Hello from Toronto - A Culinary Tour of the St. Lawrence Market
& An Exploration of Historic Tour
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.