On July 9th I
had he pleasure of going to the Latin Festival, in which cultures from all over
Latin America are celebrated. It’s only a few blocks, but there’s so much to
see that you really need to walk from one end to the other a few times.
This was my first Toronto
festival, and I was surprised to see the food options they had. While they
certainly had typical “Latin food” I was more curious about the non-Latin
stuff. For example, one of the most popular snacks was roasted corn. Outside of
these stalls, customers were free to put whatever condiments they wanted on the
corn. While they had obvious choices like salt and butter, there was actually a
large variety of spices and herbs people could put on their corn. Also popular
were coconuts and hollowed out pineapples you could drink out of, in addition
to sugar cane juice. As for “Latin food,” vendors mainly sold what you’d find
at a local taco stand: tacos, burritos, etc. The most interesting food stand was
probably this:
Far and away the most
popular attraction were all the dance studios giving free dance lessons to the
crowd.
Unfortunately, as soon as
I became entranced by the spicy rhythms and started shakin’ my bad self, the
weather pulled a Cincinnati and started pouring out of nowhere.
Thus ended my Latin festival.
The other festival I went
to was the South Asian festival, which mainly focused on Torontonians of Indian
descent. As always, it was interesting to see what food was being served there.
Just like at the Latin festival, vendors were selling mainly “typical” Indian
food, such as goat curry, butter chicken, sides of rice, etc.
Curiously, this place also
made use of the “non Latin” foods I mentioned above. Corn, coconuts and
sugarcane were all there. In all it was
a pleasant afternoon, but I just wish they featured a stage performer to teach
the crowd some Indian dances.
What was really curious
though is that both festivals had very diverse attendance. While you could
count on seeing people of Hispanic and Indian origin, I noticed that even those
festivals they were a minority of the attendees. Neither were white people. As
a matter of fact, it didn’t seem as if there was one predominant background in
attendance, which is indicative of an interesting characteristic Toronto’s culture. When people
talk about Toronto, the word “diverse” isn’t just some buzzword thrown around to
make the city sound good. The city is really, truly diverse, that when the city
holds festivals celebrating one of its many communities, the whole city comes
out to celebrate and explore a culture that helps make Toronto the city
everybody knows and loves.
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