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Toronto Through My Lens

Illuminite 2026

February 24, 2026 / / 2 Comments

Illuminite is a free, annual winter outdoor art festival organized by the Downtown Yonge BIA that transforms the Downtown Yonge area into a public gallery with interactive light installations. This year the event features five main installations focused on the theme of “Play”.

Each site features a playful, interactive experience designed to spark joy, movement, and connection in the heart of winter. Whether you’re a curious explorer or just passing through, Illuminite 2026 invites everyone to pause, play, and light up the city together.

This year the five art installations are located at:

  • Yonge-Dundas Square
  • Trinity Square Park
  • College Park
  • 777 Bay Plaza
  • Granby Parkette

I paid a little visit to each site; here’s what I found (installation descriptions courtesy of the Illuminite 2026 website):

Pop!

Something Fun Is Popping Up
Company: Gentilhomme
Location: Yonge-Dundas Square (1 Dundas Street East)

Something playful is bubbling beneath the surface at Yonge-Dundas Square, and it’s ready to POP! Hidden inside glowing monoliths are five quirky characters – named Popo, Popup, Popli, Popette, and Popotin – just waiting to burst out and start the party.

To set them free, you’ll need to call out, sing, or dance your way into their world. As each figure responds with movement, sound, and colour, the installation transforms into a joyful, collective celebration of music, surprise, and togetherness.

Domino Effect

Sparks In Sequence
Artist: Ingrid Ingrid
Location: Trinity Square Park (19 Trinity Square, behind Eaton Centre)

Get ready to knock down winter blues with a musical chain reaction! Domino Effect invites visitors of all ages to play, collaborate, and co-create a symphony of sound and light using giant pastel-coloured dominos.

Each domino triggers a unique note, from vocals to percussion, and every cascade becomes a playful performance of rhythm, colour, and connection. Work together to build longer sequences, reverse the direction, and unlock new melodies in this interactive orchestra of joy.

Horizon

The Light Is In Sight
Artist: MattCreative
Location: College Park – Yonge Street Entrance (420 Yonge Street)

Step into a glowing field of motion and colour. Horizon is a large-scale 3D LED matrix that visualizes waves of light as they move through space and time. With over 3,000 LEDs and interactive controls, this immersive installation invites you to shape shifting patterns of light in real time, turning College Park into a dynamic playground of sight and sound.

Oval Swings

Coming Full Circle
Company: Prevail Activations
Location: 777 Bay Plaza (777 Bay Street)

Feel the glow and let yourself sway. Oval Swings bring playful energy and luminous charm to 777 Bay Plaza. Designed for all ages, these glowing LED swings invite you to pause, connect, and capture the moment: a joyful blend of movement, light, and pure winter magic.

A delightful, hands-on experience that turns Trinity Square Park into a hub of movement, laughter, and collective creativity.

Hearts At Play

Find The Missing Piece
Artist: Daria Domnikova
Location: Granby Parkette (431 Yonge Street)

Granby Parkette comes alive with Hearts at Play, a vibrant trio of interactive sculptures that celebrate community, creativity, and connection in Downtown Yonge.

Bold in colour and glowing with light, these artworks encourage visitors to pause, play, reflect, and rediscover the heart of the city, and their place within it.

Illuminite runs until March 8, 2026. The event is now in its third year.

Toronto Spring Festival Celebration: The Lunar New Year

February 16, 2026 / / 2 Comments

This past long weekend was a celebration of the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Horse. In recognition of this, a weekend-long event was held at Nathan Philips Square, entitled Toronto Spring Festival Celebration: The Lunar New Year.

This Lunar Festival is a fairly new effort; this was only its second annual. The premiere of this event last year was an enormous success, with over 50,000 people attending.

This weekend there was a Market selling interesting Asian items, plenty of Asian food, and a Main Stage which hosted variety shows and cultural performances. There were also several heated tents where attendees could escape the cold to watch various performances.

Light and fireworks played a large part in the event. In Chinese culture, fireworks are far more than festive lights – they are a profound symbol of courage and hope. Rooted in over 2,000 years of tradition driving away the legendary beast Nian, these lights now shine over Toronto, bridging the past and the future.1

Much of the Festival this year took place on Nathan Phillip Square’s huge ice rink. There was figure skating, showcasing some very talented skaters. The Dragon and Lion Dances also took place on the ice, in addition to a slightly bizarre fashion show.

VIP tickets were available for purchase – this admitted the visitor to reserved seating in the heated tents to experience the robot shows and several other cultural events. The aforementioned robots were brought in from Asia for this event. Apparently one of their main tasks was to dance with performers onstage just before the closing fireworks on Sunday night – I’m not sure how all of that turned out as I didn’t stay long enough to catch the closing event.

Figure Skating

Dragon Dancing

And one of the more oddly-presented fashion shows I’ve ever seen:

Couture on Ice Grand Fashion Show: designer Adam X Atelier presenting

It was a good time, generating positivity and cultural pride; I hope the event continues in the years to come.

1Toronto Spring Festival Website

600 Parliament Street

February 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

600 Parliament Street in St. James Town is a visual reminder of resistance to the area’s development in the 1960s. Sitting on Parliament Street near Wellesley Street East, I have passed this building hundreds of times; every time I pass by it strikes me as incongruous to the rest of the neighbourhood.

The family of Lucio Casaccio had owned the semi-detached building since 1910, running a tailoring business from the premises. When the St. James Town apartment complex was planned in the 1960s, many of the old row houses along Parliament Street had to be demolished to make way for the new towers. When approached, the owner, Lucio Casaccio, refused to sell his house unless the developers paid him $100,000 – twice the amount paid for neighbouring houses. When negotiations failed, developers tore down the other half of the semi and built a Y-shaped, 32-storey building called The Halifax, which wraps around the former Casaccio home:

Lucio Casaccio continued to fight the building’s developers even after The Halifax was completed. In 1968, he sued Howard Investments Ltd., the firm behind the Halifax’s construction, for $1,000,000. In an unusual legal argument, Casaccio claimed the company violated his property’s air rights by swinging materials over his building during construction. Ultimately, Casaccio was awarded $1,200 by a judge, but also required to pay $60,000 in legal costs.

Today, the building houses New World Laundry, a laundromat run by Korean immigrants, who renovated the building in 2012.

On its upper floors, the building has 4,300 square feet of space which incorporates 10 rental units. Here’s the view around the rear of the building where the apartments are accessed:

If you have some spare change and want to invest in real estate, the building is currently on the market for a cool $5,980,000.00.

References

Heritage Toronto

Christmas at Nathan Phillips Square

December 24, 2025 / / 3 Comments

Set in Nathan Phillips Square, Cavalcade of Lights is an annual free event that transforms City Hall and and the Square into a dazzling wonderland.

This year there is lots of lights, art installations and, of course, free skating:

Art Installation: “Lux Array”
An interactive light and sound installation by Luxonous Collective. Its assembly of rotating squares become photo frames, inviting you to enter and become part of the artwork yourself.
Art Installation: “Luminescence”
An immersive experience in an illuminated dome, east of the main stage
Art Installation: “We Change Each Other”
A thought-provoking light installation that explores themes of unity and the amalgamation of cultures by Shilpa Gupta, near the TORONTO sign.
Art Installation: “Echo”
An interactive installation that allows you to explore the hidden power of your unique voice

Skaters at Nathan Phillips Square:

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!

Christmas Flower Show at Allan Gardens

December 23, 2025 / / 1 Comment

This season the tradition of the Christmas Flower Show continues at the Palm House in the Allan Gardens Conservatory. The entire conservatory is decorated and filled with thousands of flowering plants, over 30 varieties of poinsettia and seasonal topiary masterpieces made entirely of plant material.

In previous years the Conservatory had an event called “Christmas by Candlelight”, but I couldn’t find any confirmation of that happening this year. I have never been to one of those, but apparently it is quite beautiful with the lighted displays sprinkled throughout the conservatory.

I usually pay a visit every Christmas to the Conservatory to take in the Flower Show. The displays were quite sparse this year and I didn’t sense the same care and attention to detail displayed in previous years. Regardless, it’s always restful and calming in the Palm House:

Christmas Windows at “The Bay”

December 21, 2025 / / 1 Comment

Although the Hudson’s Bay store is now long gone from what was their flagship store at Yonge and Queen, the Christmas windows have been resuscitated. Yes! “The Bay Christmas windows” are back for 2025, courtesy of Cadillac Fairview, and I (along with many, many others) am very happy about this!

Background

On a frigid Sunday evening, December 14, crowds gathered along Yonge Street as Cadillac Fairview officially unveiled the return of Toronto’s iconic holiday windows at the former Hudson’s Bay flagship at Queen and Yonge. For the first time since Hudson’s Bay shuttered its Canadian department stores earlier this year, the illuminated display bays once again glowed with festive scenes, drawing families, tourists, and longtime downtown residents back to a ritual that has defined Toronto’s holiday streetscape for more than a century.

This year’s windows mark both a revival and a reinvention. With the department store behind the glass now closed, Cadillac Fairview has repositioned the historic facade as a leased experiential platform, beginning with a holiday activation by Mars Wrigley Canada. The confectionery giant has taken over seven prominent windows along the Yonge Street side of the building between Queen and Richmond, transforming them into animated tableaux designed to restore a sense of wonder to the corner while signalling a new future for one of the city’s most storied retail landmarks.

Cadillac Fairview, which owns the former Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue complex connected to CF Toronto Eaton Centre, has made clear that the holiday windows are no longer tied to a single department store tenant. Instead, the landlord is treating the building’s extensive street-facing windows along Yonge, Bay, and Richmond streets as a stand-alone experiential and media asset.

Publicly, Cadillac Fairview has framed the initiative as an effort to honour and preserve a cherished Toronto tradition, even as it explores new commercial and cultural uses for the space. Internally, the move also reflects a pragmatic response to the closure of Hudson’s Bay, which left a massive downtown anchor vacant after the retailer filed for creditor protection with more than a billion dollars in debt and failed to secure a buyer.

By reviving the windows, Cadillac Fairview is extracting value from the building’s most visible asset while longer-term redevelopment and re-tenanting plans are evaluated. The Queen Street frontage remains partially blocked due to Ontario Line construction at the intersection, but the Yonge Street run is fully active for the holidays, with additional bays on Bay and Richmond streets being marketed to future partners.

Workers putting finishing touches on one of the display windows.

Although the windows are not as elaborate or intriguing as those in past years, it is wonderful to see that an effort has been made to revive a Christmas tradition at Yonge and Queen Street.

Text courtesy of Retail Insider

Christmas at the Royal York

December 19, 2025 / / 2 Comments

The Fairmont Royal York’s hotel lobby has taken on what hotel staff label a winter wonderland appearance, decorated with reminders of reindeer and other items synonymous with Christmas.

Guests now arriving at the Fairmont Royal York are greeted by pathways lined with Victorian-style lampposts and snow-covered evergreens, creating scenes straight out of a winter fairy tale, along with the Christmas tree framed by elegant drapery and towering nutcrackers. Guests continue their journey through a serene winter garden gazebo or stop for champagne or tea at the hotel’s bustling lobby lounge, “Clockwork“, its white ironwork gates evoking the entrance to a palace. Every vignette is dressed in frosted whites, icy crystals, lush greenery, and glistening snow.
Royal York’s General Manager Edwin Frizzell

Pre-Christmas Photowalk

December 15, 2025 / / 2 Comments

Well, it’s that time again… love it or hate it, we’re on the countdown to Christmas.

I’ve always liked the way Christmas comes together in the city, so this past weekend I took a little walk around a few downtown spots to see how things are ramping up for Christmas. The temperature was -15 with the wind chill so I tended not to linger overly long at any one stop on my wanderings.

Winter Glow 2025

I started my little jaunt at Yonge-Dundas Square (I refuse to call it by that incredibly asinine new name). From December 11th through 21st there is an event on here called Winter Glow 2025.

Winter Glow is in its third year at Yonge-Dundas Square. It’s basically a holiday festivity filled with lights, music, festive flavours, classic rides, and community cheer.

This year, Epilepsy Toronto is the sponsor and presenting partner of Winter Glow. The organization brings a Holiday Market to the Square, filling it with artisan stalls, photo ops, the Polar Point Bar, fire-pits, and photos with Santa. There is also a mini-midway with a carousel and a 45-foot high Ferris wheel:

The Eaton Centre

Directly across the street from the Square is the venerable Eaton Centre. I started on the north end of the mall, making my way south through the masses of shoppers milling about:

Passing through Simons I stopped to appreciate some beautiful music being performed by a trio there:

In the middle of the mall there were several giant reindeer:

Eaton Centre’s massive (114-foot) Christmas tree made a reappearance this year. The ever-enterprising Eaton Centre was offering shoppers to have their picture taken by a professional photographer with the holiday tree as the backdrop (portraits were $10 a pop).

With the giant tree for a backdrop, these two people were getting their selfies high on the walkway above the shoppers
The 114-foot high Eaton Centre Christmas tree. The tree changes colour every few minutes.

Once or twice an hour the tree launches its “Snow Show”, and it snows in the Eaton Centre, like this:

Trinity Square Park

Just out the west door of the mall is Trinity Square Park, home to the Church of the Holy Trinity. Given all the lights in the walkway and trees, I’m sure the area would look much prettier at night, but it was kind of interesting in the daylight, nonetheless:

Brookfield Place

I have shot Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street) many, many times but have never tired of it. The Allen Lambert Galleria is simply one of the most magnificent backdrops in downtown Toronto. That beautiful, arched, soaring ceiling is a photographer’s dream.

This year they have an installation entitled Snowfall: Frost, created by Studio F Minus. The work is inspired by the architectural motif of the Allen Lambert Galleria, the geometry of a single snowflake, and the allure of a freshly frosted-over window pane.

Studio F Minus took the fractal pattern and applied the concept to the construction of snowflakes in nature. Beginning with a “Y” shape drawn from the Galleria, then repeating and rotating that shape to create a new crystalline structure. There was a sign for visitors to Brookfield Place, which encouraged them to touch Snowfall: Frost. When a hand is run along the sculpture it casts a shadow in the field of light, the same way you leave a trail when drawing on a frosted window:

Continuing eastward through Brookfield Place to the Yonge Street side, there was another impressive homage to Christmas:

Berczy Park

Moving on to the Front Street East-Church Street area, I paid a visit to Berczy Park. Someone had adorned the little dogs on the Berczy Park fountain with seasonal scarves. Very cute:

Across from the dog fountain, a Snoopy-like pup kept watch on the visitors:

I was quickly losing the light of the day so I wrapped it up and headed home, passing through Berczy’s seasonal arch on the way to Wellington Street East:

Stay tuned for more posts of Toronto at Christmastime!

St. Peter’s Anglican Church / Dixon Hall

December 13, 2025 / / 2 Comments

At 188 Carlton Street, on the corner of Bleecker Street, sits St. Peter’s Anglican Church, now known as Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services.

The English Gothic Revival-style building was constructed between 1865 and 1866, with additions and modifications over the years.

In the late 1800s St. Peter’s was a refuge for the Underground Railroad. It was a meeting place of diversity consisting of farmers, city dwellers, the needy and the wealthy. From the Church, coal and potatoes were given out during the depression.

A sketch of St. Peter’s Anglican Church, 1904

The Church’s foundation stone was laid in 1865, and it opened in 1866, designed by architects Gundry & Langley. The building received heritage status from the City of Toronto in 1973 and the Ontario Heritage Trust in 1993.

In 2016, the Church’s congregation merged with St. Simon’s Anglican at 525 Bloor Street East. St. Peter’s was then deconsecrated, and Dixon Hall moved into the building where it continues to provide community services.

St. Peter’s, January 1923
Photo: City of Toronto Archives

The entrance to Dixon Hall’s rooms and offices are located around the back of the Church, in a slightly newer part of the building:

If you are interested in learning a little more about the history of St. Peter’s Anglican Church, here is a short video made at the time of the 2016 amalgamation of the St. Peter’s and St. Simon’s parishes:

Demolition, Michael Garron Hospital

October 9, 2025 / / 1 Comment

The latest Toronto structure succumbing to the wrecking ball are the A, B and C wings of the Michael Garron Hospital (formerly known as Toronto East General). Located at 825 Coxwell Avenue, corner of Coxwell and Mortimer Avenues, these old brick wings along Coxwell Avenue were officially closed back in March of this year in preparation for this demolition.

As intensely as I loathe East York, though, I am still very sorry to see this beautiful structure demolished; I couldn’t believe it when I first heard this was happening:

As I understand it, in addition to being an outdated medical facility, one of the factors in the building’s demise was its architecture. Built In 1951 the building was anachronistically constructed in the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles. Due to its mismatched style and period, it was not deemed worthy of preservation under the Ontario Heritage Act.

Working across from Michael Garron Hospital for many years I would go into the hospital several times a week for a Tim Hortons run or lunch at the Hospital’s cafeteria (my stomach still churns at the memory all these years later). I remember thinking at the time how incredibly dated, drab and dingy the lobby and interiors were. I’ve heard the state of the medical facilities there were not far behind that of the decor.

The Ken and Marilyn Thomson Patient Care Centre

The Hospital is all about moving forward, though. In 2023 a huge, ultra-modern and beautiful new MGH patient centre was opened on the northeast corner of Coxwell Avenue and Sammon Avenue. Previously nothing more than an empty grassy knoll, the Ken and Marilyn Thomson Patient Care Centre is now in full operation. The new 8-storey facility is fully wheelchair-accessible, and includes ambulatory care clinics, in-patient beds and family space, in addition to four levels of underground parking:

The Centre is so-named after a $5 million gift from Ken and Marilyn’s son Peter Thomson. The Thomson family was named as the richest family in Canada by Canadian Business magazine in 2018.

The Ken and Marilyn Thomson Patient Care Centre in background, right.

Future Plans

The opening of the new Ken and Marilyn Thomson Patient Care Centre and the demolition of the old Coxwell-facing wing is part of a long-term plan to modernize, revitalize and expand the Michael Garron Hospital complex. According to MGH, the teardown of “several outdated wings” will continue into 2026.

The rear of the Coxwell wing currently under demolition

Apparently, after demolition MGH intends to preserve the stained-glass memorial windows and plaques which were in the original Coxwell lobby. Also, the hospital states that the demolished wings will be replaced with a new Coxwell Avenue entrance and future green space. It will be a welcome change for the better!

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