The Best Big City Place To Stand In Toronto

One of the most interesting places to stand and gaze at the financial fortresses of downtown commercial Toronto is on the northeast corner of Bay and King streets.  You can look around in all directions and see nothing but tall buildings (including First Canadian Place, the tallest skyscraper in Canada) all around, with an effect rivaling that of Manhattan's financial district surrounding Wall street.  The canyons created by the tall buildings produce a windy effect on the local micro-climate, and the sun is blocked out for much of the day.  If you want to see what such a high urban setting is like, this is definitely the place to stand in slack-jawed wonder.  More than this, though, this particular corner (actually just a little bit to the north, say about ten steps or so, on Bay street) features a really impressive view of the CN Tower:

I had presumed that this view had been forever lost in the face of continuing high rise development along the lakeshore, but the signature feature of the Toronto skyline was still exposed as of February 2014, framed ever so nicely by the Toronto Dominion Centre and it's neighbor, which I assume is the Standard Life building (all banks look the same to me).  The CN Tower is definitely one of those things that most people do (and should) come to see when touring Toronto, but most visitors never seem to give it a second thought when it comes to views of the structure itself.  It seems to blend in, albeit as an essential element, of city skyline shots, especially those taken from Lake Ontario, but the way it silently dominates even land side views of the skyline is even more impressive.  When I was growing up, I remember being able to locate Toronto from even as far away as Rattlesnake Point on the Niagara Escarpment near Milton, from the height of land on the Oak Ridges Moraine to the north, or most impressively, from atop Queenston Heights alongside the Niagara River.  That particular view had always struck me as being the mythical vantage point of Canadian sovereignty, an emblem of the might of Canadian rail power which now extends from Ocean to Ocean to Gulf, all within the view of one of the most important battlefields of Canadian history and just yards from the American frontier.  Sure, it's an overly romantic and silly sort of patriotism, but...

Let's just say it felt good to see it still standing there, probably not even noticed by half the people in the city who were otherwise too busy looking down at their shoes, the pavement, or their smartphones, people too busy to look around and be happy and enjoy this immense gathering of humanity of all shapes and sizes merged into one working, tolerant whole.  This viewpoint, taken at one the most artificial and busy vantages of Ontario, a province otherwise noted for incredibly vast stretches of wild land, probably never even stirred so much as a smile in the somber people milling about me when I took the photograph.  That's just fine, because despite all that, I have to say that I felt pretty good being in the heart of a place that has so much more to do.  Toronto is photogenic, and she does have some pretty amazing views.