Canada for Kids: Living in Toronto, Canada’s Most Diverse City

Although Canada has two official languages, about 20% of the population of Canada speaks a language other than English or French at home. This is because Canada has a large population of immigrants from other countries, and Toronto is the most culturally diverse city in Canada and the world! There are over 250 ethnicities and 170 languages in Toronto. Cameron has neighbors with cultural heritage from all around the world, including Greece, Malaysia, Italy, Vietnam and Southeast Asia. This diversity of cultures is one of the things that makes Toronto such a wonderful place to grow up.

Cameron’s school recently celebrated Tamil Heritage month. Tamil Heritage month celebrates the contributions that Tamil-Canadians have made to Canadian society. The Tamil people are originally from southern India and northern Sri Lanka. During this celebration, the students learned about the Tamil language and culture, and Cameron even got to shake hands with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau!

One of Cameron’s favorite places to explore in Toronto is Kensington Market. It is a wonderful place to see, hear, smell and taste the diversity of the city. Kensington Market is a neighborhood filled with restaurants, shops and cafes where you can taste the cuisine of so many different cultures. Cameron’s favorites are Chinese dim sum (steamed dumplings), Indian food, especially a curry dish he calls butter chicken (similar to Chicken Tikka Masala) with naan bread, and Jamaican patties. Yum!

Toronto is a great place to grow up — it has loads of activities for kids including cool museums, aquariums, sports stadiums, towers, amusement parks and so much more! Cameron has some great places he loves to explore and would recommend to any kids coming to Toronto to visit.

The CN Tower is one of Canada’s national landmarks. Over 2 million people visit the tower every year to get a bird’s-eye view of all of Toronto, Lake Ontario and the Toronto islands. On a clear day, you can even see all the way to the state of New York! The CN Tower is the 9th tallest freestanding structure and it’s 553 meters high. That’s 1,814 feet! For those brave enough, you can get to the observation deck, a 360-degree rotating restaurant and a glass floor from one of the six glass elevators in just 58 seconds!

Centre Island is one of 15 small islands in Lake Ontario and is a great summer destination for locals and visitors to Toronto. You have to take a short 10-15 minute ferry to get there, where you will see great views of the Toronto skyline.

When you arrive on Centre Island, you’ll find parks, fountains, gardens, picnic areas and a great beach where Cameron likes to go swimming on a hot summer day. You can rent bikes or quadricycles and explore the island. There is a fun amusement park called Centreville with rides and games, as well as Far Enough Farm, where you can get up close to over 40 species of farm animals and exotic birds. Spending time on Centre Island makes you feel like you’re not in Canada’s biggest and busiest city, but instead on a beautiful, peaceful island in the middle of a lake!

Another one of Cameron’s top places to go to in Toronto is the Ontario Science Centre. There are over 500 interactive experiences, as well as live science demonstrations and an IMAXⓇ Dome theatre.

In this Go With Nugget for Kids podcast episode, Cameron tells us about when he visited the Space Hall and Planetarium, where he got to meet Canada’s first female astronaut, Roberta Bondar. Roberta Bondar is a neurologist and a pioneer of space medicine research. She was one of the very first Canadian astronauts and flew on the American space shuttle Discovery in 1992. As a neurologist, she went to space to research how the human nervous system adapted to low gravity. Gravity is what keeps us on Earth from floating up off the ground — in space, there is little to no gravity. So, this research was important to help future space missions.

Cameron loves living in Toronto — he thinks it’s an amazing place to grow up and would love for kids everywhere to come and explore his hometown of Toronto, Canada. One of the reasons he really appreciates where he lives, is that he and his family have travelled together to over 47 countries! His favorite was learning about all the culture and history of China.