In fact, Kensington Market — within walking distance of the entertainment and business districts and close to most of Toronto’s major hotels — is a prime illustration of how Toronto ticks. Because within just a few blocks, you can get a vivid idea of how smoothly and gracefully the city succeeds at simultaneously dissolving the borders between disparate cultures and preserving what’s best and most valuable about each one. At Nu Bügel, you can sample wood-fired bagels (the sesame is a standout) baked by a family of Venezuelans; a bit farther down Augusta Avenue, two empanada shops are directly across the street from each other, and nearby is a choice of restaurants in which you can enjoy French-Caribbean cuisine, tacos, sushi, and pastries and vegetarian fare at the popular Wanda’s Pie in the Sky. On Baldwin Street, not far from Spadina Avenue, there’s a Middle Eastern grocery, a Jamaican gift store and an Ethiopian spice market. And near the intersection of Augusta Avenue and College Street is Caplansky’s, where the pastrami and corned beef (they’re called smoked meats here) rival any to be had at New York’s legendary delis, or on the Lower East Side.

Image Wanda’s Pie in the Sky in Kensington Market. Credit... Ian Willms for The New York Times

As much as, if not more than, any North American city, Toronto celebrates its multicultural heritage. There is an online multicultural calendar devoted to listing the lectures, religious and national holidays, and street festivals sponsored by the city’s range of communities. Often, it strikes me that the city is more successfully integrated than the cities of its neighbor over the border. Of course, even the most naïve tourist has only to glance at the newspapers or catch a few minutes of the nightly TV news to learn that Toronto has its share of poverty, prejudice, gang violence and political scandal; my most recent visit there coincided with the embarrassing revelations and the furor over the drug use of the controversial mayor, Rob Ford. Some complain that Toronto is too proper, too predictable, too staid, that it lacks the joie de vivre of Montreal. But casual travelers and most longtime residents agree that the city’s pleasures outweigh its shortcomings, that its streets are clean and safe and that its people (2.6 million in Toronto; 5.6 million in the metropolitan area) are polite, pleasant and helpful in ways that can sometimes startle those of us who come from somewhere else.

At restaurants in Toronto, I notice racially and ethnically mixed groups of friends even more often than I do in New York neighborhoods celebrated for their diversity. I see a much wider variety of visitors to the city’s excellent museums: classes of children lying on the floor and drawing at the Royal Ontario Museum, which features stellar collections of Asian and Middle Eastern art and of Canadian painting, and at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where popular recent exhibitions have included shows of Ai Weiwei’s work and of ephemera connected with David Bowie’s career. Everywhere, glimpses of residents going about their daily routines — the Sikh policeman directing traffic, the Vietnamese and Filipino reporters broadcasting the TV news, novelists from the Caribbean reading their work at the city’s annual International Festival of Authors — testify to the welcome that Toronto has given the immigrants who have sought refuge here.