Toronto architecture critic has side hustle as a sassy drag queen tour guide

A prominent architecture critic for a major Toronto newspaper is moonlighting as a drag queen — all in the name of getting more people excited about the city's rich tapestry of buildings.

Dave LeBlanc has been writing about architecture since 1997 and has been a columnist at The Globe and Mail for 22 years, covering the work of legendary architects like I.M. Pei, Edward Durell Stone, and Santiago Calatrava, among many others.

But LeBlanc noticed that not many young people seem keen on learning about local architecture. So the seasoned writer created Irma Girdle — a drag queen designed not just to teach younger generations about Toronto's buildings, but also to get them excited about the city's rich design history.

"I think a lot of young people don't know this stuff, and that's what makes me cry," Irma tells blogTO.

Irma Girdle striking a pose in front of the TD Centre's banking pavilion at King and Bay. 

A big fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, the moniker was inspired by the popular 2012 "ermahgerd" meme — proof that, despite being a "sassy 44-year-old," Irma is but a millennial at heart.

Irma waxes poetic about Toronto architecture with the same gusto as a pimply teenage boy talking about Star Wars. She's intelligent, enthusiastic and delightfully theatrical. 

The proof is in how Irma spent 30 minutes straight gleefully yapping about her favourite buildings in the city, with City Hall, designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, ranking at number one.

Irma Girdle sitting on one of the letters of the 3D Toronto sign in front of City Hall.

She firmly believes this is the building that "woke up the city" when it opened in 1965.

"It's like a super-duper space-age building. I mean, look at the thing — it's like a flying saucer with two big towers kind of hugging it, right?" Irma says. "It also was the building that signalled to the rest of the world that Toronto had come of age, and it was no longer a sleepy, sleepy, boring city."

Another spot Irma gushes about as if it were a heartthrob on the cover of J-14 magazine is the Toronto-Dominion Centre, located at 66 Wellington St. W.

What's cooler, Irma's specs or the TD Centre? 

Designed by renowned German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the series of towers was built in the mid-1960s and included Toronto's first modern skyscraper. Mies van der Rohe was, as Irma explains, the final director of the Bauhaus, the influential German school of modernist architecture and design.

"He brought modern architecture to the world. So the first building that opened was his tallest building and his last building ever before he died," she says.

A lot of people may view the TD Centre as little more than a nondescript complex of tall black boxes. Maybe they are familiar with the swanky Canoe restaurant on top. But Irma sees it differently, having studied the history and the meticulous attention to detail the German architect demanded of its construction. Buildings like this give her a "big rush."

The quote "God is in the details" is famously attributed to van der Rohe, and Irma has clearly studied those details and seen the light.

"In Toronto, we have just as interesting architecture as New York or Chicago, and I want people to know that," Irma says. "We don't know enough about our own city."

While Toronto and the Windy City have a similar number of skyscrapers, Irma believes Chicago does a far better job branding itself as an architecture destination, with river tours, bus tours, and a whole tourism industry built around design.

"Toronto, as interesting as it is, is not perceived as an architectural city because we haven't done a good enough job promoting it that way. That's one of the things that really, really gets me going and gets me mad."

The colourful mosaic by Group of Seven artist J.E.H. MacDonald over the arched entrance makes the EY Tower one of her favourite buildings.

But Irma's not the type of gal to sit around and complain, no sir! She says she's spoken with the Toronto Society of Architects about potentially using those infamous red double-decker sightseeing buses for special architecture tours of the city. But because of logistics and budgets, it's not feasible. She laments how hard it is to get anything going in Toronto without sponsorship.

So she came up with a better idea.

Irma will be hosting Dragitecture Walking Tours on the second Sunday of every month starting in April. For an hour and a half, Irma — donning her finest Mad Men-inspired 'fit and tallest platform heels — will guide walkers through the city, focusing on modern architecture, particularly Toronto buildings from the '50s and '60s like Market Square from legendary local designer Jerome Markson.

While modernism is Irma's "thing," she says she won't resist pointing out a few heritage buildings along the way.

"I know all the stuff. I know most of the anecdotes," she says. "There were lots of hard-drinking architects, but back then they weren't called alcoholics — they were just called men," she laughs.

Irma's wish is for Toronto residents in their 30s and younger booking these tours. She's hoping SnapChatters and TikTokers who don't know much about architecture will come out and learn.

"I think if a drag queen is showing them something, maybe they'll pay attention," she says. "It's a subversive way of getting people to look at architecture — and I'm going to make it silly and fun."