Little Canada

This guide to Little Canada in Toronto follows Jean-Louis Brenninkmeijer, heir to a European retail family, whose childhood hobby of miniature trains and a visit to the Netherlands' Madurodam stayed with him into adulthood. It traces how a two-year work stint in Toronto starting in 1999 turned into a permanent obsession: building a scale-model version of the whole country so visitors could see it in an afternoon. A hired crew of model makers, engineers and even a theatre set designer spent five years and over a hundred thousand hours building it by hand, at eighty-seven to one scale.