I have noticed a lot of changes. It seems that street view needs to update the images more often for it to be useful. a lot of the current photos on that page are totally different from street view's mere 3 year old photos. It is interesting how quickly toronto is startingto develop though.

That set of photos appears to be centred on what is still known as North York, not prime tourist territory, where a high-rise city centre has been sprouting for at least two decades. It's above the 401 expressway and simply moves downtown Yonge Street north. Most of the high-rises are condos, which is also true in the traditional downtown where forty-storey apartment towers bump shoulders with head offices. Like New York City (which has less than half as many towers under construction) Toronto mixes residential and business skyscrapers. But that's not so new. Medium-high-rise apartments started blossoming in the 1960s along the suburban subway routes and the momentum continues. The lure of so many apartment-dwellers persuaded IKEA to open its first North American store in Toronto.

That is such an interesting fact about ikea. Ikea does seem to only be found in areas of significant development in Toronto. the first 2 of those photos are actually not in North york. The first is right at the very bottom of yonge street where it meets the water and the other is just up the street. In the first photo, you would have been able to see the water before the buldings went in. I was suprised when I saw them building that right where it seemed to be too close to the water. I am not suprised you thought it was north york, because that is what I am trying to say is that Toronto is changing so fast. Soon google earth street view will be useless because everything will look different!

Hi, in actual fact Ikea's first North American store was opened in Nova Scotia; unfortunately it closed many years ago.

o ok. So I am assuming that the first store remaining today is in the Toronto area unless they jumped to the Us before opening another in Canada. I still find it interesting that they started in Canada before the US.

Ikea has at least a dozen stores in Canada now - but the first opened in Dartmouth N.S. in the mid-1970's. It closed in 1988 due to market size. I believe the first American Ikea opened in 1988.