Layers of the City: Discovering the Soul of Kensington Market

Kensington Market isn’t just a neighborhood—it’s a living mosaic of Toronto’s past and present. In this episode of Tanging Tanawin, Anne Wong takes us on a sensory journey through one of the city’s most storied streets. What was once a horse stable is now a cheese shop with floorboards stamped by time. Jewish tailors, Portuguese bakers, Caribbean cooks, and tattooed baristas all leave their mark in this shared street—North America’s first woonerf.

From early-morning vintage hunters to jazz musicians warming up at dusk, every corner of Kensington tells a tale. It’s a place where you can taste global kitchens in a single block and hear decades of music echo off red brick. It’s also where Toronto’s first graffiti zone and bike protests happened—and where a new chapter is written each day, whether by a Filipino bakery or a Syrian café.

Here, history isn’t frozen—it’s dynamic. It blends spice with spray paint, sourdough with soul. Slow down, explore, and you might just find a piece of yourself reflected in Kensington’s ever-changing mirror.