TORONTO - I'm not going to lie to you.

After seeing The White Stripes play an intimate show at the Arctic Winter Games Arena in Iqaluit in front of a mere 600 people last week, it was hard to share the lovable blues-rock duo with close to 16,000 fans at the Molson Amphitheatre last night.

In other words, I've been spoiled.

Still, Stripes singer-guitarist-keyboardist Jack White and drummer Meg White hardly disappointed in a larger setting, it was just more of the same howling sound and vivid performance with the aid of a bigger, more elaborate red, white and black set.

Instead of one speaker covered in a Canadian maple leaf, there were three last night.

And three red staircases that Jack would sometimes climb up to stomp around on a red platform, with white smoke rising up with each thump of his foot.

It was, to say the least, extremely dramatic and entertaining.

Jack, who plays his guitar and keyboards like a man possessed and is starting to sound more like Robert Plant with each White Stripes album, clearly digs the art of performing.

Canadians, in turn, seemed to have adopted the Detroit-raised musician like one of their own after he decided to set out on an ambitious cross-Canada tour that has already included stops in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and the aforementioned Iqaluit.

The particularly rowdy and drunk crowd -- among those in last night's audience were well-behaved Saturday Night Live cast members Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis -- kept jamming the aisles to get a closer look at Jack and Meg and roar their approval. But security guards were eventually called in to wrestle one out-of-control and shirtless large man to the ground right beside me.

Among the song standouts were such old favourites as Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground, In the Cold, Cold Night (with Meg on vocals), We're Going to be Friends, My Doorbell, Fell in Love With a Girl, and Seven Nation Army, their blazing covers of Son House's John The Revelator and Dolly Parton's Jolene and new tracks Icky Thump, Effect and Cause and the truly transcendent I'm Slowly Turning into You.

The only bizarre part was when Jack and Meg left the stage after just 45 minutes of playing and returned for a first encore that was really more like a second half.

Earlier yesterday, The White Stripes surprised children at a YMCA daycamp in downtown Toronto with an impromptu five-song set.

Fans signed up to The White Stripes online message board were alerted at around 3:10 p.m. to gather at the corner of Yonge and Grosvenor ten minutes later although security turned many people away saying the show was just for the kids.

The duo have been staging surprise concerts in unusual locations as part of their Canadian tour, playing a school in Burnaby, B.C., the Elders Centre in Iqaluit, and a city bus in Winnipeg to name but a few.

They perform in Montreal tonight and wrap up their Great White North trek on July 16 in St. John's, but not before celebrating their 10th anniversary as a band in Glace Bay, N.S., on July 14 with none other than Jack's real-life, long-lost relative, fiddler Ashley MacIsaac as the opening act.