Brought my parents downtown today for the Doors Open Toronto event, where we went to see about six buildings along Bay street. We only had half a day, so I chose that area because it was most densely packed with interesting buildings that I knew of, and all within walking distance of each other.

We started with the Toronto-Dominion Centre 54th floor tour with the spectacular city view. One disappointment was that the washrooms, part of the complete work of the Toronto-Dominion Centre architect Mies Van Der Rohe, were off-limits to the public, so my parents will only be able to see them from the photos I took last year when I was visiting as part of an architecture class field trip.

We headed south on Bay until reaching Front street to quickly glance at the Union Station exterior, as well as the Royal Bank building with its gold-coloured windows that apparently, according to tour guides back in the Toronto-Dominion Centre, actually contained real gold. We made a U-turn by crossing to the east sidewalk of Bay street and began walking north to the Santiago Calatrava-designed BCE place. These were not actually part of the Doors Open event, but were interesting buildings to see anyway and were open. We ate lunch at the BCE food court before touring the beautiful Galleria.

After BCE place we headed north to the CIBC site, where a Doors Open volunteer guided my parents around the grand, Roman-bath-like banking hall while I wandered off snapping pictures. The guide pointed out a few embedded fossils that I didn’t notice before in the central octagonal red marble flooring.

Then we left and crossed over to the west sidewalk of Bay street and headed a block north to visit another bank-type building, again with a grand banking hall but with a different, lighter look and gold grillwork doors everywhere - the Canada Permanent building. They had the original metal vault door installed and intact. You could see the inside of the vault door when you went into the vault room, which had been converted to a small meeting room and was accessible through another door that had been made in the vault wall.

The last major site we went to was the New City Hall further north on Bay/Queen, where the huge council chamber, resembling a flying saucer, was completely open so we went up to explore for a while.

It was getting late and so we left and started walking west on Queen, walking past Osgoode Hall and Campbell House, which were two other Doors Open sites, before finally reaching our car and heading home.

Photo: The lounging area behind the assembly area, all within the saucer-shaped Council Chamber in the New City Hall on Queen. In the foreground is the interesting structure where waiters may come out with food or take back dirty dishes when councilors lounge here.