26-30 Toronto Facts
26. Toronto has a building where the windows are made with 2,500 oz of gold. – Source
27. In 1997, Toronto’s Seaton House homeless shelter became the first “wet shelter” wherein clients are served a glass of wine once an hour unless staff determines that they are too inebriated to continue. – Source
28. Toronto used to have an alternative university where a B.A. cost $25, an M.A. $50 and a Ph.D. $100. It ended badly. – Source
29. During WWII, Casa Loma, a Spanish Gothic castle tourist site in Toronto, was used to conceal work on sonar device for U-Boat detection. People involved were dressed like workmen, which let them come and go as required right under the public’s nose. – Source
30. Since 2011, the City of Toronto has been dumping most of its garbage at an Ontario landfill directly beside First Nations territory. – Source
31-35 Toronto Facts
31. The Toronto Eaton Centre is the busiest mall in North America and attracts more annual visitors than Disney Land and Disney World combined, the Las Vegas Strip or Central Park. – Source
32. An AI developed by the University of Toronto wrote its own Christmas Carol. – Source
33. The “Toronto Cocktail” was first recorded in 1922, at a time when alcohol was illegal in Ontario. – Source
34. In 2011, an average of 300 911 calls per day in Toronto was “butt-dials,” comprising about 10% of all calls. – Source
35. A recent study from the University of Toronto suggests that for developers to generate a reasonable return on a standard rental property development, units must be priced over $2,200 well above average condo rental rates and more than double the average affordable rent level. – Source
36-40 Toronto Facts
36. The construction of the Skydome Stadium (now Rogers Centre) in Toronto was financed mostly with public money. It cost $970 Million dollars in 2015 money to build but eventually was sold off for a tenth of that by the Ontario Government after also paying off $600 Million in debt. – Source
37. The silver maple tree in Toronto that inspired the Canadian patriotic song “The Maple Leaf Forever” fell in 2013, but some of the wood was made into two guitars that are passed on to different musicians. – Source
38. Toronto Zoo is paying around $1 Million per year to “rent” pandas and the money goes to Panda Conservation efforts in China. – Source
39. There is a shoe museum in Toronto. The museum collects, researches, preserves, and exhibits footwear from around the world with over 13,500 items from throughout history, as well as the present. – Source
40. The 401 highway passing through Toronto is the busiest in the world, and one stretch has 18 lanes of traffic. – Source
