Culture Facts

Culture is a fundamental part of life in Toronto and plays a central role in the economic and social development of the city.

Culture is deeply rooted in Toronto’s neigbourhoods. Local festivals and performances occur year round. The city’s diverse international festivals are the norm in a city where more than 100 languages are spoken everyday.

Toronto’s cultural sector is supported by four universities and four community colleges.  Every year, Toronto hosts an estimated 30,000 international students. The city is also home to the National Ballet School  and the Royal Conservatory of Music, two centres of excellence that are among the best schools in the world in their respective fields.

Toronto is the most-visited tourist destination in Canada welcoming 18 million visitors a year. A recent study by leading cultural theorists Richard Florida and Meric Gertler found that, Toronto is a city-region with an excellent overall ranking across the categories of diversity, creativity, technology and talent, compared with other Canadian cities. Close to 60 percent of Toronto’s workforce are employed in knowledge-based businesses and 58 percent of the labour force have earned a post-secondary degree, diploma or certificate.

With the Culture Plan for the Creative City,  Toronto City Council has endorsed the key role culture plays in Toronto. The City’s 2008 Agenda for Prosperity makes creativity a central pillar of the City’s productivity and growth strategy.

Exploring Toronto Culture

Sharp Centre for Design, Ontario College of Art &Design: Photo by interiorimages.ca

Architecture

In Toronto you’ll find an eclectic mix of architecture, everything from the bold and new, such as architect Daniel Libeskind’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum to our wealth of heritage buildings and districts such as the Distillery District.

Toronto is in the midst of a Cultural Renaissance having inaugurated an unprecedented number of new cultural facilities. Doors Open Toronto (North America’s first such festival) is an annual event each May that inspires hundreds of thousands of people to explore the city with free access to architecturally or culturally significant buildings.  Since it began in 2000, Doors Open Toronto  has attracted more than 1 million participants.

• Toronto has 10 areas designated as heritage conservation districts.
• The City of Toronto lists some 7,000 properties on its Inventory of Heritage Properties (a database of architecturally, culturally and historically significant structures).
• Toronto’s historic Distillery District, the location for more than 800 film and television productions in the past decade, is the most popular film location in Canda. Films that have been shot there include Chicago, X-Men, Against the Ropes and The Hurricane.

Art

Toronto is a city that revels in artistic expression. The City’s annual Nuit Blanche all-night contemporary art crawl attracts about 1 million revellers.  Home to numerous public and private galleries, Toronto is an art lover’s paradise.  Art is on display on the streets as well as in galleries; the City of Toronto owns and maintains more than 200 works of public art .

• The Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario  houses the largest public collection of works by Henry Moore in the world.
• More than 40 per cent of the Art Gallery of Ontario ’s collection vividly documents the development of Canada’s art heritage, from pre-Confederation to current times, including one of the largest and finest Inuit art collections in the world.
• The oldest piece of public art in Toronto dates back to 1870 and new pieces are appearing on the street all the time.

Dance

Toronto is home to the National Ballet of Canada and a host of exciting independent dance companies. In Toronto, you’ll find a mix of classical and contemporary dance from every corner of the world.

• Toronto has 50 dance companies.
• The National Ballet of Canada , the country’s premiere dance company, has been part of the Toronto dance scene for more than 50 years.
• Toronto has great places for dance.  A number of  Toronto venues are specifically designed for dancing. Venues include the spectacular new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the Premier Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre Theatre, the Sony Centre and the Winchester Theatre.
• Catch some of the exciting dance festivals in Toronto including the Harbourfront Dance Series , fFIDA  and Dance Works .

Dancer Samiksha Nayak is an accomplished graduate of Toronto's reknowned Sampradaya Dance Academy founded by Lata Pada

Design

With the internationally recognized Ontario College of Art and Design, and the largest design workforce in Canada, Toronto is well placed among the world’s leading design cities.  The Design Exchange  is Toronto’s design showcase featuring rotating exhibits and a collection of Canadian design.

• Toronto has the largest design workforce in Canada and the third largest design workforce in North America.
• There are 25,000 designers in Toronto working in six design disciplines — architecture, landscape architecture, graphic, interior, industrial and fashion design.

Festivals

Festivals take place in Toronto year round.  Some are neighbourhood based like the Taste of the Danforth , others like Winterlicious take place across the city. Every summer Caribana draws visitors from all over North America to Toronto’s waterfront and to the Toronto Islands. PRIDE is another huge attraction.

• Founded in 1967 Caribana attracts as many as one million visitors to Toronto every year.
• More than one million visitors sample the cuisine of Danforth Street every year at the Taste of the Danforth festival.
• Toronto’s PRIDE celebration was founded in 1980: in 2014 the city will host World Pride

Film

Welcome to Hollywood North. Torontonians appreciate film and we have the festivals and screenings to prove it! The Toronto International Film Festival  is the largest public film festival in the world. Other festivals include Hot Docs, which focuses on documentary film, Sprockets, a children’s film festival, and Inside Out, a cornucopia of gay and lesbian themed films.

• More than 100 films premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival .
• Toronto is the dominant city for production, post-production and distribution in Canada, followed by Montreal. In 2004, close to a billion dollars in film and television productions were shot in Toronto.
• In 2004, Toronto’s Film and Television Office issued 4,302 location filming permits for 1,502 projects.

Assembling for an impromptu drill at Fort York; Photo by Emma Corby

History

The history of the City of Toronto began in 1793 when Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe ordered the construction of a garrison on the present site of Fort York .  Human activity in the Toronto area extends back thousands of years before that.  Major museums include the Royal Ontario Museum and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art . The City of Toronto also operates neighbourhood museums  throughout the city.

• With a collection of six million objects, the Royal Ontario Museum  is the largest museum in Toronto.
• The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art has the largest collection of ancient American ceramics on display in Canada.
• Fort York houses the largest collection of War of 1812 buildings in Canada.

Music

Toronto’s music scene is as diverse as the city itself. Toronto is home to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian Opera Company as well as to indie rock legends like Feist and Broken Social Scene. Toronto summers come alive with blues and outdoor jazz festivals. Music venues include the Molson Amphitheatre , Roy Thomson Hall and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Popular neighborhood venues such as the Music Garden are scattered throughout the city; Queen Street West boasts one of the most vibrant live music strips in the world.

• Toronto firms dominated the national sound recording industry in 2000-2001, despite having fewer sound recording firms than Montreal (96 versus 108). Toronto’s share of the total national sound recording revenue was even higher at 85.8%, compared with 11.6% for Montreal and 1.2% for Vancouver.
• Tafelmusik , Canada’s award-winning baroque orchestra, was founded in 1979 and has achieved international stature performing more than 70 concerts a year at home in Toronto and touring extensively around the world.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Toronto-born Peter Oundjian

Reading

Reading in Toronto starts with the Toronto Public Library , the busiest library in North America. The library system offers a wealth of reading programs at its 99 locations.  Toronto is also home to Word on the Street and the International Festival of Authors .

• 60 per cent of Torontonians own a library card.
• In 2001-2 seven of every ten dollars made in book publishing in Canada went to Toronto.
• Since its inception in 1974, International Readings has hosted more than 4,500 authors from 100 countries, including thirteen Nobel Laureates.

Theatre

As the third largest English language theatre market in the world (behind New York and London), Toronto loves theatre.  Major theatres can be found in every part of the city and in the downtown entertainment district.  In the summer, Toronto’s parks come alive with outdoor theatre.

• Toronto has 123 not for profit performing arts groups.
• In spring 2006, the $27 million stage production Lord of the Rings premiered in Toronto; it was the biggest stage production ever mounted.
• Conceived and originally staged at a Queen Street West club, The Drowsy Chaperone was remounted at the Toronto Fringe Festival before moving to Broadway where it ultimately captured five 2006 Tony Awards!
• Every year Toronto based CanStage produces an outdoor Shakespeare production in Toronto’s High Park each summer called the “CanStage TD Dream in High Park” which is now in its 23rd season.

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