Kensington Market Festival of Lights
Wednesday December 21st was the shortest day of the year. The winter solstice. Every year on this day, there is a Festival of Lights in Kensington Market in downtown Toronto to celebrate. Since this is my first winter living in Toronto, I had never been to the Festival of Lights yet, so Jen and I went down after work.
When we arrived at the corner of College and Augusta, we lit up the lanterns that we built the night before. Nothing fancy, really. Just jars and cans with red duct-tape handles! Not the prettiest or most functional lanterns, but at least we tried. ;-) Thousands of other people were there. We were surrounded by other people with lanterns, costumes, stilt walkers, drummers, etc. What a festive atmosphere!
To start the event off, there was a fire-breathing show set to the beat of samba drums. After the fire-breathers finished, we kept following the parade through Kensington Market as it zig-zagged through the narrow streets. Along the way we were treated to many art displays on the sidewalks and rooftops, musicians, singers, etc.
The parade ended in Bellevue Park, where the huge crowd crammed into the park for a bonfire. This part reminded me of the movie The Wicker Man. We didn't stick around too long here because it was so crowded and we couldn't really see much more anyway, so we went over to our favourite asian vegetarian restaurant for some dinner. What a great night out!
More pictures here.