The smells of Toronto

46 comments

1. Here’s a “Smells of Toronto” bike ride that a bunch of us did last year (organized by Herb of I Bike TO):
   http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Smells-of-Toronto

   The map is annotated with some of the smelly places we visited.

   -Vic

2. Nestle Chocolate factory on Sterling, just north of Dundas. lately it seems like they’ve been in “holiday” production mode or something, as I can smell it often all the way up Symington Ave.

   Also the Cadbury factory on Gladstone between College and Dundas. Yummmm.

   Bloor and Islington always smells like exhaust to me, mainly from all the diesel buses at Islington Station.

   Crikey…the whole city smells like *something*, but I better get back to work.

3. Great idea:

   The abattoir at King & Bathurst is an obvious one.

   The chocolate factory, I think it’s Neilson’s, off Dovercourt. My friend lives nearby and says you can smell the difference between a Jersey Milk day and a Crunchie day.

   After the recycling truck comes through in the summer and the bins are all open along the side of the street — a very different vibe compared to the pre-green bin days.

   The lake.

4. The early psychogeographers associated with the situationists would go on smell walks through Paris — following various smells and letting their nose lead them through the city.

5. I was going to mention the Cadbury factory near Dovercourt and the nestle factory in Semington, but I didn’t make it here on time, it as already been mentioned 🙂
   Another smell is near Park Lawn, sometimes the place smells like fresh baked cookies and other times it smells like raw sewage, I think it is because of the Nabisco factory and the water treatment plant at opposing sides of the QEW. Then there is the smell of cow manure during the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at the ex. There is also the smell of fallen leaves during this time of the year.

6. Tucan Sam wasn’t a Parisian psychogeographer before becoming the Fruitloops mascot, was he?

   …It isn’t what a vegetarian (or pretty much anyone) would describe as plesant but the meat factories in the Weston/St. Clair area create quite the aroma.

7. Just east of Bathurst on Dupont, I always notice a really sweet smell, like waffles or ice cream or cotton candy are being concocted in the old factory building there. I don’t know what it is but the smell is always there, demanding that I visit Madeleine’s ice cream shop nearby. (The latter seems too small to produce such a big smell, so I don’t think it’s the cause).

8. Commissioners at Logan has the smell of the transfer station, and just west along Commissioners there is an interesting smell I believe associated with cardboard production and/or recycling.

   Weston bakery on Eastern can be detected via scent across a wide area.

   Christie bakery at Parklawn/Lakeshore sometimes smells exactly like Oreo cookies. I suppose I could drop the simile.

   There used to be a nasty sewer smell on Yonge St, on the west side, just south of College Park, where the guy with no arms used to beg for change. I don’t know if either the guy or the smell are still there. A similar micro-scent exists on my street. It’s annoying but very localized – you can’t smell it 10 feet away from the one storm sewer grate.

   Every KFC in the city emits the KFC smell. I would presume this would result in a localized reduction in value of residential properties that happen to be very near. I know a woman who while house hunting fell in love with a small house in New Toronto, but could not get over the KFC smell, so did not put an offer.

   Same goes with behind every McDonalds. I imagine this is a world wide issue.

   Rotting fish along Dundas, near Spadina is an obvious Toronto smell.

   My wife pointed out to me that College St. right by Phil’s Original BBQ had a nice meat smell. Does he smoke his meat outside?

   I almost gag every time I pass a Lush store. The one at the airport at the gates in Terminal 1 is the WORST offender.

   On a positive note, Cinnibon smells great (to me).

   I can smell incense along Gerrard East coming from some stores.

   Many places always seem to smell like urine, all the time… the bathroom at Grossmans was gross, man.

   Outside 250 Yonge used to smell like the ashtray it used to be. I haven’t been by there in a while.

   …

9. Anywhere near O’Connor and Bermondsey in East York you can smell the Cookies being baked from the DADs/Peak Freans/Kraft Canada Factory.

   Sometimes the smell drifts as far south as Taylor Creek Park.

   ********

   Also the Weston Bakery on Eastern….(near Pape?) can send out lofty aromas

   *******

   Further south, of course is Ashbridges Bay treatment plant…not such a nice odour.

10. bread at baldwin/mccaul from the silversteins bakery!

11. Alexander> You are smelling the fortune cookie factory.

12. In the nether reaches of Scaberia, there is a small industrial area between Birchmount and Warden.
    On one of these streets (Comstock) resides a confectionery factory – known as “Oak Leaf”.
    Mostly in the early evening hours, just when the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can smell something that is akin to “Bubble Gum”.

13. James: Being in class with your stomach rumbling and hours to go until lunch or dinner is not fun in general, but then the smell of Peak Freans would waft in, too. Torture.

14. i second the silverstein’s bakery comment: oh rye!

15. The TTC smell, the one that rushes up from the subway. I notice it especially when I’m walking on the sidewalk past Christie Station, but I notice it at any station with a foyer that lets out onto the street.

16. Re Cinnabon, the Eglinton Station outlet is practically mythical, having been in place for for at least 16-17 years already (Toronto’s oldest?)

    Then there’s all the baking in the concourse of Bathurst Station…

17. Also, would there be any cereal odours around the Kellogg plant up near Humber College?

18. I am surprised nobody has mentioned the many places in Toronto you can smell marijuana, especially Bellevue Park in Kensington Market.

    Lush smells freakin’ amazing

    And the GO train tracks at Union Station have a particular smell, but I don’t really know what it is. Maybe diesel or grease or something.

    Wellington St. smells like the slaughterhouse near Stanley Park

19. i second the vote for Quality Meat Packers on Tecumseth (Niagara st)

    It’s weird that a ‘negative’ smell is the first one that comes to mind, but in a certain way it’s definitively linked with toronto — (one of?) the last industrial abattoir in hogtown. it’s part of our heritage.

20. Several years back I worked a summer job near St. Clair and Old Weston and you would often get the smell of baking bread.

    There’s a store on Queen just west of the parking lot at Soho that always has a distinctive smell – I was guessing homemade soap but I never did go in to look. Anyone know what it is (was)?

21. Brent, that’s the Lush stink Kevin is talking about. Awful smell, just this side of patchouli oil, there only to try and cover up the smell of hippy underneath.

    Speaking of weed, I noticed on Tuesday night bike rides around the lip of the Trinty-Bellwoods pit, during the drumming circles, the weed smell is strong. Hippy too, for that matter.

    —

    The smell of the island ferry — a little like that Go Train smell. Grease and engines.

22. The sewage smell at the intersection of Front Street and Scott Street is the result of an ancient combined storm/sewage system. It’s a nice touch, just between the Sony Centre and the St. Lawrence Centre.

23. Spadina and Dundas in the middle of a Summer heat wave. Ah that amazing smell of rotten organic juices seeping into the sidewalk`s concrete.

    In a more pleasant note, what about the smell of the first rain at the end of a heat wave? I always associate that one with a vision I had of a Goddess on a flowery Summer dress, drenched from head to toe while riding her bike, breezing by me without a care in the world. It was just one of those moments…

24. on the north side of trinity bellwoods park (crawford & dundas), it is very smelly where the underground creek/sewer vents off. there is a piece of poo stencilled on the electrical box nearby. recently the box was buffed but the buffers left the poo stencil untouched (i guess they agreed).

    also, fish markets (kensington, ossington & dundas)

25. Definitely Weston bread factory on Eastern and Logan.

    Any Cinnabon in Toronto … always makes me hungry.

    Marijuana everywhere.

    I love the way wet earth and concrete smells here after a big rainstorm.

    There’s a very mysterious stretch of street on University, along the park next to the American embassy that smells like something delicious but different every time. Maybe it’s because I’m starving when I walk by in the morning and I project my internal desires for food, but it’s smelled like muffins, cake, bread, and even hargow!

26. The wonderful food smells from Ghazale wafting out their automatic sliding door as you wait in line to see a movie at the Bloor Cinema.

27. The corridor between the Bloor and University lines at Spadina station has often had a slightly mouse-like odour.

    Walking by Bloor and Bathurst, there’s the blast of rotating meat from Ghazale.

28. The Cadbury Factory is by far the best smell in Toronto although the Mr. Christie Cookie Factory on Lake Shore Boulevard smells good too (sometimes).

29. There’s a Filipino bakery on Bathurst just above St. Clair that emits an amazing buttery smell all day. Spectacular!

30. The one smell that jumps right out in my memory is the sickly sweet smell coming from the Red Path sugar ‘factory’ at Queens Quay and Lower Jarvis. It’s like old treacle.

31. There is this distinctive popcorn smell whenever entering a multiplex theatre.

    I also finding fascinating that it is always possible to smell the seasons as they approach. I just love that first smell of cold or warm weather in the air as the seasons change. People complaint about our weather but I think we are blessed with our four different seasons.

32. – You can smell the Christie factory when when driving by on the Gardiner!

    – The smell of fireplaces in winter

    – Those round waffle-y things in Chinatown

33. Honestly? The stuffy, stale air smell of so many large HVAC units concentrated in a small area pumping out their exhaust, along with the similar smell of the subway. That, to me, is the smell of Toronto.

    The worst is when you go past the Golden Griddle on Carlton or through the “tunnel” or port cochere or whatever next to it. The smell of acrid grease from their deep fryers exhaust is overwhelming.

    A couple years ago the Paris Metro commissioned a scent to make that system more pleasant. Anyone know firsthand how it smells?

34. I live in the Junction area, just east of Keele so on a good day, depending on wind direction, it could be one of three major aromas blowing my way.
    If the breeze is blowing out of the SW then the nauseating odour of rubber from the NRI (National Rubber Industries) factory on Cawthra Avenue fills the air. If it’s blowing out of the west, the more pleasant, albeit sickly sweet smell of baking bread will come breezing through from the Canada Bread plant also on Cawthra. If it’s a good strong N/NW wind then the “organic” smell of the meatpacking plants north of St.Clair West and west of Keele will come blowing into my back garden.
    A delightful array of aromas. You don’t know what you’re missing!

35. My favourite is actually a sequence of smells on the RT. Somewhere between Ellesmere and Midland station you get the sulphurous stench from the Atlantic recycling plant and then once you’re out of Midland station and over to Scarborough Town Centre you get the smell of Dad’s cookies! heehee

    the best is when people who’ve never been on the RT before go past the recycling plant and start looking at around to see who farted.

36. Hahaha yes. I witnessed a woman, totally unaware of the recycling plant (and the garbage truck depot beside it), give a long hard glare at the man beside her for pretty much the entire ride. What a douche.

37. As far as distinct, iconic vintage smells go, there *was* Gooderham & Worts before the distillery became a District.

    In that spirit, it’s odd nobody’s mentioned the familiar whiff of, er, Horlick’s around the Molson (ex-Carling) brewery at 401 and 427…

38. hello everyone,

    so ur probably going to think im a loser but for my sisters b-day/ the holidays i really wanted to take her on a private tour of a chocolate factory. ive been googling for hours and this blog is the only thing that has seemed to come up… and there have been sum mixed opinions about the loactions of either the nestle or neilsons factory. maybe the origonal bloggers could help out with a more deatiled loaction or number cuz it doesnt seem to show up on google maps. thank u so mch to all those who help.

    p.s. im a chef so i think its really cool the smell tours/ smells u find.

    sincerly rebecca

39. I grew up in Scarborough, and what most comes to mind is the smell of the Dad’s Cookie warehouse on Progress Road by Brimley. The smell of freshly baked cookies was amazing – unless the Bick’s Pickles factory across the street was also making pickles. A strange smell combination to be sure!

40. Baldwin St between Kensington and Augusta (obviously) always smells like fish.

41. Nobody’s mentioned Campbell’s Soup in New Toronto…

42. at college and yonge, right in front of the golden griddle, across from maple leaf gardens is a smell that can kill a man. It is the smell of corrosive cleaners combined with decades of decaying oils and fats. Unbelievably rotten & rank.

43. There’s a strong, unpleasant smell that is part of Toronto that I can nevever quite put my finger on. The waterfront area used to reek of it in the late 70’s/early 80’s. I had always thought it was the Victory Soya Mills, but the smell was hovering above downtown for a few days last week, so maybe not.

    Anybody have any idea what I’m referring to?

44. Mo, maybe this is the same thing I am trying to pin point. In the O’Conner/Eglinton – Bermundsey/Eglinton area there’s this most foul smell. It’s something like soya sauce, something like vinegar, something like sewage. It’s not the transfer station – that has a lovely (sic) smell all it’s own. But some days, mostly in the morning, there’s this really heavy, acidic STINK in that area I just can’t place.

45. At Parklawn and Lakeshore, the parklands and bike trails on the Lake constantly smell like delicious baking. (Even though in reality they’re not… ranging from Ritz Crackers to Chocolate Chip cookies baked by Kraft Foods & Nabisco) Smells really good, just don’t eat any.

46. On Eglinton between Leslie and Don Mills you can smell gum from Wrigley’S that is located on Leslie just north of eglinton.

    There is also a bakery on park lawn across from the mr. christie factory that smells fabulous.

    Dupont and Symington has the fresh baked bread smell from Caldense Bakery.

    The rest of the city smells rather foul…other than the fortune cookie factory, always wondered what that was, now i know!