Sitting silently just east of Toronto's Pearson airport is the derelict Regal Constellation Hotel. Built in 1962, this somewhat bizarre example of modernist architecture was geared toward conferences and trade shows, but due to corporate rearrangement, SARS, and a host of other unfortunate events, it has sat vacant for the past few years. This past weekend, I found myself at an international conference across the street (one that, ironically, used to be held at the Regal), and I could not help paying a visit to my old friend.

Sitting high atop the Scarborough Bluffs on Toronto's eastern side, sits one of our oldest and most beautiful hotels, the Guild Inn. Boarded-off and sealed to potential guests, this magnificent structure is also famed as being one of the most haunted buildings in Canada. It consists of two large buildings, the stouter of which was built in 1914, with a large addition being added in the mid-60s.

I've visited this place many times, as well as its beautiful surrounding gardens (still frequented for wedding photos and the like). In and of themselves, these gardens are quite interesting - in days past, whenever an important building in downtown Toronto was demolished, a small portion of the structure would be transplanted to the Guildwood gardens (behind the Inn). On my most recent sojourn, I decided to do something a little different than my usual photographic escapades - I decided to sleep over.

I suppose you could say that I spend an inordinate amount of time on rooftops. My photography partner and I find ourselves way up there due to an odd compulsion, which allows us to take in some of the most impressive and unique vantage points of this beautiful city. One thinks 'Toronto skyline', and this incredibly generic image of the CN tower, with its short fat stadium friend beside it, comes to mind. But most roofs have at least four corners, and each one offers a vision which is decidedly not the generic, cliched view. The view from Carlton east of Yonge, for example, gives us the charm of distance, yet the intimacy of a proper downtown perspective.

Near the edge of the Leslie Spit on Toronto's eastern shore, lies one of the city's most impressive industrial relics - the massive, derelict R.L. Hearn power station. Since the completion of its construction in 1951, it has been at various times mothballed, partially closed, re-opened, and reconfigured; it is still home to one the of the top ten tallest structures in all of Canada - its mighty 705 foot tall power stack, still a reference point for incoming planes.

A block north of College and Shaw street, amidst a sleepy neighbourhood appointed with ample trees and schools sprawling northward, sits the ruins of Christ Church - St. James. Now nothing more than the hollowed husk and memory of an old church, it possesses a story so surprising and full of intrigue that it's only matched in tale by the mystery of its ghost like image.

At the base of Bathurst street, marking the western limit of Toronto's shoreline proper sits an odd conundrum - one of the last remaining sets of industrial silos in Toronto - The abandoned Canada Malting Company Plant.

Sister to the Victory Soy Mill silos (the remaining structure in plain sight from the Gardener on Toronto's eastern shore), these massive grain elevators were erected in 1928 to store malt hops, with further additions to the preliminary (slightly shorter) silos in the mid 1940s. Before its construction, Toronto had not seen grain silos in years, due to the explosive and unstable nature of grain dust, and the (then) wooden construction of the grain elevators, which did not last more than a decade or so. The new 'modern style' of the Malting Plant, with its 'form following function' motif made it quite an impressive addition to the Toronto skyline, even until its closure in the 1980s. What is most special about this building, however, is not its history, but its current state and statement against what lies all around it.