At Toronto’s Allan Gardens, the newly restored Palm House frames a big, bright sky

Last week, I looked up at the big, bright Toronto sky through what had to be 5,000 panes of glass in the big dome atop the Palm House at Allan Gardens.

“It’s about 1,200,” corrected Myles Tompkins, a project manager with Heritage Restoration Inc., with a smile. “Every single one is a little different; you can’t really tell [with] the naked eye, but that side of the dome is four inches lower than this side – it settled over the years – in theory it should have been symmetrical but, in the end, it wasn’t at all.”