On March 17, 2020, Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in Toronto amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is what Toronto looked like following the announcement:

1. Downtown, King at Bay

The scene on Tuesday afternoon at the intersection of King and Bay is probably not what one imagines when one imagines a state of emergency. No panic, no noise, just eerie quiet in the heart of the city’s usually bustling Financial District. But such is the strange and isolating nature of the pandemic that’s changing the lives of so many in Toronto and around the world. This is an emergency, as Doug Ford has now declared. And as the premier ordered the closure of restaurants and cinemas and other spaces that do so much to make our city what it is, it was clear we’ll all have to learn to live in a different Toronto.

2. City hall

As more and more Torontonians hunker down at home, our public spaces are increasingly without a public, and city hall is no exception. Council isn’t sitting and Toronto is winding down non-essential services and sending staff to work from home. Mayor John Tory announced some of those measures Tuesday from his home, where he is self-isolating after a business trip to London, his poorly lit livestream as much a symbol of our atomized moment as abandoned public spaces.

3. Union Station, Great Hall

On a normal day — a day, that is, quite unlike these ones — some 300,000 people travel through Union Station, an average of 12,500 per hour. How many stop to appreciate the light diffused by the clerestory windows of the Great Hall?

4. Ontario Science Centre

Part of the stated mission of the Ontario Science Centre is to inspire children with the extraordinary power of science. The centre will be closed to kids for the next weeks, but its point is being resoundingly made. In public health agencies, hospitals and laboratories across the country and around the world, scientists are waging a high-stakes battle against a dangerous virus. It’s an inspiring exhibit.

5. Yonge and Dundas

One of the busiest intersections in Canada, Yonge and Dundas is crossed by more than 100,000 pedestrians on a normal day. In 2008, to manage the volume of foot traffic, the city installed Toronto’s first so-called scramble intersection there, allowing pedestrians to cross in every direction at the same time. On this day, the scramble was unnecessary.

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6. Royal Alexandra Theatre

Mirvish Productions was slow to respond to the outbreak, continuing to stage “Hamilton” and “Come From Away” even as public health experts called for social distancing and most arts venues and sports leagues shut their doors. On Saturday, the company did join the crowd, dimming the last lights on Toronto’s arts scene.

7. Union Station, GO train platforms

“Anything with a door will be shut,” Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday as he announced the closing of national parks. He suggested, too, that if Canadians don’t stay away from each other, Ottawa might invoke emergency powers to shut yet more doors. Trudeau would have been encouraged, then, by the sight of Union Station as he spoke, a social distancer’s dream.

8. University of Toronto, St. Hilda’s College

The University of Toronto and post-secondary schools across the province are encouraging students to leave their residences as the virus spreads and instructors move their courses online. The cloisters of academia were once meant to keep scholars away from the lay masses, but coronavirus doesn’t discriminate; soon the halls of knowledge will be empty, too.

9. First Canadian Place

The gleaming white floors of First Canadian Place usually require frequent scrubbing in March, as business people and shoppers track slush through the Financial District hub. On Tuesday afternoon, the man on the riding scrubber was nowhere to be seen — nor was he needed.

10. Art Gallery of Ontario

The Art Gallery of Ontario is slated to reopen on April 5, well before the new Picasso exhibit debuts. The master himself, however, would surely have wanted the AGO to take a cautious approach. One of his closest friends, the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, perhaps best remembered as one of Picasso’s “Three Musicians,” died of influenza during the 1918 pandemic.

11. Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada

Don’t assume that just because Ripley’s Aquarium is closed, there’s nothing interesting happening inside. In Chicago, for instance, a 30-year-old rockhopper penguin named Wellington was recently allowed to explore the Shedd Aquarium, also shut due to the coronavirus. A video of Wellington having his mind blown by Amazonian fish has since delighted isolated people everywhere. Who knows what the Ripley’s octopus is doing to wait out the virus?

12. CN Tower

There is no better perspective on Toronto than from the top of the CN Tower, and no better perspective on our current predicament than to see this symbol of our city shuttered, the usual crowds at its base vanished.

13. Union Station

The sculpture in front of the limestone colonnade of Union Station’s northern facade is called “Monument to Multiculturalism,” a tribute to the terminal as a place of coming together. Few are congregating there today, and yet this lonely and frightening moment is slightly less so because across this city and this country and much of the world we are experiencing these things together — a different kind of reminder of our shared humanity.

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