What is Drake looking at?
On the cover of his new album, Toronto's native-son superstar is pictured lounging on the roof of the CN Tower, his booted feet hanging over the side of the thousand-foot abyss.
When the image – by photographer Caitlin Cronenberg – was released this week, online discussion focused on whether it was digitally altered. Did he actually sit up there in the wind? The CN Tower's management tweeted a response: Apparently Drake was #notreallythere.
But that misses the point. Whatever its method of execution, the image is pure visual myth-making, a new icon of the city sharing his light with an older one. In 1933, King Kong's climb up the Empire State Building transformed the New York skyline into a landscape that could be, at least, climbed and clambered over; in 2016, Drake's vertical climb shows the heights of ambition and sheer, rule-breaking chutzpah that the city might aspire to.
Not to mention a love for itself. Drake has resolutely, passionately, dorkily championed the city of his birth, which he also gave a new nickname (it seems to be sticking). His songs and videos are full of references to his history in the 6: his old CityPlace condo on Fort York Boulevard, shooting Degrassi episodes "up on Morningside," his crew members who live "past Kennedy," his childhood home in the suburban high-rises off Scarlett Road. His love for Toronto – his Toronto, unfettered and unformed, with its its polyglot slang and musical stew – is deep and unself-conscious.
And now he's climbed the CN Tower. The image instantly restores the tower, Toronto's singular physical landmark, to a place of poetic prominence.
It's been a while. There was a time when the CN Tower was a point of unironic if qualified pride: the world's largest free-standing structure. Completed in 1976 by the Australian modernist John Andrews – a distinguished figure who came to Toronto with big dreams of reinventing the city – the tower rose up from a dusty plain of rail yards, its brawny concrete proclaiming its dual role as a piece of machinery. It was designed to relay signals as well as stand tall.
Then it fell into a symbolic decline. In a city that's increasingly sophisticated, it is a 40-year-old pile whose main claims to fame are having a fast elevator and being … not the tallest of anything in particular, but tall. When you go up there now, you see a giant ad for the nearby aquarium and get hustled corny souvenirs.
And yet: This is where you can see the city as it is. Downtown Toronto can seem like a concrete jungle, but from the top of the CN Tower, the city reveals itself in all its low, broad, suburban expanse. It seems to go on forever, the tiny cluster of downtown giving way to infinite sprawl studded with high-rises. It's a city with wide horizons, with plenty of room to build all kinds of futures. And you can only see that Toronto if you rise to the observation deck and look around. It must look even better from up on top.