As Manhattan slowly springs to life again, with Wall Street’s biggest firms pushing traders and bankers back into the office, the scene some 350 miles to the northwest, where North America’s No. 2 financial center lies, is vastly different.

Toronto’s Bay Street is quiet, laid low by successive waves of COVID-19. Union Station, normally one of the continent’s busiest commuter hubs, is largely deserted, even in rush hour. It will get busier as the crisis eases but the financial district, most here agree, has undergone a change that is likely permanent.

Unlike on Wall Street, where the likes of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s David Solomon talk excitedly about filling offices back up, top Bay Street executives seem to be in no hurry to end remote work. If anything, they rave about how surprisingly efficient and profitable the arrangement has been. And some acknowledge that their employees have little desire to return to the office five days a week.

In one recent comment that captured the mindset in C-suites across the city, James O’Sullivan, the head of fund manager IGM Financial Inc., spoke of a “new normal” where many employees spend part of their workweek at home. Manulife Financial Corp. Chief Executive Officer Roy Gori says remote work has been “incredibly” effective and the global insurer will continue to allow some of it when the pandemic is over.

This approach is driven, in part, by real estate. Toronto has one of the lowest vacancy rates for top-quality commercial office space among North America’s major cities, according to Cushman & Wakefield Plc data, with banks, asset managers, insurance companies, technology firms and government agencies all competing for it. A smaller in-office workforce will help keep these costs in check as companies grow.

But the kinder, softer sell in getting employees back is also about the structure of Canada’s financial industry, where mortgages, lending and asset management drive the bottom line. Dealmaking and trading -- lines of business where the need for collaboration has created a culture of long hours in the office -- are important, but they’re not the dominant part of the country’s banks.

“You see much more of the investment banking culture permeating Wall Street than you do the investment banking culture permeating Bay Street,” said Joe Martin, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management who co-wrote a book on the history of the U.S. and Canadian financial systems.

That shows up at the top. Of the five CEOs who run Toronto’s largest banks, only one has spent the bulk of his career as an investment banker.