Need to know how many babies are born every day in Toronto? The five greatest movie quotes about Toronto? How much it cost to see a movie in 1896? You can find these answers and more in the Toronto Book of Everything.
The Toronto Book of Everything is the final book in the Book of Everything Series, which covers Canada’s provinces and major cities from coast to coast. “Toronto is our biggest and most important book,” John MacIntyre, the president and founder of the Book of Everything Series wrote via email. “We saved it for last because we wanted to get it right.”
Designed to be Toronto’s ultimate guide, the Toronto Book of Everything is the size of a small travel guide and reads like a good Wikipedia page. “The Book of Everything Series was started on the simple premise that places are revealed by the accumulation of detail one fact at a time,” MacIntyre wrote. “We set out to capture the true essence of a place by writing the book that the locals buy.”
A lot of research went into this book and its authors, Nate Hendley, Karen Lloyd, and Tanya Gulliver scoured every available resource—the Toronto Public Library, the city archives, Facebook, their friends, other books about the city, and more. “I spent a lot of time online and at the Toronto Archives and signed almost every book on Toronto out of the Ryerson library,” Gulliver admits.
The Toronto Book of Everything achieves its goal of being an overview of the city. It has a little bit of everything, with chapters dedicated to the city’s people, economy, food, culture, history, and crime. The “Take 5” bits are great, listing five must haves, musts dos, or cool facts such as the best artisan cheese shops, the most memorable mayors, the most famous organized crime hits, the best moose-viewing locations, and the greatest Torontonian inventions. Amy Lavender Harris, Jamie Kennedy, David Miller, John Sewell, Jack Layton, and Olivia Chow, Dave Bidini, and librarian Jane Pyper all contributed their own “Take 5″ lists, giving the book that local perspective it tries so hard to achieve.
The mini essays about the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Ward, Church-Wellesley Village, David Cronenberg, and Kensington Market are nice introductions (or refreshers) to the people and places that shape this city. You’ll learn some neat facts like that ginger ale was invented in Toronto. Half the people living in Toronto today weren’t alive when the Leafs won the Stanley Cup. (This Books@Torontoist editor sure wasn’t.) Toronto has 7,325 physicians, 147,676 university students, and 2,740 actors. We’re thinner than the rest of Ontario, smoke less, but will probably die sooner. We hate Scarberia, the TTC, and Canadian Tire but love the AGO, TIFF, and microbreweries.
However, the “You Know You’re From Toronto When!” list didn’t ring true with this Books@Torontoist editor. The pages of statistics are sometimes tedious. And the weblinks page? Didn’t have Torontoist there. Apparently Toronto.com and BlogTO.com are the only worthy websites about this city. In today’s information age, when everything you ever wanted to know about Toronto is at your fingertips, an actual book feels a bit out-of-date. Especially when that book is designed to be an overview and doesn’t delve deeply into any single topic.
The Toronto Book of Everything is a unique spin on the travel guide. It’s cute and fun to read. You’ll learn a neat fact or two to share at your next party. (This will make you a huge hit or a pretentious know-it-all. This book guarantees knowledge, not popularity.) But if you’re looking for something to provide the true flavour of Toronto, this book doesn’t quite cut it.
