As vendors prepare to turn Lawrence Avenue east into the annual mouth-watering smorgasbord of gastronomical delight, curb to curb, it may be hard to imagine that this thriving retail strip was once down on its luck, garbage-strewn, struggling to lease properties to skeptical businesses. Only 23 years ago.
International influencers sing our praises. Foodies flock here.
I initiated the birth of the Wexford BIA to wage the on-the-ground battle to keep the strip alive. When new Muslim businesses started moving in during a period less welcoming of different cultures than today, some established businesses were uncertain about the changes taking place. It could have gone sideways.
I knew then that this was a huge opportunity – felt it in my bones – in a ward that had just become my constituency. I felt I had been given stewardship of something important and had to save it.
The magic recipe involved bringing people together to blend them into something better and bigger than their individual parts. It’s what humans do every day with food – the most delicious bond capable of removing barriers – smoosh ingredients together, a mix of this and a dash of that and before you know it the taste buds are alive.
The idea of a food festival featuring the foods of the large influx of immigrants into one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Greater Toronto wasn’t an instant hit. I was literally tossed from some premises for proposing what seemed like a preposterous idea to some. People go to the Danforth to sample street food – not Scarborough, critics concluded.
Since 2004 we’ve been proving them wrong.
In about a month, on July 3, 4, and 5 this year, more than 170 vendors of a splendid array of food from Armenia to Zimbabwe and every kind of fusion in between, will fill every nook and cranny between Warden and Birchmount and dispense glorious food and drink mixed with music and midway rides and entertainment.
People will be coming by the thousands to enjoy the family atmosphere in one of our city’s largest festivals. They come for the food. They are impressed by the family feel. They return for fun.
At the core of the experience is food. This year’s city budget allocated $150,000 to help Scarborough brand and promote culinary tourism as a hub economy driver. International influencers sing our praises. Foodies flock here and leave drooling with praise and rave reviews.
The results, 22 years later and counting, are stunningly impressive. Ontario is one of the world’s largest food hubs and Scarborough is at the epicenter. People who measure such things say there are more jobs in the food and food processing industry here than in New York City. You see an impressive infrastructure of food buyers, processors, vendors, import markets.
About 10 years ago some University of Toronto historians took a famous American economist Tyler Cowen to dine in Scarborough. The author of the book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies was so impressed he wrote in a blog post that he had just visited the best ethnic food suburb and wondered that it could be “the dining capital of the world.”
This happens when thousands of immigrants recreate new homes and practice their recipes on each other – spoiling our palates on lamb kabobs and lahmajoun, shawarma and stewed peas, patty and pho, roti and rhubarb pie, dim sum and curried everything.
Congratulations to the entrepreneurs, visionaries, risk-takers and businesses that keep our economy humming in the Wexford Business Improvement Area and elsewhere.
Despite uncertain and challenging times, they deliver economic activity and jobs and services to the Scarborough community and beyond. Each year at this time I pledge my support and advocacy in encouraging our residents to SHOP LOCAL. In so doing, we will blunt the impact of predatory policies, tariffs and trade barriers that migrate across our national borders.
I have strong confidence in our residents and their commitment to the survival of local businesses. They know our neighbourhoods and communities depend on the local economy to succeed. That is a message I make, and will continue to make, every day.
Taste of Lawrence is a symbol of this: a significant attraction of thousands of visitors, potential long-term customers and new neighbours and friends ready to build a new economy suited to withstand tough times.
A city councillor’s job is more than fixing potholes. Constituents pay us to bring ingenuity and creativity to the table to inspire residents from disparate backgrounds to interact and build something lasting and better than what each group imagined by themselves. That’s the magic of city building.
The sky is the limit to what you can do when you tap a wide spectrum of people to address an issue. Cultural differences often express themselves in food. But the differences disappear in the eating.
