It's Toronto - family style

Be it baseball, food, or shopping, everyone finds something to like

Author: By Alison Arnett, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, May 11, 1997

Page: M4

Section: Travel

After weeks of discussion -- Arizona too far to the right politically, Florida too traveled, Kansas too flat, New York City too expensive -- my husband lighted on Toronto. The Blue Jays had a series with the Seattle Mariners, and it was enough to draw consensus from the oldest in the group, my diehard baseball fan father, and our 11-year-old son. The rest of us fell in line with promises of theater, ethnic dining, and shopping. ``New York but cheaper,'' my husband promised the kids.

Toronto, a city of more than 4 million, still wore the drab brown and gray coat of winter when we arrived after a short flight from Boston in late April. The sky was a particularly impenetrable shade, the air chill, and the family teenager vociferous in her disappointment at leaving her friends back home. Even the bustling lobby of the the Westin Harbour Castle, with its expansive view of Lake Superior, did little to lift the apprehension my husband and I felt. Plunging in while we waited for my parents to arrive seemed the best course.

So we headed out for lunch on Queen Street West, Toronto's answer to Soho. After a bit of wandering and arguing, we settled on a cozy, dark-paneled restaurant named Queen Mother Cafe, surely good for the burgers and salads demanded by the younger set. Imagine our surprise to find the menu was heavily Laotian, as were the chefs visible through the kitchen pass-through.

The noodle dishes and Laotian salad were wonderful, giving us fuel to begin exploring the shops. Unlike the cramped cities of the Northeastern United States, Toronto spreads on and on. Our first venture down a street that seemed to go on forever led through blocks of Asian shops interspersed with hipster clothes emporiums to shops filled with Polish carvings or Indian draperies and a several-block area of fabric goods and dressmakers' outlets. We walked as long as possible, finding the diversity -- and the fashions -- fascinating.

That contrast of perception and reality became a symbol for our trip: Toronto at first seemed a staid brown wool coat but is actually a mosaic of cultures, immigrants from all over the world who lend to the city an amazing texture.

Our sorties around Toronto soon took on a chaotic pattern, one that often began, once the parents arrived, with all six of us trying to get into one cab. The cab drivers were supposed to take only four at a time, but rarely imposed the rule. They were too polite to insist, we decided, allowing us to pile on top of each other. In fact, everyone in Toronto was startlingly polite (especially if you're from Boston) and the streets were indeed clean.

One of the basic tourist sites is the CN Tower, a needlelike structure billed as the tallest freestanding building in the world at 1,815 feet. My parents and I took the high-speed elevator to the observation decks to gaze across miles and miles of lake and city. We gingerly stepped across the glass floor to peer down 1,136 feet, immediately dizzy and thankful for the building's thick walls of reinforced concrete and glass-reinforced plastic made to withstand high winds, snow, and lightning. We looked over the displays of information about endangered species and the world's forests.

But it sounded like the interior action of the tower -- the Q-Zar live-action laser tag game and Virtual World, a virtual reality center -- were more fun. At least according to the 11-year-old.

Another multilayered attraction is the Royal Museum of Ontario, located in a lovely, tree-lined area of the city near the University of Toronto. Here, displays of everything from art works from Europe to Egyptian archeological pieces to Canadian stuffed geese and bison, plus much, much more, are combined into a swirl of images. A long wander through rooms and rooms of Chinese art and artifacts, considered one of the greatest exhibits of this type in the Western world, revealed delicate porcelains, stone sculptures from many dynasties, such curiosities as a burial suit made up of tiny joined plates of jade that had completely covered a royal husband and wife, and a big room of beautiful Chinese stone tombs.

After 40 minutes or so of losing ourselves in centuries past, we realized my mother had disappeared. Retracing my steps and peering into room after room, I began to worry until she reappeared on the escalator. She led us up to the dark recesses of a bat cave, modeled after the real thing in Jamaica, where squeaky sound effects and thousands of moving bats (animated models) did give the place an eerie feeling.

However, the adults were more impressed than the children with natural phenomena That held true for the trip to Niagara Falls, an hour and a half ride from Toronto. The view from the Canadian side, purported to be more spectacular than the American view, is truly heartstopping. From the vantage point at Table Rock House, Horseshoe Falls plunges 170 feet, sending up clouds of mist. The roar of the falls and the spray of water were heightened by my parents' story about great-aunt Fannie and great-uncle Bert's wedding trip to the falls in the early 1900s. ``Let's see,'' my mother said, ``she was 18 and died several years ago at 100 so it must have been in 1906.'' The journey took them five days each way on the train, and, from the sound of it, was definitely the high point of their long married life on a Kansas farm.

An elevator takes visitors deep below the falls; however, there was too much ice still on the bed of the river, and the path directly under the falls was closed. So we had to content ourselves with side views through heavy glass windows. No matter, all of us adults were awestruck by the falls. The children were nonplused. ``It's cold,'' said our 15-year-old, ``and it's just a lot of water.''

After a short trip to Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, we spent time in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where the Shaw Festival was just beginning. The annual festival begins with a few performances a week in mid-April and then heats up to several a day through summer, ending finally in October. Ten or 11 plays run in repertory through the season, and there are also discussions with authors and other events associated with the festival in the carefully preserved 19th-century-style village. We unfortunately missed any play times, resolving to come back another summer.

Toronto's other attractions proved pleasing to us all. We saw theater (``The Glass Menagerie'' with Kiefer Sutherland, and ``Beauty and the Beast''), went to a comedy club, did lots of shopping, shopping, shopping for my daughter. The Hockey Hall of Fame, full of special effects and memorabilia, was a great hit with our son. A quirky mansion, Casa Loma, modeled after European castles, was fun to explore as well as to hear the story of the Canadian industrialist who made a fortune and then lost it building his extravaganza.

An exhibit of glass architecture by Canadian architects and artists at the magnificent Design Exchange, once the Stock Exchange building, fascinated my mother and me. The second-floor auditorium of the building boasts murals by Charles Comfort that depict larger-than-life scenes of 1940s' steelworkers, shipbuilders, and other commerce.

And though ethnic dining was tricky with several generations of picky palates, I managed to prevail one evening for a Chinatown dinner. Lai Wah Heen, in the Metropolitan Hotel, was a lovely oasis of calm in the city, and had a menu clearly too adventurous for grandfather and grandson. But although they eschewed the delicious fried oysters with Malaysian sauce, only picked at the barbecued duck and the wonderful Singapore-style noodles with shrimp, pork, and a touch of curry, my son got to show off his skill with chopsticks. ``What is this,'' my daughter asked, polishing off strands of jellyfish. I love scenes like this, showing that all diners can move past spaghetti if they try (or are tricked).

The SkyDome ballpark, right downtown next to the CN Tower in the heart of the city, is impressive in itself. With a retractable roof, fireworks displays when the Blue Jays hit home runs, and bouncy music, watching a game was also a little like theater. We saw Roger Clemens, so recently a Red Sox, and also saw Ken ``Junior'' Griffey effortlessly hit three home runs to help win the game for the Mariners. The stands were so clean that we were afraid to drop peanut shells on the floor, and the kids were mesmerized that diners in the Hard Rock Cafe could watch the game from their tables. My father, who saw two games during the trip, was ecstatic.

It was as we were pulling away from the hotel for our trip home that I realized I wasn't ready to leave. Toronto is a little like an onion, with layers and layers of things to see, a cosmopolitan city. We hadn't gone to the world-famous zoo; there were Indian restaurants and Asian restaurants and top-flight gourmet places we hadn't been to; there was much more art, more theater, dance and opera, plus all the lakefront attractions in warmer weather.

But most of all, I'll go back to watch the people. The bellhop at the hotel told us that his graduating class had boasted 76 nationalities. That diversity gave Toronto

its flair.

-- Canadian customs require either a US passport or a birth certificate.

-- The Canadian exchange rate, currently 74 Canadian cents to a US dollar, is a great boon to American travelers. The sales tax is quite steep; however, if you save receipts, you can get a refund on the sales and government services taxes; ask retailers for the details on how to do this.

-- Although the Westin Harbour Castle is a big convention hotel, it worked well for a family vacation. The lobby restaurant was a good place to meet, the pool is spacious, there's a decent gym, and the views of the lake are lovely.

-- Toronto brims with restaurant possibilities. Here are a few we liked:

-- Queen Mother Cafe, 208 Queen St. W.; telephone (416) 598-4719. Cozy and warm, this place serves Laotian-Thai dishes as well as some more mainstream offerings. Reasonable.

-- Fred's Not Here Smokehouse and Grill, 321 King St.; (416) 971-9155. This theater-district restaurant sounds more down home than it is. The fare is quite eclectic and good, with enough range to satisfy various appetites. The wine list is extensive and the setting lively. Moderately expensive.

-- Grano, 2035 Yonge St.; (416) 440-1986. This mural-lined Italian restaurant basically serves pastas and grilled pizza with a few seafood entrees. The desserts are luscious and the noise level deafening. Moderate.

-- Lai Wah Heen, 110 Chestnut St.; (416) 977-9899. The name means ``beautiful meeting place'' and the restaurant is as serene as its name. Each dish is beautifully presented, delicious, and the service impeccable. Moderately expensive.