Taste Of the Kingsway

On Sunday our neighbourhood business association hosted a festival along Bloor St between the Park Lawn Cemetery and Islington Ave. Peter and I volunteered to work at a booth promoting Lee Fairclough, our local MPP who is running in the provincial Liberal leadership race. She is the best candidate in our opinion. But I digress, sorry.

On our way there, we wondered, what exactly ARE the tastes associated with this area? You would surmise from the street names: Royal York Road, the Kingsway, the Queensway, and so on, that the original settlers were from England. So would there be samples of Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding? Sounded promising. Maybe fish and chips? That too would be fine.

Then we thought about all the folks from the south side of Bloor who would be joining in. The major landowner who lived there first was a fruit farmer, Alexander Thompson.. His produce was apples, cherries, and plums. Nowadays a lot of residents are Ukrainian. So that probably meant pierogies, and maybe borscht or halushki. This could be a fun mix of food choices.

Another component of our neighbourhood is that many of us are baby boomers. So how would that contribute towards the food offerings? Would there be Meals on Wheels or Door Dash or other food services offered? We set off Sunday morning to find out.

The closest we found to roast beef were beef kabobs, right beside the fish, but it wasn’t any halibut or salmon; it was squid and octopus. Hmmm.. There were other Asian offerings such as dim sum and sushi, but nothing Ukrainian seemed to be available.

Peter found his favourite store, Sunnyland, with lots of fresh produce for sale. He bought apples and plums.

Keeping in mind that the area is home to a lot of seniors, various services were offered, such as facials, manicures, window washing, lawn maintenance, and dog grooming. There was also a climbing wall but we couldn’t imagine any of us seniors trying that! It stayed empty for most of the day.

When it was time for Peter and me to take a break from our booth and have lunch, Peter found us “smash burgers” the modern version of regular hamburgers. It’s two burger patties that have been smashed with a hammer and loaded with sauce and lettuce. We sat on the church steps to eat them, hoping we were not breaking any Commandments. We had lots of company – apparently bees love smash burgers too. We had to be careful not to get them in our mouths.

After standing at our booth for 3 hours, greeting the crowds and offering swag, we were relieved by the next shift. We hurried home to watch the Blue Jays and eat chips. Peter had some Italian wine. We had enjoyed our outing, and there were lots of adults, kids, and dogs. But it was more local business than cultural. And people were buying Canadian!

Sue