Well, I’m qualified to answer this one. I consider both to be home cities for me, I’ve moved to both twice and lived in both for over a decade. Also, I’ve lived in or visited dozens of cities globally.
All of this is pre-COVID-19, so take it from a historical perspective.
There are a lot more active outdoor sports enthusiasts in Vancouver. That’s simply because there’s an awful lot more outdoors that’s accessible to a much greater percentage of the populace. There are three ski hills visible from downtown, as one example, all three of them are much taller than anything in Ontario. Of course, a lot of people just drive to Whistler-Blackcomb with its mile of vertical. It’s under an hour and a half drive from downtown, so once you get across the bridge, it’s just as easy to keep going.
Similarly, the downtown is surrounded by water and has a massive Seawall along the water with free access and lots of marinas and the like, unlike Toronto where you have to get past the Gardiner barrier to get to the water, and there are a lot fewer marinas and rental places. As a result, there’s a lot more sailing, canoeing, boating and stand-up paddle boarding per capita in Vancouver.
There are a lot more hikers in Vancouver as well, and once again it’s because there’s an awful lot of amazing hiking trails in close proximity, and ones that suit every level of capability.
This doesn’t mean that Torontonians don’t want to be more active in these types of sports, it’s just that the barriers to doing so are quite high.
Both cities are massively multicultural, but with different balances. Vancouver tends to be more Asian, while Toronto has a much bigger percentage of Black people. As a result, there are comparatively more jerk restaurants in Toronto and more Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese joints in Vancouver. Overall, Toronto gets the nod for multiculturalism, with every language and ethnic cuisine available. Vancouver only has about 90% of the languages and cuisines from around the world. Like Caribana? Toronto. Like amazing sushi? Vancouver.
Both are densely populated urban areas, but there are some variances that trigger different behaviours. The actual City of Vancouver is very dense compared to most of Toronto, but the better comparison is Metro Vancouver with its 24 different cities and First Nation lands to Toronto. 2.5 million in Metro Vancouver and 2.9 million in Toronto (not Metro Toronto which has 6.4 million, but includes Brampton). There’s better transit in Metro Vancouver, with the light rail Skytrain system extending deep into the other cities. It’s seen more investment with less political whipsawing than the TTC. As a result, more people as a percentage use it in Vancouver. Similarly, Vancouver's bike trails are much better extended throughout the region, and along with a couple of other factors, that means a lot more people bike around the place. And Vancouver dodged the entire expressway fad of the mid-20th Century, so we don’t have a Don Valley Parking Lot or the Allen Expressway that truncates at Eglinton to drivers’ frustration, or the elevated Gardiner blocking anyone from getting to or appreciating the waterfront. The combination means that while Vancouver’s drivers see a lot of congestion, there are a lot fewer drivers per capita in Vancouver.
Vancouver is in British Columbia, which means that sensible environmental policies are much stronger here. BC didn’t have a Doug Ford moment, where they elected a buffoon who tore up 758 renewables contracts, eliminated electric car incentives and killed the carbon price. One of the key results of that is that Vancouver has an awful lot more Teslas per capita than Toronto. Typically I notice a dozen on any given walk. Electric cars are fully normalized here. Similarly, Vancouver City Council just adopted a policy of not allowing natural gas heating in any new buildings or major retrofits. And the province already has among the lowest GHGs per kWh electricity due to all the hydroelectric, so basically, the air is cleaner and the roads are quieter more of the time. Still work to do.
There are different types of jobs in the two cities. Toronto has almost all the major banks’ headquarters, IT shops and back-office secondary sites. Lots more financial services sector jobs in Toronto. It also has Queen’s Park, the head of provincial government and all of its administrative buildings. It also has the University of Toronto smack in the middle of the city, along with Ryerson and OCAD. While Toronto has a lot of film, tv and game production, it’s a much lower percentage of employment than in Vancouver. Toronto is running about $2 billion annually in the industry, while Vancouver is running about $4 billion, so Vancouver’s industry is bigger in both absolute and relative terms. Vancouver has a much greater tourism sector than Toronto as well. Vancouver sees $14 billion from the sector annually, while Toronto sees $8 billion.
What all that means is that there are a lot fewer dowdy people in professional clothes and a lot more professionally attractive and fit people in Vancouver. It’s striking walking down the streets of the two cities if you are paying attention. A couple of decades ago, the Toronto dismissal of Vancouver was about everyone wearing fleece, but that’s not true anymore if it ever was, and there are a lot more stunningly attractive, well-dressed people wandering around here in Vancouver.
Toronto has the edge in bricks-and-mortar legacy culture. If you want museums, galleries, symphonies, operas and chamber quartets, then Toronto is far ahead. I’ve spent hundreds of hours inside the AGO, ROM, MOCA and smaller cultural venues in Toronto. I’ve spent perhaps a dozen hours inside the VAG and Vancouver’s cultural venues. Some of this turns into great architecture. I love the end result of the Gehry intervention at AGO, I love Liebeskind’s crystalline extension of the ROM, I love the modernist facelift on the National Ballet, I really love Alsop’s OCAD extension and many others. I have a couple of Toronto walks that I take most times I visit the city just to pass by and appreciate the great architecture that’s been built and adapted there. As an architect, I know in Vancouver relates, he’s been asked more than once by visiting Europeans whether Vancouver actually employs any architects. That’s changing, with the amazing new Vancouver House — which a couple of people I now worked on — as an obvious example, but if you like architecture as one element of culture, Toronto has a lot more to offer.
The climate makes a big difference. Vancouver rarely gets humid or too hot in the summer, and rarely sees any snow or even freezing temperatures in the winter. That means a lot more walking, biking and outdoor activities year-round. Typically on New Year’s day walks in Vancouver I’ll see people playing beach volleyball beside the ocean and outdoor tennis in the public parks. There will be fewer people outside wandering around and playing, but still very large numbers. Toronto is much less appealing during the muggy months and the slushy months, so more Torontonians spend more time inside. There’s a reason Toronto has the largest underground pedestrian system, with 70 buildings connected by 30 kilometres of walkways in the downtown core, and Vancouver has exactly two blocks downtown where there’s something remotely equivalent. That lends itself to the much greater biking and walking-to-work culture here.
But for all of those differences, Toronto and Vancouver are a lot more similar than dissimilar. They are both modern urban areas in a developed country whose motto is peace, order and good government. They both overwhelmingly vote for progressive parties and candidates. They are both modern economies, not focused on the dying economies of oil and gas or internal combustion vehicles. They are both massively multicultural, where the odds of you hearing non-English and non-French speakers whenever you are on the street are high. People of every ethnic background, gender and sexual orientation mingle freely in both cities.
Michael Barnard
