The sun shone brightly for our last morning in Toronto, as it so often does – it’s as if the place wants to make us even more reluctant to leave than we already are. And I must admit that my heart increasingly belongs to London and Toronto in equal measure. While London bears the weight of history, Toronto has the brashness of a relatively new place, which changes every time we visit, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Take the CN Tower, for example. Finished in 1976, it was at 1815 feet the tallest free-standing tower in the world until 2007 when the Burj Khalifa took the record. It soldiered on as the world’s tallest tower until 2009 when the Canton Tower overtook it. Today, it’s the tenth tallest tower in the world, and the tallest free-standing structure on land in the Western Hemisphere. Which might seem something of a comedown, but this is an iconic landmark that seems to pop up wherever you are in Toronto, in much the same way as the Post Office Tower seems to peer from the most surprising alleyways in London.

Our last morning in Toronto is always a bit tricky to navigate, but on a glorious morning it was wonderful to walk alongside the Lake, hearing the red-winged blackbirds calling, and positively tripping over the sparrows. What a delight it is to hear them everywhere, to see them disappearing into the smallest crevices in old buildings and new skyscrapers alike. There were even some chirruping in the atrium below. I think this is the most beautiful internal space in Toronto.

This is the Allen Lambert Galleria in Brookfield Place – it was designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, who seems to specialise in buildings and bridges that seem to defy gravity. Certainly this is a light and airy space with something of the cathedral about it. And inside, there’s a fine piece of ‘facadism’, with the front wall of the bank that used to stand on this street preserved as if pinned in a case of butterflies.

And so we head home, though I always feel melancholy leaving the friends and family here. It’s strange to feel so attached to a place thousands of miles away from where I live, but then I have been coming to Toronto for 25 years, so I suppose it was going to work its way under my skin at some point. This time, we’ve celebrated my mother-in-law’s 97th birthday, and said goodbye to her 95 year-old sister. I’m both glad to be heading home to London, and sad to be leaving.