Kensington Market Links

Additions welcome; please submit to alharris@yorku.ca

Kensmarket.com: "Objective Public Debate About Kensington Market"
A community site, independently run. Interesting Discussions forums, including subjects like Pedestrian Sundays, Zimmerman's FreshMart, issues surrounding bike thefts, and community festivals and events.

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Kensington Alive: A Pictoral History of Kensington Market, Toronto, Canada

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Kensington Market Action Committee
160 Baldwin Street, Toronto
416-593-9604
May fluctuate in membership, location, and purpose; see:
"Revamping the Market: Kensington Market Action Committee suffers coup d'etat" (The Varsity, October 16, 2000)
"Kensington group deposed in fight over soup kitchen" (Now, November 2, 2000)
"Kensington Market Does it Right" (Eye Weekly, August 20, 1998)


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planning action

info@planningaction.org

To subscribe to the Planning Action listserv:
email planningaction-subscribe@yahoogroups.ca

planning action's involvement in Kensington Market has included the Social Justice and Car-Free Neighbourhoods forum held on April 24, 2004.

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Councillor Olivia Chow

Olivia Chow is the elected Councillor for Ward 20, Trinity-Spandina, which includes Kensington Market. Olivia Chow's City web-site is located at http://www.toronto.ca/councillors/chow1.htm; and at http://www.oliviachow.org/home.php

On Kensington Market, her site comments:

Kensington Market

The City’s planning staff met early in 2003 with the Kensington Market Action Committee (KMAC) regarding a variety of residential and commercial concerns including garbage, lighting and the making Kensington Market pedestrian-only. The City’s planning staff will be presenting an improvement plan for the Market to Toronto/East York Community Council early this fall.

Upcoming meetings are being organized to discuss garbage and making Kensington Market pedestrian-only. For more information, contact Constituency Assistant Helen Kennedy in Olivia’s office at 416-392-4124.

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City of Toronto

City of Toronto information on Ward 20 (Trinity-Spandina, which includes Kensington Market)

Kensington-Chinatown Neighbourhood Profile
Available electronically at: http://www.toronto.ca/demographics/cns_profiles/cns78.htm

The Future of Downtown Toronto. A Report prepared for the City of Toronto, Urban Development Services Department, June 2000.
Available electronically at: http://www.toronto.ca/torontoplan/downtown_future.pdf

City of Toronto Official Plan

Kensington Market in the News

In progress; additions welcome

Globe & Mail

"Is Kensington's boho bubble bursting? (Globe & Mail, September 4, 2004)

Now Toronto

"Travesty in Kensington" (Now Toronto, 2004 09 30)

"CASE FOR CAR-FREE: WE'VE EXPERIENCED THE THRILL OF PEDESTRIAN SUNDAYS, SO WHAT'S NEXT FOR KENSINGTON MARKET?" (Now Toronto, 2004 08 19)

"FISH SNACKS REGGAE-STYLE: KENSINGTON FISH SHACK STREAMS OF BLESSINGS DOES WONDERS WITH RED SNAPPER" (Now Toronto, 2003 10 30)

"Market on Autopilot: Will a Car-Free Kensington Lead to Gentrification of the Bohemian Enclave?" (Now Toronto, 2003 10 16)

" PRESTO, YOU'RE COOL: NIKE BUYS INSTANT STREET CRED IN HIP KENSINGTON" (Now Toronto, 2002 07 11)

" NIKE'S DRESSING DOWN" (Now Toronto, 2002 07 11)

" Quiet on the set: Moviemaking has residents of scenic Kensington Market living under virtual house arrest" (Now Toronto, 2000 12 07)

"Split market: Kensington group deposed in fight over proposed soup kitchen" (Now Toronto, 2000 11 02)

"THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: IS DEMOLITION OF PALACE OF PUNKDOM FIRST STEP TO GENTRIFICATION OF KENSINGTON MARKET?" (Now Toronto, July 3, 1997)

Eye Weekly

"Car-free failure by design" (Eye Weekly, 08 19 2004)


"Fish for thought" (Eye Weekly, 08 12 2004)

"Cars over happy children?" (Eye Weekly, 08 05 2004)


"Walkabout's fair play: Toronto's finally giving the pedestrian zone a trial run" (Eye Weekly, 05 27 2004)

"Bikenapped!" (Eye Weekly, 07 22 2004)

"Walk softly, carry a tiny phone" (Eye Weekly, 09 25 2003)

" The kids of Kensington: The Market succeeds by turning its back on success" (Eye Weekly, 05 29 2003)

"Kensington Market does it right" (Eye Weekly, 08 20 1998)

"Courage, my love: cars will leave Kensington" (Eye Weekly, 07 24 1997)

"THE WRITING ON THE WALL" (Eye Weekly, 03 05 1992)

Art, Culture, Place: Kensington Market as Muse

How do writers, musicians, sculptors, and filmmakers imagine Kensington Market?

Kurt Swinghammer's Augusta as an ode to Kensington Market

A ChartAttack.com article on Toronto Musician cites Kensington Market as an important source of his creative energy:

The new album, Augusta, is a direct reference to Augusta St. in Kensington Market where Swinghammer lived for nearly 15 years. He says that the colourful, multi-cultural environment has influenced his work greatly and that he finds it impossible not to be taken in by Kensington Market.

"One of the things that motivates people to make art is to shape their environment, to make sense of things and to sort of reorder things," he says. "To have that extend out into the community or through television and movies and CDs and stuff, it just extends that. Its seems to validate the work for sure."
...
"Proximity to the source is directly correlated to how exciting and visceral the experience can be," he says. "The best parties happen in the kitchen, people want to be close to each other, as opposed to spread out in a big room."

The City of Toronto's Public Art Program: Community Markers for Kensington Market
Community markers

Kensington Market (Baldwin Street and St. Andrews Street)
Artist team of Shirley Yanover & David Hlynsky

The artist team of Shirley Yanover & David Hlynsky summarizes the market's variety of activities, from its grass roots international trade, represented by the marker at Baldwin Street, to the best of domestic harmony, represented in the icon at St. Andrews Street. The Baldwin Street globe (powder coated aluminum) represents the home we all share, with orbiting images of what we need to survive. The images (powder coated aluminum) circling the globe are inspired by photographs of the Market's windows and signage. The artwork evokes global commerce on an intimate scale, a pictorial language that transcends multilingual chaos by reducing trade to a few essential appetites. The St. Andrews marker, a cat on a kitchen chair, is a poignant representation of the spirit of Kensington. Cats rule supreme in the market. They are its security guards and they keep our laps warm in winter. The artwork is a monument to their simple but essential contribution to human well being.

The King of Kensington (A CBC television series representing Kensington Market (1975-1980))

Wikepedia entry
The Al Waxman Collection at the Toronto Reference Library
"Salute to the King" (from the Canadian Jewish News, July 4, 2002)
"He was a good King" (from the Toronto Sun, June 24, 2002)
"The King is Back in Kensington for Good" (from the Globe & Mail, June 24, 2002)


Twitch City (CBC television series, 1998-2000)

Cast and episode guide
Canoe.ca articles on Twitch City

Literature

From Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride (1993, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart)

Gradually her heart settles. It's soothing to be among strangers, who require from her no efforts, no explanations, no reassurances. She likes the mix on the streets here, the mixed skins. Chinatown has taken over mostly, though there are still some Jewish delicatessens, and, further up and off to the side, the Portuguese and West Indian shops of the Kensington Market. Rome in the second century, Constantinople in the tenth, Vienna in the nineteenth. A crossroads. Those from other countries look as it they're trying hard to forget something, those from here as if they're trying hard to remember. Or maybe it's the other way around.

See also:

Dionne Brand's At the Lisbon Plate and Neil Bissoondath's Christmas Lunch, published in Fagan, Cary and Robert MacDonald, 1990. Toronto Stories: Streets of Attitude. Toronto: Yonge & Bloor Publishing.

Brand, Dionne, 2005. What We All Long For. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wolfe, Morris and Douglas Daymond, eds., 1977. Toronto Short Stories. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.

Papadimos, Basil, 1989. The Hook of it is. Enismore, Ontario: Emergency Press.

Callaghan, Barry, ed., 1995. This Ain't no Healing Town. Toronto Stories. Toronto: Exile Editions.

Niedzviecki, Hal, 1998. Concrete Forest. The New Fiction of Urban Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

PS Kensington: Pedestrian Sundays (links)

Some links on PS Kensington

Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market
(a website created by the Kensington Works group, the organizers of Pedestrian Sundays)

Cars Over Happy Children?
Eye Weekly, August 5, 2004

Fish for Thought
Eye Weekly, August 12, 2004
(letter responding to 'Cars Over Happy Children' article)

Sundays in Kensington: Cars out, revellers abound
Toronto Star, July 5, 2004

Market on Autopilot WILL A CAR-FREE KENSINGTON LEAD TO GENTRIFICATION OF THE BOHEMIAN ENCLAVE?
CarFreeDay.ca; Car Free News
(a short article considering some impacts of making a district car-free)