Rooftopping Toronto: Bay and Adelaide, Heart Of The City

The infamous Bay-Adelaide stump, once an urban memento mori, is now nothing more than a memory. The star of one of my favorite films, it represented both the ideal of an unfinished city and the perpetual possibility of new beginnings. But, more darkly, it also represented the fallibility of human plans: it was an architectural cautionary tale, a humble dwarf amid hubristic giants.

Out of its ashes, however, rose a gleaming glass beauty stretching upwards...

Our journey took place before the structure itself had topped-out, so the penultimate floors offered an unfettered view of the bustling hum of city night life below.

Looking Northward, one could see the incandescent Old City Hall peeking between two buildings...

On the Eastern front, I soon discovered what seemed to be the city's highest portable washroom...

Stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions were the peaceful lights of the city...

The unfinished final floors of a future skyscraper reminded me of the scaffolding on which artists paint ceiling murals. But, seeing the city from such a height through gaps that would soon be walls, it seemed as if the real artwork was many miles above, and many stories below. Dotted everywhere, as the poet says, were ironic points of light, in the city and in the sky.

(To see more snaps from this incredible height, as well as hi-res. versions of the ones above, please visit my flickr slide-show below.)