Toronto
— — a city counted from the lakeward edge.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest city in Canada, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The CN Tower still measures the skyline at 553 meters; the streetcars still run on Queen and King; the ferries still cross to the Islands in summer. A city of neighborhoods more than of monuments: Kensington Market, Greektown on the Danforth, Little Italy, Roncesvalles, and Chinatown counting Spadina south to Dundas.
Toronto, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Toronto is the capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada, with about 2.79 million residents in the city proper and over 6.4 million in the metropolitan area at the 2021 census. It sits on the north shore of Lake Ontario, opposite Rochester, New York. The city covers 630 square kilometers and rises from the lakeshore through the Don Valley to the Oak Ridges Moraine. The CN Tower, completed in 1976, was the world's tallest free-standing structure for thirty-two years at 553 meters.
Lake Ontario defines the city's southern edge and most of its weather. The Toronto Islands, Centre, Ward's, Algonquin, and Hanlan's Point, sit about a kilometer offshore and are reached by a ten-minute ferry from the Jack Layton Terminal. The lake is the easternmost and smallest of the Great Lakes by surface area but the deepest in average depth at 86 meters. Ice rarely covers the harbor in winter; the lake holds enough heat to keep the shoreline warmer than the inland suburbs.
Toronto rewards a neighborhood-by-neighborhood pace rather than a checklist. The TTC streetcar network covers most of downtown; the subway connects the rest. Kensington Market and Chinatown share a square mile west of University Avenue. The Distillery District, in restored Victorian industrial buildings, sits east of the core. Late spring through early autumn is the busiest stretch; the city quiets in February when the lake wind sharpens. The PATH, an underground walkway system covering 30 kilometers, keeps the downtown core navigable in cold weather.