Somewhat unrelated, but if you had to pick an American school that Toronto would be 'our version of', Harvard is probably a better bet than Columbia: > from 20

Somewhat unrelated, but if you had to pick an American school that Toronto would be 'our version of', Harvard is probably a better bet than Columbia: > from 2000 to 2004 U of T professors produced more publications in the fields indexed by Thomson Scientific than faculty at any other public research university worldwide... the University of Toronto stands second only to Harvard in publications among all private and public universities. (The numbers are a bit out of date, but Toronto's relative place among Canadian universities is probably unchanged).