Mayors
The son of York's first postmaster, this 11th Mayor of Toronto was in office during the infamous 1855 Circus Riot and now has a historic downtown public garden and conservatory named after him.
George William Allan
To avoid massive crowds during a highly controversial 1977 visit to Toronto, the Rolling Stones booked two legendary secret nights at the El Mocambo playing under this insect-themed pseudonym
The Cockroaches
Unveiled in 1968 as part of the massive "Metro Centre" railway land proposal, the original design for the CN Tower was a futuristic, tripod-like cluster of three separate towers built to anchor a new headquarters for this national broadcasting company.
CBC
Introduced when the stadium opened in 1989, this friendly green turtle was the official mascot of the SkyDome, chosen because his retractable shell perfectly mirrored the building's famous motorized roof.
Domer
Spitefully denied an official plaque by city council, architect E.J. Lennox got the last laugh by secretly ordering stonemasons to carve this exact 23-character message sequentially into the corbels wrapping all the way around Old City Hall's upper eaves.
EJ LENNOX ARCHITECT AD 1898
A month before becoming Toronto's 5th Mayor, this man changed the course of the 1837 Rebellion by killing rebel Captain Anthony Anderson and narrowly failing to assassinate Toronto's first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, due to a misfiring pistol.
John Powell
Known for high-energy chaos, this iconic punk band from Hamilton sparked a riot during 1978's "The Last Pogo" at the Horseshoe Tavern, and ignited an even larger riot at Ontario Place in 1980 that led to a temporary ban on rock concerts at the venue.
Teenage Head
Brought in from the United States in March 1975 to dismantle the tower's massive construction crane and lift the 44 heavy segments of the transmission antenna into place, this 10-ton Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter was affectionately known by this four-letter female nickname.
Olga
Designed by a group of Grade 8 students from Markham, this multi-coloured porcupine was the official mascot of the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games, featuring exactly 41 quills to represent every competing nation.
Pachi
Ringing the 32nd-floor observation deck of Commerce Court North, these 16 gargantuan, 24-foot-tall stone faces—affectionately called the "Giants of Jordan"—officially personify these four civic and financial virtues.
Courage, Observation, Foresight, and Enterprise
The only Toronto Mayor to be elected to the office by city council while entirely absent from the city, this 8th mayor governed from the new City Hall above St. Lawrence Market, and his stately manor house—The Grange—is now part of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
William H. Boulton
Long before finding solo fame, "Super Freak" icon Rick James and folk-rock legend Neil Young were 1966 bandmates in this Motown-signed Toronto R&B group, named after a popular Yorkville music venue.
The Mynah Birds
Operating from 1979 to 1991 on the main observation level, the CN Tower was home to this glittering discotheque, which proudly billed itself as the "highest nightclub in the world."
Sparkles
First introduced in 1971 to teach local school children about traffic safety, this anthropomorphic Metropolitan Toronto Police mascot was a real, heavily modified cruiser equipped with mechanical eyes that actually opened and closed.
Blinky
Though the front of the Old City Hall war memorial permanently reads "TO OUR GLORIOUS DEAD," the original 1924 architectural design competition layout intended for the main stone inscription to read this broader phrase instead.
TO THOSE WHO SERVED
Only the second mayor to die while in office, this 53rd Mayor of Toronto was an avid sportsman who once served as a practice goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in 1963 after strapping on his pads for a charity hockey game.
Donald Dean Summerville
Known for his signature style of playing the guitar flat across his lap, this late, legendary Toronto blues-rock icon treated local fans to an intimate, surprise performance right here in the other room in 1995.
Jeff Buckley
Built with incredible architectural flexibility to withstand massive windstorms, the CN Tower's transmission antenna is designed to safely sway by this maximum distance from the center, equal to about one meter
0.5m (1.5 feet) in any direction, or 1m (3 feet meters) in total
Created by the city to help usher in the year 2000, this short-lived, androgynous cartoon character featured a replica of the CN Tower for a head and was completely forgotten by the public immediately after New Year's Eve.
Millenni
Stretching across the 1937 Art Deco facade of the old Toronto Stock Exchange, a famous limestone frieze by this Canadian artist features an overlapping line of marching figures that looks suspiciously like a banker picking a laborer's pocket.
Charles Comfort
This highly combative 30th Mayor of Toronto alienated virtually all of city council and exhibited such erratic, aggressive behavior near the end of his term that he was thought to be legally insane, a symptom due to syphilis that would kill him two years later.
Ernest A. Macdonald
At Varsity Stadium's 1969 Rock and Roll Revival festival, this Detroit-born shock rocker sparked global headlines when he threw a live chicken into the audience, mistakenly believing the bird could fly.
Alice Cooper
Pounding up 1,776 stairs two at a time, Brendan Keenoy set an untouched, seemingly superhuman CN Tower climb record of 7 minutes and 52 seconds in 1989 while off-duty from this law enforcement profession.
Provincial Police Officer
Serving as the official mascot of the City of North York from 1982 until amalgamation, this giant, scarf-wearing snowball got his four-letter name from a contraction of the borough's two words.
Nork
To pave the walking paths of the historic Distillery District in the early 2000s, developers imported 600,000 antique, turn-of-the-century paving blocks originally manufactured in this heavy-industrial Ohio city.
Canton