The problem isn't me, it's you

I like architecture.

Oh, good, that's out of the way.

As we travelled across Canada, for me, a part of the trip was an Arthur Erickson cross Canada tour. Just before I left Vancouver (Okay, technically, I left Surrey, but we don't need to get into that right now.) I went to tour the Arthur Erickson exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery (itself an Arthur Erickson creation).

In Alberta we went to the Royal Tyrrell Museum (guess who the architect was, and don't say Moshe Safdie), in Saskatchewan we went to the RCMP museum (thanks again, Michelle) and saw the construction of the new Arthur Erickson designed RCMP museum, here in Toronto, there is Roy Thomson Hall (I haven't been inside it yet), and there is the Mclaughlin Gallery in Oshawa (which has an amazing modern art collection [Hey, there might be a trend running here, but at least I didn't mention Arthur Erickson again.].).

I prefer modernist architecture, as opposed to post-modern (which Arthur Erickson says is an oxymoron [How many times can I write "Arthur Erickson" in one entry?]) or any of the revival styles. Toronto has a lot of modernist architecture done badly at worst and blandly at best. I think that was the thing that formed my opinion of Toronto when I was here last (Yes, it was a very long time ago, and you may rightly argue that there is no way I could have formed that kind of opinion based on that kind of information at that age, but you're there and I'm here, so NYA, NYA, NYA!).

On the other hand, Toronto has an amazing amount of public art. As I was wandering around downtown, I would look down lane-way and there would be a courtyard and some sort of sculpture in the middle. You wander around and the art is just there like Easter Eggs (Easter Eggs in software [ask your kids]). The architecture may suck, but the public art is amazing.