Jesus Festival

When I moved to Ontario five years ago I knew that there would be a period of adjustment as I learned how to navigate a new city, culture, and country.

The town I lived it as a preteen until just after college graduation had a handful of free, local and secular events to look forward to each year:  fireworks on the Fourth of July, a parade down the main street of our town at Halloween and an arts and crafts festival held on the library lawn in June. When I hit my later teens some members of the local Hispanic community began to have a festival for traditional (predominantly Mexican) music, dance and food; about the time that I moved away our town started a summer barbecue festival and a fledgling Native American culture and food festival, too.

All other events were church-sponsored or involved paying money for things that didn't pique my interest like high school athletic games . It wasn't that people in small towns were uninterested in other things...there just wasn't the money (or the volunteer hours!) needed to support other activities. It takes a good deal of both to start something new and keep it going year after year.

And then I moved to Toronto. From April to October, it isn't uncommon for there to be as many festivals in one weekend as one would normally find in the entire calendar year in my previous hometown.

At first I thought I'd simply moved up here at a very good time of year, that we needed to take advantage of these festivals before they all went away and we had to wait for 48 or 50 or 52 more weeks to try anything new or to meet new friends once again.

So I made a list of all of the festivals and events I was interested in and tried to get Drew to come with me. "Look at all this cool stuff!" I said. He didn't seem very impressed, although he did agree to check out an art show with me (or maybe it was a Jazz festival - I honestly don't remember!)

We had a great time.

And then the next weekend rolled around and there were even more awesome events going on. I was so excited - two weekends of entertainment in a row!

And then the next weekend rolled by. And the next. And the next.

I began to notice a pattern: If the weather was nice, there would be something cool going on in the city somewhere. Sometimes it would require tickets (which ranged from extremely reasonable to "how in the hell do other people afford this for two hours of entertainment?"), often they were free. My brain imploded.

There's no such thing as one single Event Weekend up here. Some events ( The Pride Parade, The Canadian National Exhibit) are definitely more well-attended, but every weekend there's something fun and most probably free to check out in this city.


There were many things I appreciated about my childhood - living in a community that had to struggle to put on a handful of secular events a year was not one of them. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with VBS, Harvest Festivals, or conferences; urban church hold similar events up here all of the time. There's just something refreshing about living in a community that doesn't need to use the excuse of ministering to the surrounding community or winning souls to throw a party.