Street spit, being built far out into Lake Ontario to form a new outer harbour for Toronto, is home to the world's largest colony of ring-billed gulls, but around convTHE FOLLOWING BY RICHARD CLEE GIVES  YOU A GOOD IDEA OF WHAT YOU CAN DO IN TORONTO, IF YOU SHOULD BE FOOLISH ENOUGH TO PLAN ON SPENDING LESS THAN 24 HOURS A DAY AT ADAMCON02.

   So your going to ADAMCON 02 in Toronto come August. Fine, but what about the spouse and munchkins? While you are soaking up ADAM lore for three days, what about the rest of the family?
 
   Quite possibly the best solution, if the budget permits, is to take the option of the three extra days at reduced rates so you can all at least scrath the surface of the city's attractions.
 
   ADAMCON 02 is set in the traditional vacation season to allow you a leisurely trip to and from the convention itself. Maybe you'll drive and come in by Niagara Falls, or take the family sparrow-snoop to the birdwatching parks at Presqu'-ile to the east, or Long Point and Point Pelee to the west. Maybe you'll stop for the beaches from Prince Edward County to Wasaga to Grand Bend, or choose attractions from the Pickering nuclear generating station - usually the world's most efficient with the unique Candu reactors, it offers tours - to the Canadian Automotive Museum, to the African Lion Safari, to just loafing around the dozens of varied provincial parks and hundreds of conservation areas.
 
   But those decisions can be made from a road map and information from Ontario Tourism. So this will concentrate on things to do in what the rest of the country calls T.O. or, if they work for an airline, YYZ. 
 
   In Toronto in August, the big attraction is the Canadian National Exhibition, an overgrown state fair type of event whose permanent buildings spread over a huge park on Toronto's lakeshore. If you want an idea of the size, a fraction of the grounds are used for the Molson Indy race in July - watch the telecast
 n  e world. From the observation lounge at the top, you can see deep beyond Buffalo on a clear day. If there's still time, the McLaughlin Planetarium is a quick half-dozen subway stops away.
 
   The Ontario Science Centre, with its breathtaking architecture and superb ravine parkland setting, will take any serious adult a full day. It's crammed floor after floor with hands-on, you-try-it quite spectacular demonstrations of basic scientific principles, and some not so basic. If your legs feel ready to drop off, or the kids' do, there's a restaurant and cinema as well. How good is it? During the school year, the school buses with U.S. plates waiting outside tend to outnumber the Ontario ones, even though it seems every Ontario teacher is conniving to take the class there.
 
   Your significant other is a history buff? Try touring downtown, east of Yonge St. Not just antique row on Queen East; the whole St. Lawrence Centre and Market complex, Toronto's First (1834) Post Office (where, incidentally MTAG gets its mail), the magnificent churches, and the Mackenzie house, home of the leader of the 1837 Rebellion. Or go about two and a half miles northwest from the hotel to Black Creek Pioneer Village, where an historic mill forms the centrepiece to a collection of historic houses, inns, shops, and outbuildings collected from all over southern Ontario to form an early-Victorian town
 
   The munchkins didn't get enough rides on the Midway at the Ex and Ontario Place? Take them on the hotel shuttle bus out to Canada's Wonderland, a very decisive cut above your run of the mill theme park. Or spend a cool day on the Toronto Islands with their attractive amusement area, quiet lagoons featuring a lifetime supply of ducks and Canada geese, open green spaces with playgrounds, gardens, a petting zoo, and the refreshing ferry trip home at the end with its ultimate view of the city skyline.  They'll love The Old Spaghetti Factory or Organ Grinder pizza place for dinner when you get ashore.
 
   Perhaps you're paired with a culture vulture. No problem.  Toronto is home to both the Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet of Canada. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra now performs in the visually and acoustically stunning Roy Thompson Hall. Two magnificent huge theatres from the glory days of vaudeville, the Pantages and Elgin/ Winter Garden, have been lovingly restored at enormous cost and are now housing lavish stage productions. You could stay a month, visit a different "little theatre" every night, and still not exhaust the supply. The newly expanded Art Gallery of Ontario houses probably the world's top collection of Henry Moore's sculptures, in addition to its special showings and strong collection of pictorial art. It serves as focal point for a galaxy of private galleries. And anyone with any interest in Inuit art who does not run just north of the city to the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art in Kleinburg will miss a lifetime experience.
 
   All of this is backed up by a collection of museums, from the mighty Royal Ontario Museum, rated to have the best Chinese collection outside China, the mineral gallery only obtainable in a place as resource-rich as Ontario, the fabulous bat cave centring a fine natural history section, and a general collection as well selected as it is displayed, to the specialty places like the incredible ceramics museum across the road and the latest, devoted to fabrics and their history.
 
   Perhaps she just wants to go shopping. Where? The high-priced, high-class turf is Yonge-Bloor-Bay and the adjacent boutiques of Yorkville. More normal mortals can try the 300-odd shops in the great gallery of the Eaton Centre, then cross via Simpson's newly redone flagship store into the five miles of underground plazas, all interconnected, that underpin the financial district. For open-air colour, visit the Chinese - Caribbean - Jewish - Southeast Asian melange of the Kensington market, then drift south a block to the bargain stores of the garment district. Yorkdale, once the largest enclosed plaza in the world and a short bus ride from the convention hotel, has recently expanded yet again and may yet regain the title. The city abounds with small shopping enclaves catering to almost any interest. For the science fiction and fantasy fans, not only is Bakka bookstore one of the best for the genre on the continent, but the Toronto Public Libraries harbour a special branch - the Spaced-Out Library - rated as the best publicly accessible science fiction research collection in the world. Often noted authors, from Judith Merrill to Spider Robinson to Guy Gavriel Kay, are found visiting or even working there.
 
   Nightlife? Toronto has always been the jazz centre for anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line. You can find a restaurant where you can spend $200 a couple if you want to, and feel you got your money's worth. Brew-pubs offer their own distinctive beers, brewed on the premises. Entertainment? Choose the kind you like and it's there. Even if you just stay home and watch the tube, in Toronto you can get stations of eight different networks plus four or five feisty independents off the air - don't ask what cable delivers.
 
   But perhaps the hectic pace isn't for you. How about the Metro Toronto Zoo? It may boast a monorail and the world's largest McDonald's, but even they are easily lost in the spectacular 700-acre Rouge River valley setting. Or go birdwatching. The Leslie Street spit, being built far out into Lake Ontario to form a new outer harbour for Toronto, is home to the world's largest colony of ring-billed gulls, but around convention time is a popular resting place for summer warblers assembling for migration. So is High Park, in the city's west end, where Grenadier Pond also draws its share of overfed waterfowl. Toronto is networked with ravines and major river valleys, most of which have been preserved as parks, generally interconnected and all easily accessible. And there's the usual assortment of formal gardens and quiet walking streets as well.
 
   There's the 98-room folly of Casa Loma, a castle complete with underground and secret passageways, and adjacent Spadina House, a mid-Victorian patrician's home, both awaiting your inspection. The broad campus of the University of Toronto shares downtown space with the provincial Parliament buildings in Queen's Park. Fast or slow paced, high or low key, the list of things to do in Toronto is almost endless. For instance, we haven't even mentioned Harbourfront yet, with its restaurants, boutiques, flea markets, special entertainment events, waterside promenades and more.
 
   You can find out about all these things easily. Most hotels distribute Where - Toronto, one of the network of Where magazines familiar to American hotel guests in all major cities. Toronto Life magazine, on any newsstand, carries more extensive listings.  The Metro Toronto Convention and Visitors Association, Queens Quay Terminal, Box 126, Toronto M5J 1A7 has an information phone locally and a toll-free line from southern Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio (800) 387-2999 daily from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, and will mail information on request. The Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation answers at 800-462-8404 from New York State and 800-828-8585 from the rest of the lower 48; Canadians call 800-268-3735; all numbers of course toll-free.
 
   Don't worry about getting around Toronto. The reasons for choosing the convention hotel included superb accessibility. It's by the junction of the main east-west and north-south superhighways, one exit before the junction with the airport expressway. A frequent-service main bus line at the door connects with both arms of the U-shaped north-south subway route to downtown. In Toronto, transit is cheap, safe, fast, efficient, and fanatically clean. Even in off-peak hours it will deliver you to any downtown destination faster than your car and nearer to it than any parking you can find. Torontonians only use their cars in the city for three reasons - destinations in the suburbs, it's Sunday, or an irresistible bargain on a case of anvils (cash and carry only). A one-day, unlimited use pass is $5.00 for multi-stop excursions - on Sunday the pass covers the whole family. You can save by not renting a car and miss only the hassles. 
 
   Of course for those with time to burn, ADAMCON 02 can be just the centrepiece of a memorable vacation tour. Ontario is bigger than any U.S. state except Alaska, having a common border with New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota. Its southernmost point is below the northern border of California in latitude; its saltwater shoreline is Hudson's Bay. Side trips can take you from fast-paced major cities to lakes that have yet to feel the keel of a canoe. Whatever you and yours want in a vacation, Toronto and Ontario can deliver. Come and see. 

