David Dunlap Observatory
Canada's largest optical telescope, in a 1935 dome, running public astronomy nights most of the year. Book ahead: they sell out.
Richmond Hill
Yonge Street's most crowded stretch, a very good pond, and Canada's largest optical telescope. Richmond Hill is dense along its spine and leafy either side of it, with big Iranian and Chinese communities and the food that comes with them.
Stock photograph. Not Richmond Hill.
Busy Yonge, quiet streets
Feels like
50–60 min
To Union Station
Yonge Street food and good schools
Go for
How to say it
Richmond Hill, or just “the Hill” if you grew up here. Oak Ridges and Lake Wilcox are part of it and people from there will make sure you know that they are a separate thing.
Heads up
There is no subway yet, and the Yonge extension has been imminent for twenty years. The Richmond Hill GO line is scenic, limited and prone to flooding: most people drive to a Line 1 station instead, so factor in the parking.
Who to go and watch
No club of its own.
No club of its own: the Aurora Tigers and Newmarket Hurricanes are both fifteen minutes up Yonge and both worth a Friday night. Richmond Hill's own sport is minor hockey, and there is a great deal of it.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Richmond Hill.
Public places, parks, markets and the streets the independents are actually on. Nothing here is invented, and nothing here is a photograph of somewhere else.
Mill Pond Park
The town's living room: a pond, a loop, ducks, and free concerts on Thursday evenings all summer.
Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts
At 631 seats, the largest theatre in York Region, and the courtyard runs a free jazz series through the summer.
Yonge, Major Mackenzie to 16th
Persian bakeries, kebab houses, Chinese restaurants and Korean cafés stacked along two kilometres of Yonge. Almost none of it is on a best-of list.
Lake Wilcox & the Moraine
Oak Ridges sits on the moraine with a lake in the middle of it and a handful of independents around the edge. Walk the trail, then sit down.
The year
What comes round every year.
Keyed to a month, never to a date. Dates move, and a page that prints last year's is worse than one that says “September”.
February
Winter Carnival
Skating, sleigh rides and fire pits around Mill Pond. Free, cold, and precisely the thing that gets you through February.
July–August
Concerts in the Park
Thursday evenings at Mill Pond, free, tribute bands and picnic blankets. It has been running long enough that people have a usual spot.
September
Mill Pond Splash
The town's autumn festival around the pond: art, music, food and a duck race. Small, free, extremely local.
HelloGTA.com
The GTA is enormous and most of it is unknown to everybody.
Including the people who have lived here twenty-five years. That is the whole brief: twenty-nine guides, and a question a week put to the region.