North Toronto Station (Summerhill)

Neighbourhood: Summerhill · Address: 10 Scrivener Square, Toronto, ON · Hours: Mon–Sat 9:30am–9pm, Sun 11am–6pm (LCBO hours) · Price Range: Free

Why Visit

North Toronto Station is one of Toronto's most beautiful adaptive reuse projects — a 1916 Beaux-Arts railway station with a 45-foot ceiling, marble floors, and arched windows, now functioning as an LCBO flagship store that preserves the architectural grandeur of the original Great Hall.

What Makes It Unique

The combination of architectural quality, historical significance, and successful adaptive reuse makes this one of the most impressive heritage buildings in Toronto. The fact that you can walk through the Great Hall for free, without buying anything, makes it accessible in a way that many historic buildings are not.

If you want a version of Toronto street art that feels less staged and more lived-in, go wander the Parkdale laneways between Queen and King. This isn’t a single mural wall or a neat little art corridor with a map and matching hashtags. It’s a loose patchwork of back lanes, garage doors, fence panels, brick walls, shipping doors, and the odd surprise around a bend. You’ll find dozens of smaller murals tucked into the everyday mechanics of the neighbourhood, which is exactly why they work so well. Nothing about it feels overly polished or packaged for visitors. You’re not walking through an art district that’s been sanded down for photos; you’re moving through a working part of the city where art has been layered onto the surfaces people actually use.

What makes Parkdale stand out is the mix, and not just in the obvious visual sense. One wall might carry Tibetan symbols and prayer-flag colours worked into a piece that clearly means something to local residents. A few steps later, you could run into a portrait with bold Afrocentric styling, then a sun-bright Caribbean palette on a garage door, then something unmistakably Toronto: a local character piece, a stencil, a text mural, or a fresh layer painted over an older work that’s already started to fade at the edges. Some pieces are crisp and intentional, some are looser and more scrappy, and some have been softened by weather, salt, and time. That variety is part of the charm. The lanes feel like a conversation happening in public, with different voices adding to the walls instead of one clean style dominating everything.

That’s also why Parkdale feels so different from the more obvious mural zones in the city. A lot of places with street art end up feeling curated in a way that’s almost too neat. You get a few giant statement walls, maybe a mural festival footprint, and that’s the whole story. Parkdale is messier, more organic, and way more fun to explore if you like noticing details. The art isn’t arranged to make an easy tourist loop. You have to slow down a bit, look behind parking lots, glance over fences, and notice the side walls people usually ignore. The reward is that you end up seeing work in context rather than as a standalone attraction. The murals aren’t separate from the neighbourhood; they’re just part of how Parkdale looks and feels.

For photography, this place is excellent because the scale keeps changing on you. One moment you’re looking at a full garage door, the next you’re framing a tiny painted panel tucked beside a staircase or a fence that only shows itself when you turn the corner. That constant shift makes it easy to get more interesting compositions than you’d get from a single giant wall. There’s depth in the lanes, which means you can play with lines, shadows, and layers of texture. Fire escapes, utility poles, cracked pavement, overflowing greenery, bike racks, dumpsters, corrugated metal, old brick, fresh paint, and worn paint all end up in the same shot. If you like images with a lot of colour against real urban grit, Parkdale gives you that without much effort. And if you’re not a photographer, it still works because the visual rhythm is strong enough that you don’t need to be hunting for the “perfect” angle every thirty seconds.

The mood changes depending on when you go. In the morning, the lanes can feel oddly quiet, with the first bit of sunlight hitting brick walls and the occasional resident heading out with garbage or coffee. Late morning and early afternoon are usually the easiest if you want to actually study the murals, since the light is bright enough to show details without getting too harsh right away. By late afternoon, the warmer sun can make the colours pop a bit more, especially on brighter pieces and painted doors, though some lanes start to fall into shadow earlier than you’d expect. At night, it’s a different story. The murals are still there, obviously, but the lanes become more about atmosphere than detail. It’s less about reading every layer of paint and more about the feeling of being in the back half of a neighbourhood after dark. If you’re aiming for photos, daylight is the smart choice. If you’re aiming for a moodier walk, evening has its own appeal, but you’ll miss a lot of the smaller work.

The best way to do it is not to overplan. Start somewhere south of Queen and just wander west-east or east-west through the lanes toward King, ducking in wherever you see painted garage doors or a wall worth following. Keep your eyes up and low, because some of the best pieces aren’t front-and-centre. They’re on the side of a shed, behind a parking area, or wrapping around a fence. A lot of visitors make the mistake of staying on the main streets and expecting the murals to announce themselves. They don’t. You have to actually enter the lanes, and once you do, it becomes a slower, more attentive kind of walk. That’s also why it’s worth coming back more than once. Murals get painted over. Weather changes them. New work appears where you didn’t see anything before. One lane can look totally different a few months later.

A lot of people show up here with cameras, phones, and a loose plan to “just take a look,” and that’s really the right attitude. You won’t need a long wait, a ticket, or a guided tour, but you do need to accept that this isn’t a controlled space. There’s no single entrance or finish line. Some lanes are a bit awkward to navigate, some dead-end, and some have the kind of tight corners that force you to turn around and retrace your steps. That’s normal. The honest reality is that the best strategy is simply to keep wandering and be willing to double back when something catches your eye. Crowds are usually manageable, though you may run into a few other people doing the same thing, especially on nicer weekends or around golden hour. Even then, it rarely feels packed in the way some downtown photo spots do. The area has enough spread that people disperse quickly.

A quick local note: these are working laneways, not an outdoor museum. Cars come through, people are taking out garbage, someone might be unloading groceries, and residents live right there. So don’t block driveways, don’t treat the whole place like a private photo studio, and keep it moving if someone’s trying to get by. It’s the kind of place where a little awareness goes a long way. Say excuse me, stay out of the way, and don’t linger in front of someone’s garage like you own the block. Parkdale is used to visitors, but it’s still a neighbourhood first. If you act like that, people generally won’t mind you exploring.

The neighbourhood context matters here, because Parkdale isn’t just a blank backdrop for murals. It’s one of those Toronto areas where different communities have shaped the streets in very visible ways, and that shows up in the art. Tibetan businesses and institutions are part of the area’s identity, and you can feel that influence on certain walls and in the colour choices people use. Caribbean restaurants and shops add another layer, which is why you’ll see so much warmth and saturation in some pieces. Local artists, tenants, property owners, and community groups all leave their mark too, so the lanes end up reflecting a lot of different perspectives without trying too hard to unify them. That’s probably why the area feels more genuine than places that have been cleaned up into a single mural “route.” Parkdale is a little rough around the edges, and the art benefits from that. It’s not trying to hide the fact that people live, work, and move through these spaces every day.

Also, absolutely pair it with food. Parkdale has some of the city’s best Tibetan spots and solid Caribbean options, and grabbing momos, roti, or jerk nearby just makes the whole outing feel complete. That’s kind of the point here. You’re not checking off an attraction and leaving. You’re spending time in a neighbourhood where food, culture, and street art overlap in a way that feels normal rather than packaged. Grab lunch, wander the lanes, duck into another side street, maybe circle back for a second pass when the light shifts. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll probably only scratch the surface. If you slow down a little, you’ll leave with a much better sense of the place and a camera roll full of details you didn’t know you were looking for. The murals aren’t competing with each other so much as building on one another, and that’s what keeps Parkdale interesting. It’s free, easy to explore, and worth returning to because the lanes never look exactly the same twice.