Toronto Global

In the Toronto Region, Our Motto is, “Keep Calm, and Winter On”

Ashleigh Ryan — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 19:20:00 +0000

Winter is upon us in Canada, which means you might be thinking we’re all in full hibernation mode.

How cold does it get in Toronto? We get asked that a lot. Our answer is, yes, it does get cold, but not as cold as you might think.

Below is a comparison of average temperatures for various major North American cities over the course of the year (we left off Los Angeles and Miami because, well, no need to rub it in). You’ll notice we’re about the same as Chicago and Boston, and warmer than most other Canadian cities throughout the year, which isn’t surprising given that we’re farther south than all of them.

You may not be surprised to learn that Canadians spend a lot of time talking about the weather. In everyday parlance, you’ll hear many Canadians refer to something called “wind chill.” This is technically a measure of the wind’s cooling effect on the skin. So on a typical winter day in Toronto, the temperature might be 0 degrees Celsius, but we say it “feels like” -7 with the wind chill.

Meteorologists tend to get ruffled about our wind chill obsession, as it often becomes a way for us to gripe about the weather being much worse than it actually is. That is, we say the wind chill temperature rather than the actual temperature to be extra dramatic about the cold we are experiencing.

The thing to note about winter in Canada is there’s generally a trade-off between temperature and sunshine. On the coldest days of the year in Toronto, you’ll have crystal clear skies and gorgeous sun. You’d probably still prefer to be on a beach, but there’s nothing more refreshing than a crisp, sunny winter day. As long as you dress for it, it’s beautiful.

More on that point – winter apparel. It’s serious business here. It’s no coincidence that the king of the fashionable parka, Canada Goose, is made right here in Toronto. (And by the way, the company just launched a new line of Inuit-made parkas in New York last week.) We pride ourselves on stylish practicality, and homegrown Canadian brands like Roots, Lululemon, Mackage, Arcteryx, Moose Knuckles, and Aritzia have taken up the mantle on helping Canadians look good and stay warm all winter long.

We also stay active all winter long. From ice sculpture festivals and Holiday Markets, to skating rinks, ski hills, and trails around the region, there are countless ways to enjoy the outdoors over the course of our long winters. But even if you don’t want to go outside, there’s so much to do indoors, that you might find winter goes by much faster than you think.

One of the things I love about winter is it gives me time to catch up on all the cultural activities our city has to offer. The last thing I want to do when the sun is out and it’s over 20 degrees (68 Fahrenheit) is sit inside a dark movie theatre or spend a day in an art gallery. I don’t think I’m alone; visit anywhere in the Toronto Region when it’s nice out and you’ll see every outdoor space and patio is full of people.

But Toronto has an amazing array of things to do inside, from art galleries and museums, to our world-class theatre scene, to Raptors and Leafs games, to dozens of venues to catch the buzziest new films and music acts. Each year, the City of Toronto hosts the Winterlicious Festival, where hundreds of restaurants across the city offer three course, fixed priced menus for between $23 and $53 ($18 and $41 USD), giving us an added excuse to eat for comfort and try some of the amazing places our city has to offer. North of the city in York Region, there’s also Richmond Hill’s Winter Carnival and the beautiful Winterfest at Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan. West of Toronto in Burlington, active winterites can enjoy skating on the waterfront, or partake in the annual Chilly Half Marathon. And don’t forget Raptors 905 games in Mississauga, where you can scout the next generation of NBA stars from our G League team (the Raptors’ Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam are both alumni).

There really is no shortage of things to do around the region, and the ebb and flow of the seasons allows you to allocate your pastimes accordingly.

About “Keep Calm, and Winter On”

You might hear a lot about Canadian winters…but the reality is, there are enough awesome things about this place to compensate for the weather – great people, fantastic work opportunities, excellent schools, one of the world’s most vibrant food, sports, and arts scenes, and blissful summers that are almost as long as our winters. You might have one experience shoveling snow or walking outside on a -10 day and find any excuse possible to leave. But I suspect the warmth of the people, the quality of life we offer, will give you more than one reason to stay. I convinced my British partner to move here instead of Australia. He loves it here, and I suspect you will too. So long as you dress for it.

How Multicultural Is Toronto? Let Us Count the Ways…

Ashleigh Ryan — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 19:07:00 +0000

Torontonians often boast about their multiculturalism. It’s enshrined in the City of Toronto’s official motto – “Diversity Our Strength” – and observers from Anthony Bourdain to Amazon have highlighted Toronto’s unique advantage in having so many people here from diverse cultures and backgrounds. BBC Radio in 2016 even crowned Toronto as the most multicultural city in the world, after London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan offered up his own city for the title.

A bold claim, to be sure. New York, London, Sydney, Los Angeles – not to mention cities like Singapore, Jerusalem, São Paulo and Mumbai that have multiple, distinct cultural and ethnic communities – are all exceptionally vibrant, diverse places. But the Toronto Region’s diversity still stands apart in a number of ways.

For one thing, the proportion of our population that’s foreign born remains higher than just about any major city in the world. In the City of Toronto, 51% of residents were not born in Canada and for the Toronto Region as a whole, that figure is 47%. This is higher than any other metro region in North America, and higher than Greater London, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, and Amsterdam (see figure below).

The only North American cities with higher foreign born rates than Toronto are the Cities of Miami and Miami Beach. Yet unlike the Toronto Region, where just about every corner of the world is represented, more than three quarters of immigrants in Miami hail from Latin America.

Source: Statistics Canada, Census 2016; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2016; Eurostat; UK Office for National Statistics; Australian Bureau of Statistics

Over 250 ethnicities and 170 languages are represented in the Toronto Region, and roughly half the population identifies as a visible minority (defined as either Asian, Black, Latin American, or Arab). There are 16 countries that have over 50,000 people represented in the Toronto Region, including 337,000 from India, 300,000 from China, and 200,000 from the Philippines.

To put this in perspective, there are more people in the Toronto Region that were born in Asia than there are living in the Cities of San Francisco or Dallas. There are nearly twice as many people living in the Toronto Region that were born in Greece than there are living in Santorini.

Source: Statistics Canada, Census 2016

But the numbers only tell part of the story. Spend a bit of time in the Toronto Region and you’ll quickly realize that our multiculturalism is woven into every aspect of our way of life, whether it’s our food, our art, our festivals, or our businesses.

Torontonians – and Canadians as a whole – value and celebrate diversity like few other places on the planet. As Yung Wu, CEO of Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District put it, “Canadians are wired differently. We embrace difference differently. We assimilate differently. We approach change differently.”

The Martin Prosperity Institute ranked Canada fourth overall and first on Tolerance in its Global Creativity Index, citing Canada’s openness to ethnic and religious minorities and promotion of LGBTQ rights. The index assesses 139 countries around the world based on three dimensions of creative competiveness: technology, talent and tolerance.

About Multicultural

Our relative strength on all three categories (Canada is also the most educated country in the OECD) is proving to be a pivotal asset in today’s economy. Access to talent – especially a broad array of skills and perspectives that can help boost innovation – is something all globally competitive companies are looking to leverage. When Booking.com, a world leader in online reservations, was looking for a new office in North America, they settled on Toronto in great part because of its multilingual population.

From Toronto, they’re able to provide service in English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. The Toronto Region has also become a top destination for clinical trials because of our large, multiracial and multiethnic population, providing an exceptionally diverse subject pool.

Whether you’re looking to work, study, play, or create, the Toronto Region allows you to connect to people, places, and ideas from around the world in incredible ways. It makes this one of the most interesting places to live and it helps our businesses grow and thrive. Our region is able to hold onto more of our talent because, simply put, they’re able to find themselves here.

Most multicultural city in the world? Yeah, we’ll take it.

Toronto’s Got Talent…and Lots of It!

Ashleigh Ryan — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 18:47:00 +0000

The Toronto Region’s tech boom is showing no signs of slowing down. In the last five years, Toronto added over 80,000 tech jobs – more than any other North American city. This past September alone brought over $1.4 billion in investment from U.S. and Canadian technology companies, including a new Canadian headquarters for Microsoft; a $200 million expansion to Uber’s Advanced Technologies group; and a new Toronto office for Shopify. Since then, Intel, Pinterest, Instacart, WeWork Labs, and Accenture have all announced a Toronto expansion.

The region’s exceptional talent pool is a big driver of this success. With over 670,000 STEM degree holders and one of the most educated populations in the world, our region is full of incredibly bright people with a diverse range of skillsets and knowledge. The question is, do we have enough of them?

Cities and academic institutions all over the world are realizing the need for a strong talent pipeline to supply local tech companies, particularly in burgeoning new fields like artificial intelligence. MIT, for example, recently announced a $1 billion plan to create a new college for AI in response to the sharply increasing demand for skills in areas such as machine learning and computer vision. China has pledged to create a similar school for machine learning, with the help of Google exec Kai-Fu Lee, in its mission to become the world’s leader in AI by 2030.

The thing is, we did it first.

Canada has a long history of supporting research in artificial intelligence. The Toronto-based Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) first introduced the “Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Society” program in 1983. Today, CIFAR is leading the Government of Canada’s $125 million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy – the world’s first national AI strategy focused on supporting research and developing talent. Toronto’s Vector Institute is headed by none other than Google’s Geoffrey Hinton, one of the earliest proponents of deep learning application.

Aerial view of Downtown Toronto including architectural landmark CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Building on this momentum, the Vector Institute is working with postsecondary institutions across the province to increase the number of applied AI grads to 1,000 per year by 2023. The Ontario government has also committed to increasing the number of graduates in STEM disciplines from 40,000 to 50,000 over the same period.

The Toronto Region is also benefitting from an enormous brain gain in recent years. In 2017, 94,465 immigrants settled here – a rise from 90,675 in 2016 and 88,905 in 2015. More than half (53.5%) of those who immigrated to the Toronto Region between 2011 and 2016 have a university degree or diploma at bachelor level or above and 10% are STEM professionals. Adding them all up, our region’s tech workforce is growing by tens of thousands each year – regardless of how many companies come.

But some in the industry fear we’re still not doing enough – that there aren’t enough graduates and new immigrants waiting in the wings to sustain all this growth.

To this we say, Toronto is changing – for the better.

The Toronto Region has one of the most diverse industrial economies in North America. Nowhere else do you find a top 5 tech, automotive, food and beverage, digital media, and life sciences sector. That gives us a unique advantage, as it allows businesses to tap into supply chains and expertise that exist outside their immediate cluster. Tech companies can draw people from a wide array of technology-focused industries to be found here, from broadcasting and publishing, to finance and insurance. This gives us stability as a region, while providing tremendous opportunity for workers and businesses. In fact, one of Toronto’s strongest growth areas is in fintech, building on our high concentration of leading international banks as well as STEM talent. Many coding bootcamps have cropped up in Toronto to help workers transition to the industry, from HackerYou and Product School to the innovative Insight Data Science Fellows Program.

About Toronto

Our competitive wages in tech are also a great advantage for businesses, but they’re bound to change as demand for our talent increases. As wages go up – and in Toronto, they have a lot of room to grow relative to other tech hubs – more workers and students will be motivated to enter the industry, further adding to our talent pipeline.

The Toronto Region is one of the largest and fastest growing metropolitan regions in North America. By 2036, the region is projected to grow from 7.7 million to more than 10 million people. We have the people, the stellar academic institutions, and the public commitment to build a world-class technology workforce. The question is not whether we have enough talent, but what can we expect from it. At least for now, the future is bright.