Secret Toronto: The Unique Guidebook to Toronto's Hidden Sites, Sounds, and Tastes

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Secret Toronto is an attractive, entertaining, and informative guidebook
to an astonishing number of lesser-known and obscure “sites, sounds
and tastes” of Toronto and area, and it is sized to fit pocket or
purse. “Secret” may be questioned, since the book’s entries
include Queen’s Park and Albert Britnell’s bookshop, but often one
learns interesting trivia even about places we thought we knew.
“Secret” seems to apply, however, to some of the painterly
photographs that illustrate the book, for they are not captioned, and
one might like to know where many of them were taken.

The 172 entries are arranged alphabetically; within each entry there
may be several sites briefly discussed, every one highlighted in bold,
colored type. There is cross-referencing and a thorough index.

The entries include something for everybody, from those who want their
nipples pierced to those who want to meet fellow devotees of Wagner.
Along the way from Acoustics to Zines, one learns where to play indoor
beach volleyball (on 1200 tons of sand warmed by radiant-heat tubes),
tour a honey plant, attend a hawk watch, visit Ken Thomson’s art
collection, go on a 30-minute tour of a landfill site (after an
hour-long presentation), play Frisbee (on the city’s permanent 18-hole
Frisbee golf course), find a gay billiard lounge, visit the city’s
ambulance headquarters for a 30-minute tour (which must be booked “at
least two weeks in advance”), find the best marzipan, join a nudist
potluck supper, learn to kayak or parachute, get tickets for TV taping,
or enjoy an English high tea for $16.50. It is the fate of all such
books to be instantly dated; a ticket to the Royal Ontario Museum no
longer gives entry to the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, since they are
no longer affiliated. Still, this guide will be of use and interest for
some time.