The 2014 Cabbagetown Festival of the Arts, 6 and 7 September

The Cabbagetown Festival of the Arts reached its 38th edition in 2014, and it took the shape the neighbourhood still recognizes: a closed Parliament Street, a stage on Carlton, yard sales on every side street, and a week of smaller events leading into the weekend. It was organized by the Cabbagetown Business Improvement Area and promoted as a festival with something in it for everyone, from families to people who came mainly for the film program.

The weekend itself

The main festival ran on Saturday 6 September from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sunday 7 September from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Parliament Street was closed from Wellesley Street south to Gerrard Street East, and filled with one-of-a-kind vendors, artists, performers, buskers and food. Carlton Street was closed from Parliament to Berkeley for the main stage, which carried live music across both days. A community stage on Parliament near Amelia Street gave local groups and individual performers a place of their own.

Children had the Kidz Korner at Parliament and Gerrard, a free play area back for its second year and run with help from neighbourhood community groups.

The week around it

The festival was really a cluster of events. On Thursday 4 September, One Night in Cabbagetown turned the restaurants and pubs into a tasting route: in its third year, a $10 ticket bought four samples at the participating venues of the buyer’s choice.

On Friday 5 September the Cabbagetown Short Film & Video Festival held its 22nd annual screening at Toronto Dance Theatre, with a program of short films from abroad and from local filmmakers. Advance tickets were sold in person, and the organizers warned that the evening always sold out.

On Sunday morning, before the street opened, Blair’s Run held its 34th annual mini-marathon, a fundraiser for the Cabbagetown Youth Centre, with registration at 8:30 a.m. and the race at 9:30.

Beyond Parliament Street

The juried Cabbagetown Arts and Crafts show returned to Riverdale Park for its 25th edition, running on both festival days. At Riverdale Farm the Fall Harvest Festival added a day-long corn roast and a barn dance. The Cabbagetown Theatre Company staged family theatre in the chapel at the Necropolis on Winchester Street, across from Riverdale Park, a setting that says a good deal about how the neighbourhood uses its old buildings.

The festival’s advance tickets for the film program were sold from the Cabbagetown BIA’s office at 237 Carlton Street, on weekday lunchtimes, which gives a fair picture of how local the whole operation still was.

The yard sales were, as ever, the part residents talked about. More than 200 of them were counted on the tree-lined streets that weekend, and a whole day could be spent drifting from one front walk to the next.

A Cabbagetown Tour of Homes was also announced for 2014. The self-guided tour opened several interiors, and that year it also stepped into the history of public housing in Toronto. Along the way, a small glass medallion in a front garden marked a past winner of Streetscapes in Bloom, the neighbourhood’s friendly garden competition, which is a detail worth looking for on any walk through the area, festival or not.

Then and now

Set beside the current festival, the 2014 program is striking mainly for how much has stayed the same. The streets, the Sunday run, the art show in the park and the yard sales all carry on, while the names of the stages and the side events have shifted. The Cabbagetown Festival guide covers the event as it runs today, and the 2013 festival has its own page. For a quieter look at the same streets, the Necropolis and St. James Cemetery and Riverdale Park are both within a few minutes’ walk of the festival route.