The Globe and Mail

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Water Filtration Plant

The Water Filtration Plant in Toronto's East End is the perfect place to recalibrate the mind. Deep in the winter or the dazzling heights of the summer, climb to the top of the steepest hills and sit down. Face the water. Put your back against the buff brick Queenston limestone of this Art Deco monument, constructed as an act of civic daring during the Great Depression by the fierce Orangeman, Rowland Caldwell Harris, the Commissioner of Works for the City of Toronto until his death in 1945. The uninterrupted view across the lake to the feathery plumes of Niagara Falls is liberating. But a special freedom comes from knowing that the big sky is yours while the weight of an architectural masterwork is all around.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Galleria Italia, Art Gallery of Ontario

A room of glass spanning the length of an entire city block might have been a place of human insignificance. But because of the massive cedar tree carved out by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone and the complex curves of the Douglas Fir columns the Galleria Italia by architect Frank Gehry offers the healing of a soaring forest and life-giving dose of light that’s way beyond vitamin D. Share the space: blindfold a friend, push open the heavy wooden doors leading to the Galleria from within the AGO and expose an unsuspecting visitor, dramatically, to the blinding natural light.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Balzac’s Café, Distillery District

A café that sets an exquisite balance between ghetto chic and French urban bistro. The white brick walls once framed the pump house for the 19th-century Gooderham & Worts distillery, but now there’s a pressed tin coffee bar and diamond-shaped stone floors. Take the stairs away from the busy ground floor and float to the cantilevered balcony to enjoy your latte. That’s where it’s best to reflect, suspended over the buzz.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Multi-Faith Centre, University of Toronto

Unique in North America, the Multi-Faith Centre is a space that embraces tolerance and religious diversity. Exquisitely, intelligently designed by Moriyama + Teshima Architects, the main meeting room features a breathtaking ceiling of pale white onyx panels backlit to glow like a swirling, muted sky. An eastern-facing wall clad in the milky onyx can be opened to reveal cupboards where Sikhs might place a sacred text, or aboriginals might keep sweet grass for a cleansing ceremony. Weddings, yoga retreats and musical performances are held here. The Dalai Lama visited the Spadina Road facility – once the Centre for Pharmacy Management – earlier this year. Before entering the central space for prayer, Muslims can wash in private, serene ablutions rooms. A smaller room with a living wall of plants is available during the day for quiet meditation.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Thorncliffe Park Library

Surrounded by high-rise modern-era apartments, the Thorncliffe Park branch of the public library is where the great Toronto experiment in diversity and tolerance is being tested and celebrated. Kids and parents from nearly 50 countries around the world come here to read. When class gets out at the nearby Thorncliffe Park Public School – at 2,000 students considered to be North America’s largest – the library is jammed with students, the older ones at the computers, the younger ones settled among soft furnishings next to a red wall painted with enormous letters that say: READ. Designed by Levitt Goodman Architects in joint venture with Phillip H. Carter Architect, the new library sits atop a just-completed community centre with a light-filled childcare wing and mini playground.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Cathedral Church of St. James

The cathedral stands its holy ground on King Street East. Designed by the British architect F.W. Cumberland in the mid-1800s and constructed of white brick and Ohio stone, the church is fine piece of sober English Gothic architecture. An exacting symmetry defines the competition-winning design; light enters through myriad stained-glass windows – rich in colour and designed in the style of the Italian High Renaissance. At 306 feet, St. James’ tower and spire are the tallest in Canada, second only in North America to New York’s impressive St. Patrick’s. The tower houses a full peal of 12 change-ringing bells. From its humble beginnings as a small wooden church, later transformed into a hospital for the wounded during the War of 1812, St. James defines the grand city church.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Trinity College Quadrangle

Part of what’s significant about a space of reflection is what leads you there. There are two points of entry to Trinity College’s freshly designed courtyard by gh3 Architects: Through the formidable front doors of the Tudor-gothic college at Harbord Street, or by taking the west path away from Philosopher’s Walk to the arched entrance of Henderson Tower. Within the thick stonewalls, there’s a new graphic of trefoils cut into the big patch of grass. Brilliant green in the summer, but still and secretive during the winter.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Derry Downs Park

When it comes to unique places, Toronto’s ravines are unsung heroes. Derry Downs Park offers welcome respite from a stretch of tough urban tedium at Jane and Finch. Black Creek runs through the park, providing fishing, song birds, and paths that take you down into the ravine. Community life – apartment block towers, York Woods library and Topcliff Public School – unfurls above the ravine. In a neighbourhood with few visual delights, the scene of a man walking a dog across a vast snowy flat is like a prayer that has been answered.

— Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Wychwood Park

A bucolic Victorian enclave, originally conceived in the late 19th-century as an artists’ colony, has a pond that freezes over hard enough for skating during the winter. The historic dictate was that the Arts and Crafts houses sit well back from the loop road. The private home by Toronto architect Ian MacDonald is iconic for the way it sinks into the park. There has also been some ill-conceived tampering with the original vision, but the idea of city life held in check by a wild, mature landscape still triumphs. Located west of Bathurst and north of Davenport, the neighbourhood feels privileged and generous at the same time.