Where to go, and one person worth knowing.

The discovery

The first owner’s story runs next issue.

Every issue from No. 2 on leads with one Toronto business owner — how they started, the month it nearly went under, and what they need now. This week, start with where to go.

This week

Worth leaving the house for

1. 01

   Listen · Entertainment District · Thu Sep 24 – Sun Sep 27

   Yuja Wang plays Prokofiev

   The symphony opens its season with Prokofiev's third piano concerto, which is the one that sounds like someone arguing with the orchestra and winning. Debussy's La mer on the same bill, plus a world première by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith. The Sunday matinee has the best availability if the evenings are gone.

2. 02

   Eat · Allan Gardens · Sun Sep 27, 10am – 5pm · Free

   Toronto Garlic Festival

   Fifteen years in and it is still exactly what it says: Ontario garlic by the bagful, garlic pickles, garlic beer, and a free raw clove pressed for you at the door. There is a breath contest. Go early, buy your winter supply, accept that the streetcar home will know where you've been.

3. 03

   Do · Bloorcourt · Thu Sep 24, 8pm · $40.75

   Migrante at Comedy Bar

   Three comedians, three countries, one shared subject: the strange business of starting your life over in a new place. Stephan Dyer, Juan Cajiao and Antonio Sanint have between them a Netflix credit, a TEDx talk and eight hundred performances of a show that filled theatres across the Americas.

4. 04

   See · West Queen West · Thu Sep 24, 6 – 8pm · Free · checked 2026-09-20

   Embodied opens at Gladstone House

   Six painters working in figures — Kelly Rose Adams, Robyn Asquini, Chad Cole, Frances Hahn, Kalmplex and Sherry Park — hung through the halls of the city's oldest hotel. Remarks at 6:30, cash bar, and the resident artists showing work still half-finished from their three months upstairs. A DJ carries it into the night at Cassette.

5. 05

   Do · Harbourfront · Thu Sep 24, 4 – 10pm · Free · checked 2026-09-20

   Public Trust at Harbourfront

   You make a promise. It gets drawn for you to keep, and a version of it goes up anonymously on a large marquee beside promises made by politicians, economists and weather forecasters. Paul Ramírez Jonas has run this in other cities; this is its Canadian debut, and it is stranger and quieter in person than it sounds written down.

6. 06

   See · Todmorden Mills · Sat Sep 26, 1 – 4pm · Free · checked 2026-09-20

   Open Canvas Project: Gather

   Twenty-five years of a painting project that hands strangers a brush and lets them work on the same enormous canvas. The reception shows two new pieces made this year alongside work pulled from the archive, down in the old mill by the Don. First twenty-five through the door get the zine. Parking is free, which at a gallery in this city is its own small event.