MARTIN L

Author: Martin L

  • Retrospective: East Chinatown Food & History Walk

    On August 17th, 2025, I hosted my very first Food & History Walk! These walks are a initiative created for a variety of reasons listed below:

    Intention

    To introduce local perspectives, stories, and challenges to visitors of new places.

    Invitations

    1. Three stories of East Chinatown residents and informers that introduce the past, present, and future of East Chinatown
    2. Using food to build on these stories; highlighting imported flavors to each story
    3. Creating opportunities to connect with each story, imploring on the impact on the community.
    4. Opening a window to explore additional stories in new places.

    Desire

    For visitors to see the neighborhood beyond its Chinese identity, and rather a place where people from all over gather and draw inspiration from its past & present into the future.

    Experiences

    What happened?

    On this tour, we were able to visit a plethora of different sites, restaurants, and look at some of the community revitalization initiatives that have taken place since the 2010’s.

    Restaurants

    • Que Ling
    • Issho Coffee
    • Onyx Chocolates

    Sites

    • Dr. Sun Yat-sen Statue, East Chinatown
    • Charlie’s Meats Original Site
    • Hubbard Park
    • Toronto Chinatown Archway (Chung Hwa Men)
    • Murals of the Wonders of the World
    • Chinatown Architecture

    Stories

    • The Pioneers of Chinatown: The move to Gerrard & Broadview
    • Waves of Influence: Exploring the cultural changes in the Chinese Diaspora
    • Immersion of Diaspora: How this generation of East Chinatown residents have melded this space into their own
    • Grasping of an Identity: Suburban Chinatown to Now (story was not told)

    Feedback

    • Tour was great, particularly enjoyed the framing of each story from past, present & future
    • Liked all of the historical backgrounders that aren’t evident in today’s East Chinatown

    Reflection

    • Reduce talking portions to engage with the audience with questions and pondering periods
    • Be cognizant of the time and set time limits at each stop
    • Food stops need to be scattered throughout the tour and not primarily focused at the later portions of the tour
    • Dedicate more time to flesh out the characters of each story and ensure they are incorporated at each stop & location
    • Reduce rambling, and ensure you are incorporating each food stop into specific stories along the tour
    • Prepare photos of each reference to the past, or things you point out
    • Be confident during the talk, no self-depreciation.

  • Biidaasige Park: Highlights FROM Toronto’s latest parkland

    Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of visiting Toronto’s latest waterfront park, Biidaasige Park. Biidaasige, which roughly translates to Sunlight Shining Towards Us in Anishinaabemowin, is the flagship park of the Port Lands Redevelopment program. The program is a decades long project to redevelop the Toronto Port Lands into a livable, mixed-use community, whilst restoring the Don River to a more naturalized form.

    The park is a 60-acre green space lining the Don River’s new river mouth, with a variety of amenities to encourage playful interactions with our natural environment.

    What I loved

    There’s a lot of love about this park. The park is intended to be a centerpiece of a massive trail system in the Port Lands, which connects all corners of the city. I particularly liked the variety of trails, which are segregated between faster modes of transportation (bikes) and hikers / walkers. A variety of road surfaces were used as well, which really helps encourage different activities and speeds throughout each area of the park.

    The children’s areas were also playfully designed, with a great variety of swing structures, and even a whole cable structure for kids to play with! There’s also a outdoor fitness center, which is perfect for adults to take advantage of the open space around us.

    The park also features many connection points to the river, which gives it an innate connection to the water. On my day at the park, I saw a lot of people sitting at the river edge, and surprisingly a lot of paddlers. It’s a park that faces the water instead of retreating from it, which I hope helps people realize the connections we have with the land.

    Overall, the park was well designed, with a lot of natural interaction spaces between different groups of people. Although it lacks the traditional open space you’d see in most city parks, it still promotes open play with the large variety of different hang out spaces. The two addition of open leash areas are also useful for fencing off dog areas, which is important as not everyone is a fan of dogs.

    What I Disliked

    Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of things I dislike about the park, but one important thing to remember is that the park is the centerpiece of a community that doesn’t exist yet. As a result, it is very difficult to get to this park. There’s ample connections on the Martin Goodman Trail, but very limited transit access. On the day that I visited, many visitors chose to drive to the site. Currently, it’s a 15-ish minute walk from the closest residential development, which makes it hard to access. This will eventually improve with the development of the community, but serves as a slight barrier of access to the rest of the city.

    Bike Share access also leaves much to be desired, with only two bike share stations nearby (not even at the park). I wish the Toronto Parking Authority was more coordinated with the launch of the park to build out two Bike Share stations nearby. I saw many people waiting for Bike Share slots to open up since it was crowded and many people chose to use Bike Share to the park.

    What I Learned

    Building a park is hard and people will probably be critical about it, no matter how nice the park is. Also, Bike Share is 100% a victim of it’s own success, and I’d appreciate it if they could be better at bike distribution during large, preplanned events. Thanks!

  • My Ideal Weather

    weather

    It’s a partly cloudy day, with a low of 60°F and a high of 72°F. Wind is a maximum of 10 mph gusts. Dew point is around 50°F – 55°F. Slight moments of shade but still really great lighting.

    FEELING

    The temperature should be on the cusp of feeling a bit chilly if sitting still. It should feel comfortable with a 30 minute walk without sweating. At night, it shouldn’t feel explicitly cold, but chilly at times.

    Wear

    Layers should be possible for tops, bottoms can be shorts or long pants. Sweatshirt with shorts weather.

  • Two months later: Embracing the silly life

    Around two months ago, I decided to embrace the silly life by creating silly goals for myself. Today, I am here to provide a update to this article, and reflect on whether or not these goals had an impact on how I live my life.

    For May, I chose goals that were a bit easier to accomplish to ease me in (for example, talking to a stranger, which I do all the time). It was a great way to ease me into this experience as it did remind me to put more of my focus onto searching for these types of experiences. Unfortunately for me, it was also a bit too easy to accomplish these goals, as I finished all of my goals by early May, and the mindset flew out of the window after I no longer needed to look at a list of goals.

    In June, emboldened by May’s progress, I created six goals in a variety of topic areas. These included things like: “Have a picnic with friends” and “Stay off social media for twelve hours”. I only accomplished two out of the six goals this month, mainly due to a very busy schedule that took these goals out of my mind. Overall, I will say that June was not very successful for this reason alone, as I didn’t encompass the silly mindset.

    Lessons

    1. Create goals that don’t depend on other people to accomplish: your goals cannot be contingent on the existence of other people helping you accomplish your goals. The goal of these goals are to embrace creativity
    2. Make it easy, make it hard: your goals should challenge you, but also be approachable in steps. Don’t force yourself to climb up a floor without building the staircase first.
    3. Keep the silly top of mind: It can be hard to embrace the silly energy without prioritizing it. Since it’s a mindset, keeping it in focus by incorporating it into your life is a must.

    Overall, I am still continuing this experiment throughout the summer, and as always, I am inviting y’all to join into the adventure! My goal for July and August is to incorporate this reflection into my life, and get a bit sillier for once!

  • Bike Share – What I’ve Learned to Love

    If you didn’t know, I’m a proud Toronto Bike Share member! Thanks to a plethora of great discounts, I’ve been able to maintain a membership for about two years. Biking is such a great way to get around, and throughout the two years I’ve learned a lot about biking in Toronto.

    • Biking is the fastest way to get around the inner city

    Bike Share is the easiest way to get around the city! Biking is just as flexible as a car, but never stuck in traffic. There’s a decent amount of bike lanes downtown, and if you have a good mental map you’ll find it really easy to get around. I especially love it getting to and from subway stations because the streetcars are so slow by comparison!

    Here’s an example: from Rosedale Station to Little Italy, Bike Share is the fastest way!

    • Bike Share gives you options

    I love that Bike Share now exists as an option. It’s no longer just between taking transit and walking, there’s a new sweaty way to get to my destination. If my TTC transfer is expired, I can just use my “free” bike share pass! It’s especially useful to combine transit and bike share to get around, which is way faster than walking! It truly is a great last mile solution.

    • Bike Infrastructure was better than I thought

    Toronto has a surprisingly decent amount of bike infrastructure. Within the inner city, there’s plenty of bike lanes that create a grid (although it doesn’t connect the entire inner core yet). Many of these bike lanes have been upgraded over the past few years, adding protected infrastructure, signage, dedicated traffic lights, etc. I especially like the new College Street and University Avenue bike lanes, which are very wide and segregated from the rest of traffic. Well done!

    If I have to summarize my experience using Bike Share in Toronto, this quote from Ray Delahanty, the creator behind the YouTube Channel CityNerd: “I’ve never seen so much biking in a place that was so obviously hostile towards it.”.