Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stormed into Toronto on Thursday night, bringing the biggest tour the world has ever seen to the Rogers Centre and covering downtown in seas of sequins and sparkle. Tens of thousands of fans, many from around the world, encircled entire city blocks.
“I was thinking, ‘You know, I want to spend those last shows with the most generous, encouraging, welcoming, passionate, excitable fans’ — so we came to see you in Toronto,” Swift said on stage as the rapturous crowd of more than 40,000 erupted. “The way the city of Toronto has embraced us and welcomed us, we notice all of it, and it’s heartening. It feels so good and it feels so different than any other experience I’ve had before.”
When Swift swept on stage a few minutes before 8 p.m., she performed songs from her various eras and albums — “Lover,” “Fearless,” “Red,” “Reputation,” “Evermore” and others — with twists for her first Canadian audience.
“Sorry aboot it,” a backup dancer ad-libbed during “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” “Doesn’t it feel like the entire ‘Folklore’ era belongs in Canada?” Swift said, as she introduced songs from her 2020 pandemic album. “The kind of place that I envisioned in my mind that ‘Folklore’ took place is very natural wilderness, beautiful, forests that have been there since the beginning of time. It feels like we’re returning the ‘Folklore’ era to where it belongs.”
This was the first — and most anticipated — night of Swift’s 10-day, six-show stay, the Eras Tour’s first stop in Canada. Swift will wrap up her two-year tour, the first in history to gross more than $1 billion, in Vancouver in December. The show itself is a three-and-a-half hour, 40-plus-song, career-spanning marathon. For Toronto, these shows have been more than a year in the making, representing endless hours of promotion, preparation and anticipation.
Outside the stadium, as fragments of Swift and opener Gracie Abram’s songs drifted out through open doors, and a small sliver of the video board could be seen through black curtains, the hundreds left ticketless crowded under overhangs to avoid the drizzling November rain. They scoured the resale markets — the cheapest tickets had dropped to just under $1,400 by the time the concert began — and bartered with scalpers.
Earlier in the night, Michel Longstaff and his 10-year-old daughter Karolina held matching signs, pleading for a way in to see Karolina’s favourite artist. “I’m the biggest Swiftie in the world,” she said.
“We just bought a house,” Longstaff said. ”We can’t afford (resale prices).”
A scalper walked past. Longstaff offered $400 for a ticket. The scalper scoffed.
One fan, Jasmine Salve, stood atop a concrete step, wearing a white sequin dress and backlit by the deep blue of Ripley’s Aquarium. She had flown in alone from outside Munich, Germany, to see Swift, and paced the sidewalks for hours with a simple cardboard sign: “Long story short, searching for one ticket.” As the drizzle came down and the show began, she was still searching.
Salve wasn’t the only fan who had travelled for the show. Chloe St. Laurent drove seven hours with two friends from Sherbrooke, Que. Husband and wife Anthony and Alana came from Syracuse, N.Y. Lisa and Spock Saric flew in from Queensland, Australia; their daughter Bridget joined them from London, England, for her 15th Eras Tour show.
Marsha Stagg came from Halifax. She was one of the first fans at the Rogers Centre, setting up a folding beach chair on Bremner Boulevard at 5:30 a.m. She had hopes of a last-minute ticket drop at the will-call booth; six of her childhood friends flew in from across the country in hopes of the same. One, Kristen, has Stage 4 breast cancer. The concert was a chance to reconnect and celebrate Kristen’s journey, Stagg said.
As the sun rose on Stagg and the hours ticked by, the Rogers Centre grew busier. At 9 a.m., a Taylor Swift impersonator performed a rendition of “Shake It Off” under the nearby CN Tower. At 10 a.m., Noelle Rogers and her daughter Evie snagged selfies with the giant, inflatable Eras Tour friendship bracelet. At 11 a.m., two kilometres down the road, Mayor Olivia Chow showed off friendship bracelets in city council.
By 1 p.m., the crowds began to build. Lines — while officially not permitted until 3:30 p.m. — started forming and roads started closing. By the time the security perimeter around the Rogers Centre opened, an hour before gates swung open at 4:30 p.m., the line to enter the stadium by the CN Tower wrapped across Bremner, up Lower Simcoe and onto Front Street. It only grew as the concert neared.
The line became so long that fans began confusing it for the line to get into Taylgate, an unaffiliated sister event hosted at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. For most of the night, that event, with trivia, costume contests and bracelet-making tables, was quiet.
Taylgate represented only a slice of the Taylor Swift economy, one that is projected to bring more than $282 million in impact to this city and its businesses. On the streets, enterprising sellers and sample-giving companies hawked earplugs, fake nails, instant photos, cookies, chips, cough drops and cowboy hats.
The economy bustled inside stores, too. French Made Café inside the Bisha Hotel on Blue Jays Way rebranded with a Swiftie coffee menu, attracting “fans from all over the world,” employee Joanna said. The 1 Hotel transformed its lobby bar into the Swift-themed Folklore Lounge. A Sephora pop-up at Union Station attracted long lines. On Queen Street West, Lululemon, Brandy Melville and Pink Palm HQ were popular destinations for visiting Swifties.
At the Michael’s craft store at John and Richmond streets, about a five-minute walk from the Rogers Centre, store manager Kriti Madhukar said they sold out of some friendship bracelet materials last week. People had even taken to sifting through returns before employees could place the product on the shelf.
The city projects as many as 500,000 visitors to downtown over Swift’s 10-day stay. But before Thursday’s show, while sidewalks were jammed, transit still ran smoothly. Union Station was steady but busy.
“It looks a little like Christmas,” commuter Marc Beaulieu joked, “with all the shiny dresses and beads.”
The TTC expected an additional 20,000 riders, while Metrolinx added service to its GO buses and trains. On at least one trip from Hamilton to Union, people made friendship bracelets to pass the time.
Even with the crush of fans, police told the Star there had been no concert-related arrests. Security was high, with a previous tour stop in Vienna cancelled after a planned attack. Officers were stationed around the Rogers Centre and at many nearby intersections. Two police horses wearing oversized friendship necklaces stood on Bremner, as did an attendant to clean up after them.
Toronto police declined to share with the Star how much Swift’s visit is costing taxpayers. The TTC put the bill between $1 million to $1.2 million.
The Eras Tour is the latest and biggest chapter in Swift’s career, which has spanned nearly two decades and made her the most famous entertainer on the planet. Her hits, which have embraced country, pop and folk, have become anthems to generations of fans who, despite Swift’s supernova stardom, feel deeply connected with the words she sings.
“These are songs I wrote about my life, my feelings or something that I invented in my imagination,” Swift said at the start of Thursday’s show. “Maybe that’s what you think about when you hear these songs out in the world.”
“After tonight, when you hear these songs, you’re going to think about us and the memories we made here tonight at the Eras Tour.”
With files from Raju Mudhar, Richie Assaly, Nathan Bawaan, Aisling Murphy, Angelyn Francis, Kelsey Wilson, Ben Cohen, Abhiraj Lamba and Estella Ren
