Toronto Touring

To start this post off, I have a moderate fear of heights. Now I can go up on a ladder, and I can climb a few flights of stairs and look down and be fine, heck, I even did the Treego Obstacle course in Moncton. However, it took a big leap for me to go back into the CN Tower today. I've done it once before, and I figured I would never do it again, but the City Passes, they had an admission ticket for the tower. As well, although I personally have a moderate fear of heights, I do believe that everyone who comes to Toronto should go up in the CN Tower just to say they did. Geoff had never went, so we went up the 400 something metres into the sky to see the sights. I have to say, as terrifying it is to go up there, the view IS pretty good.

Those buildings are like 40 floors high, and we're looking DOWN on them!

While in the CN Tower you get that feeling you get in a plane just as it's taking off. You're higher in the air than you've ever been but you aren't high enough that you're in the clouds and you can still make out details of the city below. I find it sort of make you feel Omnipotent, but that's just me. To raise the stakes in this trip, I actually ventured outside the safety of the enclosed observation deck and went outside on the exposed lower deck. I've never done this before, and I have to say, it wasn't so bad, although it was windy enough to knock your hat off if you were wearing one. I guess that's expected to happen when you're 400+ metres in the air.

This totally proves that I was outside the observation deck, YOU ALL SAW IT!

There was also the glass floor. This is something that children and very adventurous people are able to trounce around on and make it look so easy. For people like me however, I made some very conservative steps on it, but only managed to make a small quarter circle around the edge. Although once you're up there, I challenge anyone who reads this blog to do better.

That's a loooooong way down

After that Geoff went up to the observation skydeck, which is another 100 metres in the air. I declined to go for obvious reasons, although before anyone calls me on it, I have been up there before. I personally don't see why you need to spend $10 to shorten your life expectancy by a few minutes. So far the only place I see that running successfully is the cigarette companies.

After we got back to Sweet, sweet Terra Firma, we headed over the Casa Loma. This place is a testament to all that is super rich about the late 19th century. This was built by a guy who was so ambitious he looked around at the extravagant Victorian houses of his ultra-rich neighbours and thought "You know what, I want to build a castle, screw all those other guys in the neighbourhood, I want to live like a Lord!"

And that's exactly what he did, right in the heart of downtown Toronto

However, the story of Sir Henry Mill Pellat is actually a little sad. This was a guy who built his whole life from the ground up, only to see it come crashing around him. This isn't to say that this was someone who was a heroic figure, he was definitely a 19th century Toronto Fat Cat, but he was a fat cat with a heart, and full of ambitions to entertain royalty in his opulent house-mansion. While he never did entertain royalty, he did get knighted in his lifetime.

This house never does anything in half-parts, all of the rooms had some quirky or neat addition that made them extra luxurious. As well, the house included a suprising amount of modern housing developments considering it was built at the turn of the 20th century. To start off, you walk into this huge Grand Hall that connects to all the rooms on the first floor. At one end he had a conservatory that had tropical flowers in it all year round, as Pellat was an avid gardener. These gardens were kept heated in the winter through a series of steam pipes that ran under the soil. So if Henry Pellat wanted to come look at an Orchid in the middle of January, he could darn well do that. The entrance to this room was flanked by bronze doors that were covered in ornate designs. As well, they were backed by glass, and the ornate bronzeness could be opened separately from the rest of the door so the glass could be cleaned. How smart is that? Also they cost $30,000 each in 1901 dollars, and their estimated to cost $135,000 in today's dollars to replace, each. There were 6 of them!

Some people flaunt their wealth, this guy hits you in the face with it. With a DOOR

Then we moved on to the dining room. Sir Henry didn't just have a regular dining room like the rest of his rich friends. He had a dining room meant for entertaining guests, and a separate dining room for regular, every day meals. Did I mention that his 'group' dining room had a special section attached to the large room for none other than an orchestra to play while his guests were eating? Yeah, he had that. Now I couldn't get a picture of that room since they were filming stuff in it for a show, but I did get a picture of the regular, nothing special about this dining room. Remember that when the picture comes up.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of my personal orchestra playing in the background.

His second floor had mostly sleeping quarters for himself and his wife. However, what is the point of having all this floor space with no one to share it with? So on top of having a separate room for himself and his wife (Something you did when you were ultra rich in Edwardian society) that both had full working interior plumbing (toilet, bath AND shower, in marble!) he also have five bedrooms for any guests who wanted to stay the night. These rooms were fully furnished, had their own bathrooms and even their own sitting rooms. If one of these rooms, just one were rented out, they could easily fetch $700-$800 on the current market without any fixing up, and this was for the guests!

'Here's your bed, and over there is the pool of silver coins to swim in. The gold coins you say? Well I have to keep SOME of the good stuff for myself'

Back in the main room, I also discovered that there was an organ. That's right, a full fledged organ that you'd find at a church, he had one in his living room.

For the last time, I will NOT play Spirit in the Sky!

His house also featured two towers that were inspired by actual castles in England and Scotland. We were allowed to walk up one of them and it provided a very nice view of the downtown, including the CN Tower we were just in. It was a bit of a walk up some sort of rickety staircases, but it was worth it!

Must be nice to, you know, have your house be a four storey castle.

In a story I found most interesting, Sir Pellat wanted to build some stables on his property. However, there was a problem of a major roadway cutting his lot in half. He petitioned the City of Toronto to declassify the road so he could rip it up, but being a vital roadway to the city they obviously had none of that. Pellat told them all where to stick it and did the next best thing, he built an 800 foot tunnel, 18 feet below street level to connect his massive stables and the rest of his gi-normous house.

I'll build my own tunnel, with hookers and blackjack. Actually, forget the tunnel!

Finally, there was the stable/garage/greenhouse itself. What shocked me the most was how big it actually was. The garage alone was two level high (Although we couldn't get to the second level). Unfortunately I could only access it from the inside today, so I wanted to get an impression of the size by looking at the fire escape. To put it in perspective, this garage/stable/greenhouse was probably larger than most average sized detached homes today, and that was just for his hobbies!

This man has a garage, and it's bigger than your house.

Unfortunately, this story about Sir Henry Mill Pellat has a sad end, it sort of reminds me of the Scottish Castle Scene in Monty Python's 'Quest for the Holy Grail' (Where the castle keeps sinking into the swamp). Basically Sir Henry built his fortune in the railway, as many Toronto elite in the late 19th century did. He invested most of his return into electricity generation, mainly though the abundant hydro resources found in Ontario. Now, certain people didn't like the idea that private companies were profiting off providing electricity to the City of Toronto, especially where it was generated off what was seen as provincial natural resources, despite that no one was generating electricity before. Adam Beck chaired a commission that decided that the Province of Ontario should get into the generating business. They founded Hydro Ontario with no infrastructure and no grid, they just seized it all from Pellat with no compensation.

Pellat responded by investing heavily in surrounding land, figuring that the ever expanding City of Toronto would keep on expanding. Well, the depression fixed that for him unfortunately. Finally, Pellat tried investing what little money he had left in the booming airline business, he got that off the ground by building airplane manufacturing companies and pilot training schools, until that was also seized by the government in World War Two. Combined with the stock market crash of 1929 wiping out all his non-industrial assets.

To make matters worse, the Home Bank of Toronto, the one backing the construction of his house, went bankrupt in the 20's. Wiping out most of Pellats credit rating and substantial assets with the bank with in.

Casa Loma ended up costing 3.5 Million Dollars in 1915 dollars, and parts of it were never finished. The Pellats were only able to live there for about 10 years before financial hardship forced them out again. His wife died in 1926, and Pellat remaried, only to have his second wife die a few years after that. Pellat died penniless after he lost control of Casa Loma to the city to pay for back taxes of $26,032 in 1939.

So take this as a lesson, if you're going to build a giant house-castle, you better make sure you can afford it!

We decided to stay an extra day in Toronto, so tomorrow, the Ontario Science Centre and the ROM