May 2024

TOURS

Touring Toronto for 30 years!

We're excited to kick off our 2024 Tours season this month, celebrating 30 years of exploring Toronto's iconic landmarks and hidden gems. While you can choose from 60 great experiences, our tours offer more than sightseeing. Join us to uncover the stories that shaped Toronto's character and for conversations featuring new voices on places sometimes little remarked, but significant to modern city life.

With a range of formats—from guided walks to bus tours—you'll find something that fits your style. Upcoming tours are featured below. As spots are limited and registration is required, we suggest you sign up soon.

Skyscrapers and Shorelines

NEW FOR 2024



$107.83 FEE ($100.00 ticket + $7.83 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Victory Building (80 Richmond Street West)

Discover the rich history and design behind Toronto’s changing skylines and shorelines on this full-day bus tour. You will visit great locations like the Art Deco gem, the Victory Building, once a ghost tower that fell victim to the Great Depression and lay unfinished for almost eight years.

This tour includes behind-the-scenes access and conversations with those involved in some of the featured projects like team members from Dream and ERA Architects.

Changing Chinatown

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Huron Square (Huron Street & Dundas Street West)

Discover the past and present along Spadina Avenue; the shifting demographics that saw a thriving Jewish community transition to Toronto’s Chinatown; the advocacy that cancelled destructive expressway plans and now guides efforts to preserve the neighbourhood’s cultural heritage; and the evolving definition of public space and art that grounds the community and its shops, homes, and businesses.

Don't miss this great experience offered for both Asian Heritage Month and Jewish Heritage Month!

Roncesvalles Roots

NEW FOR 2024



$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Dundas Roncesvalles Peace Garden

What's in a name? Find out on this interactive street theatre tour and discover the curious history behind the Roncesvalles neighbourhood (hint: it's not a French name), and explore the art, architecture, and local community efforts that define this thriving community.

Monumental Interventions

NEW FOR 2024



$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Northwest corner of Nathan Phillips Square

Explore the colonial legacies of Toronto's statues and street names. From painting statues, to floating them down the Don River, to celebrating Indigenous languages and presence in the urban environment, you'll learn about artist-led engagements with, and creative resistance to, public forms of memory in Toronto.

Rail Lands

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Chinese Railway Workers Memorial (9 Blue Jays Way)

Learn how the railways transformed Toronto from a small British settlement to a cosmopolitan city, tracing their role from today’s quick modern commute to their historic contributions to telecommunications and the tourism industry.

Big Stories in Little India

NEW FOR 2024



$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Northeast side of Greenwood Park (150 Greenwood Ave)

Did you know that Toronto’s first Bollywood movie theatre was on Gerrard Street East? Discover how this area—once a former industrial brickyard—became a hub for Toronto’s South Asian community in the 1970s and 1980s.

Presented by

Hidden Histories at U Of T

NEW FOR 2024

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: St George Subway (Bedford Road entrance)

Explore the fascinating architecture of the University of Toronto campus. From the adaption of 19th-century homes to innovative modern design, discover how form has driven function on campus, and how modern education incorporates historic houses and colleges.

Modern Scenes on St. Clair II

NEW FOR 2024

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: St Clair Subway Station (Pleasant Blvd entrance)

Take the modern view of St. Clair Avenue on this interactive photo walk. Bring along your camera and capture the unique lines and finishes of mid-Modern architectural gems, like the Imperial Oil Building, originally designed to be Toronto’s new City Hall in the 1950s.

Discover your Hidden History

DOORS OPEN TORONTO

Join us for this free talk offered for Doors Open Toronto. If you're keen to explore the stories of your home, street or community, get some helpful hints from our staff and learn about the resources, records, and techniques we use.

Walking with Anna Jameson

NEW FOR 2024

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: TIFF Bell Lightbox Theatre (350 King Street West)

Play your part in 1830s Toronto while following the footsteps of nineteenth-century author Anna Jameson. No acting experience or fancy accent needed. Along with the fun, you'll learn about the buildings and people she experienced while living in Toronto in 1837, from stories of Irish newcomers to the site of Toronto’s first hospital.

Garbageland

NEW FOR 2024

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Evergreen Brick Works (550 Bayview Ave)

This tour is trash! Bike the Lower Don River with us and discover how Toronto was shaped by what we throw away. We will talk trash about our man-made waterways, the hidden treasures unearthed from our mountain of filth, and the nocturnal critters that rely on our discards.

Campus and Cosmos

$9.85 FEE ($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Munk School of Global Affairs (315 Bloor Street West)

Discover how Toronto became the “centre of the universe” for astronomical research, education, and public outreach over the last 150+ years. Hear stories of the remarkable individuals, organizations, and institutions in our city that contributed to advancing the field worldwide.

It Takes a Village

$9.85 FEE($8.00 ticket + $1.85 Eventbrite transaction fee)

Start: Barbara Hall Park (519 Church Street)

Discover the stories of Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ+ community—from advocacy fueled by the Bathhouse Raids and the AIDS epidemic, to the belonging and celebration found at the City Park Apartments, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and St. Charles Tavern. Learn about efforts to strengthen the Church-Wellesley Village today and build the community for the future.

EXPLORE

Japanese Internment: Growing Community in Postwar Toronto

In this new digital story for Asian Heritage Month, discover how Japanese-Canadians, the target of race-based internment policies during the Second World War, overcame significant marginalization, discrimination, or even imprisonment. After the war, grassroots organizations worked to secure housing and employment to build a postwar community in Toronto rooted in advocacy, collective memory, and cultural preservation.

This story was researched and written by emerging historian Elizabeth Compa and made possible by the generous support of our Emerging Historians Champions:

HERITAGE TORONTO AWARDS

Open call for nominations!

DEADLINE: Sunday, July 14 | 11:59 PM

Help us celebrate the remarkable contributions of individuals and organizations to our city's cultural landscape. We invite you to submit your outstanding project for the 49th Annual Heritage Toronto Awards!

Nominations are open for three categories: Book, Built Heritage, and Public History. Don't miss your chance to be part of this prestigious event.

EMERGING HISTORIANS

Grow your career with us!

DEADLINE: Friday, May 3, 2024 | 11:59 PM

If you're great at engaging with people on our city's history, architecture, natural heritage, and more, consider joining our team in a support role as a Programs Assistant, a full-time summer contract.

Image Credits

Tour participants, Dragon's Gate Mural on Spadina Avenue, June 8, 2023. Image by Johnny Wu.

80 Richmond Restoration. Photo by Arthur Mola Photography, courtesy of Dream.

Chinatown West, Dundas and Spadina, June 1, 2019. Image by Kristen McLaughlin.

Corner of Roncesvalles Ave and Dundas Street, Image by Valentine & Sons, c. 1910. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

Equestrian Statue of King Edward VII, Queen's Park, July 10, 2022. Image by Herman Custodio.

Tour participants, Union Station, June 25, 2022. Image by Ashley Duffus.

Toronto's Naaz Cinema, Gerrard Street, 1980. Image by Erin Combs/Toronto Star Archives,

Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, circa 1910. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

St. Clair Avenue, looking east to Yonge Street, 1983. Courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.

Tour group, Saving Chinatown, July 17, 2022. Image by Ashley Duffus.

Walking with Anna Jameson tour by Sunnyside Historical Society. Courtesy of Meghan Edmonds.

Harper's Dump, November 19, 1937. Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives.

Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, 1880s. Courtesy of the University of Toronto Archives.

Tour participants, Bathhouse Raids mural, August 6, 2022. Image by Ashley Duffus.

Japanese Canadians labourers taking a break from work on Premier Hepburn’s farm, Elgin County, July 1943. Courtesy of Momoye Sugiman.

Jay Pitter accepting for A Big Vision for Little Jamaica: Black Cultural History & Mapping Process, Public History Award, October 30, 2023. Image by Herman Custodio.

Heritage Toronto tent at Emancipation on Bloor, Christie Pits, August 1, 2023.