On the right, Shakespeare represents the Renaissance.

Campus dining sure has gotten better since I went to college. The food here is "locally sourced and ethically produced."  (And tasty--don't forget tasty.)

I love this clock and wonder if the caption at the bottom refers to finals week.

After a light lunch we continued our stroll around campus and noticed advertisements for an upcoming a book sale in Seely Hall, which was originally a reading room for the college library but is now an events center. The book sale is an international event (it raises over $100,000 for the library annually).

Since we couldn't take advantage of the book sale, we used Seely Hall for a photo backdrop instead.

4.  After walking around the Trinity Campus and exploring the Royal Ontario Museum, we were hungry again. We walked to a nearby restaurant appropriately named Utopia. Bob and I LOVE poutine, a French-Canadian dish of french fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy. It is even better when there are options for toppings. We had two versions: one with shaved roasted lamb in lamb gravy, and another with "peameal" (what we called "Canadian") bacon. Nirvana.

Utopia also offered a burrito filled with smoked lamb and brie cheese. How does one say no to Utopia?

What a way to end a day.