July 9, 2004 -- Sandwiched between Toronto's dull docklands and the city's businesslike downtown, a ferment of creativity is bubbling up in an old brewery, the Distillery District.
To get to the Distillery District from the center of Toronto, take the occasional #72B or 172 TTC buses from either the ferry dock or Union Station downtown, or take the much more frequent #504 streetcar from King subway station to King and Parliament streets, take a right on Parliament, walk three blocks to Mill and take a left on Mill.
Reinvented from (what else?) a Victorian-era distillery, the complex of brick buildings holds avant-garde design shops, dozens of artists' studios and a handful of restaurants. On Sundays, a farmer's market serves up fresh Ontario strawberries, butter tarts (think of pecan pies, but without the pecans) and hot French toast in the main courtyard.
I visited the Distillery District on a sparkling Sunday, fresh off the ferry from Rochester. Toronto's #172 bus took me straight from the dock to the District, where a gate marks the beginning of the pedestrian-only zone.
There are guided tours from the District's visitor "centre" (as the Canadians spell it), but you have to arrange them in advance, so I grabbed a C$2 brochure instead and just started wandering. Built in 1832 when the city was still called York, the District is Toronto's best example of intact early-Victorian architecture, and it's been the site of dozens of films.
The first shop I stumbled into was a winner: Lileo (www.lileo.ca/about.htm) is as much gallery as shop, where nearly every piece of clothing comes with a bit of biography about the small-scale designer who made it. For a place offering a C$580 Haruki Murakami soccer ball, Lileo is tremendously relaxed and friendly - they'll let babies play on the 'light fountain,' an interactive sculpture in the front of the shop where patterns of light follow the placement of three medium-sized rocks.
Although galleries dot the district, the highest concentration of art is in the Case Goods Warehouse building, a long rectangular structure with more than 40 working artists' studios, all at least sometimes open to the public. Art here isn't just painting and photography; jewelry designers are prominent, and there's one first-floor furniture designer with some pretty radical ideas.
Painting and photography are well-represented at galleries like Monte Clark (www.monteclarkgallery.com), where I saw an intelligent selection of contemporary art that wouldn't have been out of place in a top gallery in New York's West Chelsea, and at the Sandra Ainsley Gallery (www.sandraainsleygallery.com), devoted to modern glass art.
One of Toronto's top new restaurants, Perigee, is in the District, but that was way beyond my price range. I lunched instead at 1832, the area's budget choice, serving up pizzas and pastas in a classy atmosphere for around C$10. My thin-crust pizza was huge, but not quite blackened enough for my taste; still, it was fine for the price. Ravioli, on the other hand, were delicious, fresh and firm. I topped off lunch with some very fruity mango sorbet from SOMA Chocolate. They not only make a wicked spiced hot chocolate and sell some bizarre artisinal chocolate confections, they offer fresh homemade gelato and sorbet as well.
The Distillery District is more avant-garde than Yorkville, and prettier than Queen Street West, Toronto's other 'artsy' areas. And yes, they still make booze at the Distillery, at the Mill Street Brewery (https://millstreetbrewery.com/), where you can taste their all-organic pilsner.
Summer Sundays, when the farmer's market is running, the galleries are open and there's often a festival on, are the best time to visit the Distillery District. To see what's going on there, go to www.thedistillerydistrict.com/home.html; to arrange tours, go to https://distillerytours.ca/tours.htm.
Let's Go JetsGo
Toronto is more accessible than ever from the US, thanks to several Canadian low-fare airlines keeping prices down for everyone. On my way back to New York, I flew on JetsGo (www.jetsgo.ca), which I recommended in a previous column for their fares of less than $200, including taxes.
JetsGo is one of those honest, friendly, no-frills airlines. They use older MD-80 planes, but they've cleaned them spic-and-span and spruced them up with jewel tones. Their service is polite, if not as perky as JetBlue or Southwest, and on flights of three hours or longer you can rent a digital video player for $10 that's packed with 20 movies. Alas, on short flights like Toronto-NYC you're left staring at your shoes.
The movie rental scheme shows one key aspect of JetsGo's strategy: they charge extra for everything other than the flight. Want a bag of chips, or a soda? You'll have to fork over a dollar or two, up to $5 for a sandwich. That sounds stingy, but it makes sense to me: JetsGo keeps base fares low, and asks you to pay for exactly the level of service you want. They'll even kick you some more legroom for a surcharge. I'd fly them again to Toronto.