Not quite Toronto, but close enough

I was watching the newest episode of Nikita this afternoon (S2, E12 - Pale Fire) and spotted something distinctly Canadian in the Amsterdam scene. This had me taking notes and looking up locations on the internet and finding pictures to support. I spent about 3 hours having fun working on this so I could share it with the universe.

When Michael and Owen are first shown in Amsterdam they are walking down the street with "Amsterdam Ballet" signs behind them. There are some red awnings barely visible in the background. The shot is very carefully framed to remove anything that would give away the location as distinctly not Amsterdam. There is a brief flash on those red awnings that made me sit up straight and grab my notebook. The red was suddenly not only red, but had a swipe of yellow/gold on it as well. It was immediately triggered in my mind as the CIBC logo. I started searching for branch locations that would fit that image: Stone building, logo only on the awning to the far left and text on the building ending in "ntre". I had no luck.

I started working backward trying to find a starting point for this conversation walk. I mean how many stone stairways lead down to the water? It turns out that there aren't any in Toronto. I had to use the logo behind Michael to find the cafe which would lead me on my adventure through Google maps/street view to find the shots that happened in that sequence.

Step 1) The Logo - Find the logo, and you can find the locations.

I started with the logo and tried to find a cafe in Toronto with the name that looks to appear on the awning. It looked like "Mocha" but that didn't work so I had to zoom in closer and try to make out the blurry words. It appeared to be "Melville". I tried that and was successful. I found the stairway and the cafe location.

The cafe was at Melville and Main St in Cambridge, ON. Street view had it very similar but couldn't get in close enough to find the exact shot as seen in the show.

Step 2) The Branch - Once I had the logo, I looked for the closest CIBC branch.
Using the location of the cafe as my search parameters I looked up the branches on the bank website. Closest branch to the cafe was at Water & Main, just down the street.

Step 3) The Conversation - Follow the movement in the conversation and see if I could match it
From there I was using street view to follow the walking conversation as they went north on Water St.

When the movement stopped so the boys could talk the shots were going back and forth with Michael in front of a store type locale. This was 18 Water St N

Step 4) The Church - This one was hard.

Once I found the store front that Michael was in front of I couldn't match the background behind Owen. That's because it's across the river. I had to find the churches near the shooting location and find the angle that best fit the shot of Owen. I found the church over near the first intersection. It's the Central Presbyterian Church. We're looking at the east side of the church through a gap in between buildings.

The shots are framed so well that I thought it was across the street behind Owen and that they had changed locations entirely for his half of the conversation, turns out they just moved a few yards down the block and had Owen basically facing the same direction Michael was for his half of the conversation. A great little trick. Owen hides the tree and Michael hides the edge of the red brick building.

I tried to find some of the other locations and I'm sure that with more time and internet geekery I would be able to find all the little spots that were used to portray Amsterdam. Some were easy and some not so much. But it was a lot of fun to try.

I know that Cambridge isn't Toronto, but since I had so much fun I figured it was close enough.