There are a lot of chefs in the kitchen for the Canadian premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a triptych set in three time periods that tells the stories of amateur actors (played by real actors) involved in staging performances of the story of Christ. Three different Toronto independent theatre companies, all with reputations for innovative staging and creation in their past work, each tackle one of the three acts. Ordinarily, such a complicated arrangement would be to a show’s detriment, but not in this case. While you need to be prepared for a marathon of theatre (the show runs four hours, incluing two intermissions), you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth.

“A cross between Woodstock and the Algonquin Round Table,” is what Michael Redhill called it. Dorothy Parker grinding out an electric cover of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Well, not quite. Rather, Redhill, the literary curator for Luminato 2013, was describing A Literary Picnic, the annual festival’s celebration of storytelling, creativity, and the written word.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

Doors Open
May 25-26
FREE

While it’s fun to create your own a la carte menu of buildings to visit during Doors Open Toronto, sometimes you crave more guidance or want some context to connect your stops. This year’s edition of the popular sightseeing event may satisfy these desires by offering a larger selection of guided walks.

The official Doors Open website lists 15 walking tours happening on Saturday and Sunday, up from four last year. These walks are offered in conjunction with community groups and organizations like Jane’s Walk and the Toronto Society of Architects. Participants were asked by Doors Open to tie into this year’s theme of “Creators, Makers, and Innovators.” Geographically they stretch from the Thistletown neighbourhood in Etobicoke to the grounds of Guild Park in Scarborough. All walks are free and are on a first come, first serve basis. While some attendees might be disappointed that the walks don’t necessarily go into the buildings shown during the walks, the stories told along the way will provide deeper insights into the characters and forces which shaped them.

We tagged along for a preview run of this year’s “signature tour,” which Doors Open commissioned from Heritage Toronto. Bookended with stops at City Halls past and present, “Creating Toronto: The Story of the City in Ten Stops” is designed to show walkers how innovation and creativity have shaped Toronto since its establishment. Each stop symbolizes a particular theme in the city’s development, including nods to our financial (King and Bay), commercial (Queen and Yonge), and educational (the one-time site of Ontario Veterinary College on Temperance Street) accomplishments. Plenty of tidbits are shared at each stop—we enjoyed a story about how 11,000-year-old footprints were discovered on the lake bed during a water pipe installation near Hanlan’s Point a century ago.

For your own sneak peek of the tour, check out the gallery.

A sign spotted at Wednesday’s Occupy Gardens rally at Queen’s Park.

Occupy Gardens Toronto really likes puns. City Hall is known as “Seedy Hall,” “peas” is employed as a substitute for both “please” and “peace,” and before Wednesday’s event at Queen’s Park (titled SOILidarity City: Free Food For All Festival) the online invite encouraged participants to “mark your calendula.”

Wordplay aside, the group, a local chapter of what has become an international movement, is quite serious when it comes to food security and awareness. “The Occupy Gardens movement is a collective of guerrilla gardeners. We’re here to make a statement on the state of the global food system, as well as the food system here in Canada,” said Katie Berger, who organized Wednesday’s event along with Occupy Gardens Toronto founder Jacob Kearey-Moreland.

“Right now we have a hybrid state-corporate food system that wreaks environmental devastation and displaces people from their homes through migrant labour,” Berger added. “While there are some good points to the Local Food Act that was just proposed by Premier Wynne, it is quite shallow. It doesn’t address the fact that the ‘local’ food that it’s promoting is grown under slave-like conditions. It also doesn’t have concrete targets, because that would violate Canada’s free-trade agreements. So we’ve essentially made our country impotent in the global system and our province impotent in the national system.”

In an attempt to fight back against what Kearey-Moreland called “the clutches of global capitalism,” Occupy Gardens Toronto is trying to provide people with an alternative. A year ago, the group celebrated International Workers’ Day by planting a community garden at Queen’s Park. The City ignored the garden’s existence for five months, while group members tended to the plants and expanded the patch. The night before they intended to harvest the crops, however, City workers received orders to remove the garden (in the middle of the night, no less). “They destroyed the garden and all of the produce was thrown out. There was over five kilograms of fresh, organic produce that they threw in the garbage rather than donating to one of the hundreds of understocked food banks in Toronto,” said Berger.

The crowd at Wednesday’s Occupy Gardens rally.

Wednesday’s celebration served as an act of protest, with a group of about 100 gathering at Queen’s Park to plant another community garden. The afternoon also contained a number of workshops, speakers, and even a musical theatre piece. Over a hundred people arrived on the South Lawn for the afternoon’s kickoff, where they were treated to free vegan chili, red bean and lentil salad, hummus, and assorted fruits and vegetables. Students, seniors, and families with toddlers all lined up for the free grub. A couple of suits even checked their iPhones while waiting for their turns.

Issues of food access are central to the Occupy Gardens movement. “We need to recognize the right to food,” said Kearey-Moreland. “We need to guarantee a meal for every kid in school, and we can help by having a garden in every school. We have this situation right now where kids are going hungry, while other kids are fed junk food and becoming obese. Meanwhile the solutions are quite simple.” The group’s Free Food For All project consists of volunteers “gleaning” unwanted food by dumpster diving, taking donations, and picking fruit from trees, and then using the supplies to teach workshops on canning and fermentation.

Occupy Gardens Toronto also runs the Toronto Seed Library, which allows borrowers to take out free seeds to use in their gardens. Users are given information on how to grow different plants and how to harvest the seeds from them, which are then returned to the library so the cycle can begin again. “It’s all part of a global seed-freedom movement, which is about taking back the most fundamental part of the food system, which is the seed,” said Berger.

According to Brendan Behrmann, who works with the Seed Library, hundreds of exchanges have already taken place. “Our goals are three-pronged: to reconnect people with food and the growing process, to promote the conservation of heirloom species, and to push back against GMOs and industrial agriculture,” he said. Within the next few months, the Seed Library plans to expand to 10 branches across the GTA.

If it seems like Occupy Gardens Toronto has its fingers in a lot of different pies, it’s a reflection of the multitude of issues that revolve around food and agriculture. Since 2008, food bank usage in Canada has increased by 31 per cent, with four out of 10 users classified as children or minors. 2.7 million Canadians are currently deemed “food insecure,” which means they aren’t certain of where or how they will obtain their next meal. In 2012, Statistics Canada reported that 31.5 per cent of Canadian children were overweight or obese. And, as farms become increasingly more corporate, farming is losing its appeal for young Canadians. Over two decades, the population of farmers under 35 has fallen by two thirds.

As a response to food issues both global and local, Occupy Gardens groups have cropped up across North America, in locations like Montreal and Philadelphia. “Not everyone has access to land to grow a garden, and the City has made cuts to the Live Green grant program. The number of people on the waitlist to get into community gardens or start new ones is getting longer and longer,” said Kearey-Moreland. In addition to providing free food for the hungry, an Occupy Gardens community garden at Scadding Court at Bathurst and Dundas streets offers people the opportunity to grow their own produce.

On Wednesday the mood was celebratory, even if the new incarnation of the community garden at Queen’s Park would likely be destroyed again. (Queen’s Park confirmed that while the event would be tolerated, the garden would be removed once planted.) In the meantime, though, participants lounged in the sun, listening to music and enjoying the complimentary meal. Adam Heller, a volunteer who showed up to help ladle out chili, was happy to be participating. He has his own concerns about food security. “I’ve gotten a lot better at scavenging lately,” he said. “I think food should be free, if you don’t care what you’re eating. I mean if you really don’t care what it is, you should be able to survive.”

WHERE: Underpass Park (Eastern Avenue and Richmond Street)

WHEN: Thursday, 9 p.m.

WHAT: Though we previewed Underpass Park during its construction a few months ago, the park officially opened yesterday and we decided to pay it a repeat visit—specifically at dusk, to see how the new lighting would change the atmosphere. We recommend it highly—it’s fairly distinctive, and really highlights the underpass’s urban nature.

WHERE: City Hall

WHEN: Monday, July 9

WHAT: As part of an ongoing series of projects organized by Arrivals.ca, the windows of councillors’ offices at City Hall have been plastered with enormous, blown-up images of the eyes of new Canadian citizens. (We won’t quote from the artists’ statement, but you can imagine all the stuff about seeing through the eyes of others, and the value of bringing new perspectives to government.) The installation, called “Fresh Eyes,” will officially debut at 12:30 p.m. today, in celebration of Pan Am/Parapan Am Day, which marks exactly three years until Toronto will host the 2015 Pan Am Games. The eyes will stay up until July 30. The anticipated best viewing time is said to be at dusk tonight, when councillors’ office lights will be on.

WHERE: College Street, just east of Bathurst

WHEN: Sunday July 2, 5 p.m.

WHAT: In the end, it was no contest at all. Always a strong contender for the title, Spain completely dominated Italy in the Euro 2012 finals, turning what many expected to be a tight battle into a decisive 4–0 conquest. Their possession-heavy game has its critics, but their string of victories is hard to deny: the first team to rack up three consecutive international wins (World Cup 2010 and Euro Cup 2008 prior to this weekend), fans of La Furia Roja crowded onto the street to celebrate as soon as the final whistle blew.

Packed into the back-alley lot behind Honest Ed’s at Bloor and Bathurst, several hundred serious culinary explorers took to the food carts on Wednesday evening for Night Market at The Stop, a fundraiser to help the local food-services organization.

The Stop had brought in several local designers and studios to create booths for each vendor, creating innovative showcases for the food and celebrating the summer solstice. Decorated with fairy lights and a rainbow of paper lanterns, and surrounded by the surprisingly colourful brick backsides of restaurants on Markham Street, the lot seemed to be home to the best street party in Toronto, despite the sizzling surface beneath the guests’ feet.

The evening’s primary purpose was to serve as a fundraiser for The Stop‘s anti-hunger programs, but it was also a great way to highlight the booming street-food scene in Toronto. The parking lot was filled with a young, creative crowd—one that caught attendee Melissa Goldstein by surprise: “I thought it would be an older crowd, the type that you would expect to see at a fundraiser,” she said.

For $50, the Night Market functioned as an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of 27 of the city’s best culinary treats. Amid the snapping cameras and flowing beer, the lines at each cart moved—happily—very quickly, and booths were more than happy to offer seconds, thirds, fourths, and, dare we say, even fifths. (Torontoist reeeeeally liked Jack and Lil’s passionfruit marshmallows.)

Some carts, like Sullivan and Bleeker‘s, were self-serve. By 8:37 p.m,. bakery owner Elysa Wahle said she was nearly out of her 750 mini-cupcakes, and could not believe the success she was having. She also said that she liked working out of her cart, createded by design firm Halcrow Yolles. “It was a bit like a blind date,” Wahle said about seeing her cabana-like cart for the first time. “But I really like it. I think there will be a second date.” She said she plans to collaborate with the studio to make a table for her new kitchen at Dufferin and Finch.

A group of Ryerson students called [R]ED[U]X was responsible for Woodlot’s cart, a wooden structure of graceful arcs and a tiered body with purple lighting. Vincent Hui, the Ryerson architectural science professor who got the students involved, sees architecture and food as a natural marriage. “It’s using fundamental resources for a fundamental need,” he said of the kinship between culinary creativity and architectural design. One of the students, Jason Ramelson, said that the studio visited Woodlot ahead of time to get a feel for the restaurant and incorporate its vision into the cart. He called The Stop’s event “an amalgamation of different tastes” and hailed its use of “informed architecture.”

Suresh Doss, the man behind Toronto’s Underground Market and a street food activist, commended the use of the well-located parking lot. “It’s prime real estate to use for an event,” he said, adding that it achieved the air of a garden party, reminiscent of food events in San Francisco and Brooklyn, and matched the vibe of the food served. He also raised a glass to the wonderfully designed carts and mentioned that Woodlot’s was one of his favourites. (Woodlot really liked the cart, too—Ramelson said that they were interested in buying it from [R]ED[U]X.)

As for the culinary component, it’s a challenge to figure out where to begin. There were some familiar names and heavyweight contenders, like the Stockyards’ barbeque fare and Yours Truly’s dazzling Xi’an-spiced pork burger, but the real gems were the smaller vendors. Many were displaying their food for the first time—such as Jack and Lil, who served South African street food—or had only recently acquired commercial space, like Paulette’s, which debuts its donuts this week over at Queen Street East and Logan Avenue.

Lauren Gutter is the head, heart, and soul of Jack and Lil’s, one of Toronto’s only South African food ventures. Her son Daniel works for The Stop and encouraged her to sign up for a vendor’s spot. When ACE Bakery offered to sponsor some food, Gutter was inspired to mix up some bunny chow, a tradition South African vegetarian curry on a slider bun—ACE Bakery gave her 600 of those. She also put together fudge, coconut marshmallows, and the aforemention passionfruit marshmallows (although Gutter preferred to use the South African word for passionfruit, granadilla).

Another detail worth mentioning: many of the options were vegetarian, often difficult to find at gourmet events such as this. Hawker Bar’s son-in-law eggs were a great surprise for vegetarians, as Southeast Asian dishes tend to use a shrimp-based paste called sambal. The Beet Organic’s quinoa tacos were also delightful, and The Stop served up its own vegetarian pad thai.

By the time 11 p.m. rolled in, the smouldering heat was long gone, as was the food, beer, and spring season. As people sway their way into summer, the food scene has never looked hotter.

At the corner of College Street and Augusta Avenue, a jazzy rendition of “Girl From Ipanema” cooled down pedestrians in Thursday’s midday heat. French chatter melodically mixed in with the snapping of cameras and the whooshing of streetcars passing by, the city playing its own tune. Fête de la Musique came to Kensington Market yesterday and brought with it a score of free music and French festivity.

Organized by Alliance Française, an organization that promotes French language and Francophone cultures, Fête de la Musique is now in its eighth year in Toronto, although this is the first time it has been held outdoors. The origins of the event go back 30 years, to Paris; the festival has since expanded to over 100 countries and always takes place on June 21, the summer solstice. The date harmonizes well with Kensington Market, which annually hosts a winter solstice parade and lacked an introductory summer event this year.

The guiding idea behind Fête de la Musique is that music should be universally accessible and anyone can play music in the street. Toronto’s jamboree had 30 to 40 musicians and groups, ranging from high school students from the French school board, to subway musicians, playing the top of Augusta Street from noon to 8 p.m. In the evening, as rain started to fall, the event was brought inside the restaurant Waterfalls, and culminated with three bands playing for several more hours.

Given Toronto’s love of arts festivals, it’s a natural and vibrant addition to the city’s calendar. Dominique Denis, the artistic director of Alliance Française Toronto, said that the Kensington BIA has been a big help in putting together the Fête and the Fondation franco-ontarienne is its largest supporter.

Currently absent from the mix is the municipal government, which considered putting some resources into the Fête a few years ago but ultimately decided against it. (There are, to be sure, many more applicants than the City can support—that year, according to Denis, the City was weighing funding for the Fête as well as Nuit Blanche; ultimately, Nuit Blanche won out.) Denis thinks the festival would have a great deal of room to grow if the City did ever choose to support it, though.

Lili Holm sat on the steps on the southwest corner of Augusta Avenue and bobbed her head a bit while waiting for her boyfriend to show up. She didn’t know that the 21st was Fête de la Musique, but she was glad to have stumbled upon it. She thought that expanding it city-wide would be a great idea.

“It’s a nice fit for summer,” she said.

Try as he might, Ian Sit just wasn’t getting any bites. With his arm out, he made a graceful arc, and his fishing rod splashed in the centre of the pool. But still, no luck.

“Maybe I’ll have chicken for dinner,” he said.

Sit was at Scadding Court on Wednesday night, trying his hand at fishing in the community centre’s indoor pool, which had been filled with live trout. For the past 10 years, Scadding Court has done this in an attempt to give Torontonians the chance to learn about ecology and food systems, and maybe a new hobby.

Gone Fishin’, as the week is known, traditionally coincides with the end of the school year in mid-June. Kevin Lee, executive director of Scadding Court, said that’s done to provide some fun for those with busy schedules, and those who don’t have access to a cottage, like many newcomers and inner-city families. This year’s edition ended on Saturday.

Each year, Gone Fishin’ reels in several thousand Torontonians who want to learn to catch their dinner. During the week, four local schools are invited to the pool each day. All the students leave with trout that they caught themselves (or with a little help from Scadding Court volunteers). In the afternoons, the pool is open to anyone interested in giving the fishing rod a spin. In the evenings, the pool is saved for community groups, like Holland Bloorview MacMillan, the children’s rehabilitation hospital.

Many families at the pool on Wednesday evening were there as a result of one of their children having visited during a school trip earlier in the week. Sisters Latisha and Jateya, both 10, had come Monday with their Clinton Public School classes. On Wednesday evening, Latisha carried her fish in a plastic bag as her sister and father tried to lure some bites in the deep end.

“This program is good for kids,” Latisha said. She finds fishing relaxing.

Doug Hodge agrees. He has been volunteering with Gone Fishin’ since the start of the program, and has recruited his entire family to help out during the week. He grew up in downtown Toronto and has been fishing his whole life.

“If I didn’t like doing this, I wouldn’t be doing it,” Hodge said, as he chopped up a worm for bait. He lauded the program for educating youth about ecosystems, and for giving them the chance to try his favourite sport—one that has been a controversial topic in Toronto lately, thanks to efforts by City parks staff to prevent anglers from casting their lines from public parks along the downtown waterfront.

Around the edge of the pool, all sorts of emotions filled the air. An elated teenager caught his first fish ever and watched as a volunteer squirmed to kill it quickly. Some people gazed at the hundreds of trout zigzagging in the clear water. Several fishing rods got tangled in the middle of the pool and an unlucky volunteer had to unravel the knot with infinite patience. Hodge had a hearty laugh as someone grimaced at the wiggling worms in his bait bucket.

For those interested in participating next year, Scadding Court charges $4 for a license. Should you get a nibble, it’s possible to get the fish cleaned for just 75 cents. Watching the fish get gutted by Walter Quan, the Scadding Court program coordinator, is optional.

The trout come from a fish farm north of Caledon and are raised in the nearby Credit River watershed. “We bring in 1,500 and I gut about two-thirds of them,” said Quan.

In addition to promoting health and ecology, Scadding Court also promotes the local economy. Several of the cafes in the shipping containers along Dundas Street have bought fish for their menus, as have restaurants in the area. The cafe in the community centre serves frozen Gone Fishin’ trout year-round. One staff member even asked for fish heads to give to her cat.

“There’s no waste,” said Quan.

Back on the edge of the shallow end, Sit was still working on his technique, hoping to catch a prize-sized trout. He knew exactly what he’d do, if he caught one.

“Pan sear with lemons, butter, and capers,” he said, as another one got away.