Personally, I would go to Toronto. Decades ago I used to work for a Canadian company headquartered in Toronto and had development offices in the states. There was a project I needed to do with a distinguished engineer that required me to move to Toronto for a few months. I really liked it. TBH, there are very few cities in the US that I would say are on par with Toronto, and none are better. Now the Winters are brutal, but they're brutal where I'm from so that's not a dealbreaker for me.

totally understand about winters and miss them, personally. i'm from pretty near toronto but us side of the border, a bit further west.