It's been pretty hot in Toronto these past few days, and I mean hot, like 35 degrees and what feels like 100% humidity, hot. I would like to be out doing something, but the moment I walk out the door I lose all energy.
Just across the lake is Toronto Island, which is a great place to spend the day. Lake Ontario surrounds this massive parkland. There are very few houses and actual permanent dwellers of the island and you have to take a ferry to get there. It's a lovely get away from the city and everything about it is super quaint. The folks that do have houses there lease them from the city and as the leases are about to expire in coming years there's talk of developing it. Toronto has a lot of problems when it comes to city planning and developing, but if they did anything to changed the island anymore than they already have I think there would be no doubt that we would win world's worst city. We will have to wait a few more years to know what is going to happen, but there is talk of upsizing the teeny, tiny airport that is there to an international airport. Yuck.
For now, I will show you something wonderful that once was on the island- Hotel Hanlan. I wish decision makers could be mindful of the regret of things we have lost in the last 100 years or less, as to not make the same mistakes over and over.
Hotel Hanlan was built in the mid 1800s, and it has a sort of Eastern look, although it is considered Second Empire in style. After a fire destroyed part of it in 1909 it was torn down rather than salvaged and the damaged parts reconstructed (that happens a lot here).
Moral of the story? Two things: I want to go relax at Hotel Hanlan on Toronto Island; Toronto sucks for historic preservation.
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