Gift Guide: City Walks – Toronto

City Walks: Toronto is a nicely-designed collection of 50 solid cards in an attractive box. Each compact card (4-1/16 x 5-5/8) has on one side a map with a walk drawn on it in red, with numbers for key sights, and on the other side a written description of the walk and information about the numbered sights. The collection is part of a series by San Francisco-based Chronicle Books.

The walks range from the Humber Valley over to the Beaches and up to North York, with a concentration in the centre of the city. Most walks are about an hour long, with a few ranging up to two hours (or more, depending on how much you want to linger). Each walk begins and ends at a transit stop.

The types of walks, and the sights chosen, range widely, including the natural, the historical, the cultural, restaurants, and interesting shops. There is even one focused on bookstores in the Annex. The choices are interesting and knowledgeable — for example, the Corktown walk includes the hidden gem of Bright Street (featured in a recent issue of Spacing), and the Don Valley walk tells you how to find the obscure path to the Brickworks from Rosedale’s Craigleigh Gardens. There are even two separate ways to experience High Park. Although the collection was published this year, inevitably some shops described no longer exist, including Ballenford Books and the tragic case of Preloved, which burned down in the big Queen West fire last winter just as this collection was published.

The collection is aimed at tourists (it is a good price — US $14.95 — and can be ordered online), but there is way too much here to see on one trip. It would be perfect for someone who has just moved to Toronto for work or for study and wants to explore the city (it’s a whole year’s worth of weekend walks), and it would also be perfect for someone who hosts a lot of visitors — each guest could simply shuffle through and pick a couple of cards a day. The cards are made of good stock and should survive being used several times. Another good idea would be if you are visiting one of the other cities they provide cards for — use the cards while you are visiting, and then leave them with your hosts as a gift when you are done, for the use of future visitors. It would also be good for someone who has lived in Toronto for a while but feels they want to get to know the city better — even as someone who has walked all over the city in recent years, there are some interesting bits that I’m not familiar with. For example, I’ve never explored High Park from the south, starting at the Queensway, before — I may try that next spring.