A Lake Story
Sep 27 & 28, 2025. Procession at 11am & 4pm
A procession of over one hundred canoes moves in unison across Toronto’s eastern Waterfront on September 27/28, each carrying colour field paintings made with pigments sourced from the lake/shoreline and activated by the wind. A Lake Story will articulate Lake Ontario’s colour story across the sky and water, amplifying the lake’s own voices of vibrancy, ecosystem, and community.
Sun/Shade
April 14, 2025
The Bentway’s summer exhibition of free public art brings together artists, designers, and researchers to explore how new thinking about sun and shade can help cities adapt to rising temperatures and create more comfortable urban spaces.
Bentway @ Nuit Blanche 2024
August 26, 2024
This Nuit Blanche, we invite you down to The Bentway and surrounding area for a series of installations that light up the neighbourhoods along the Gardiner Expressway.
Dominoes
In 2024, Dominoes brought together Torontonians in a joyful act of community-building, as 8,000 human-sized dominoes weave and fall along an epic 2.5km journey through downtown neighbourhoods.
Softer City
April 25, 2024
In an increasingly hard city, how do we soften the barriers that separate us? The Bentway’s Summer 2024 public art exhibition proposed a series of soft encounters, where “softness” is embraced as a collective strategy for building a socially connected city.
Winter 2023 at The Bentway
November 16, 2023
Winter is back at The Bentway! We’re pleased to welcome neighbours and fun-seekers for ice skating, the return of our signature Polar Bear Skate, free workshops, family programming, art, and more.
Halloween at The Bentway
October 3, 2023
Get into the Halloween spirit with The Bentway! Join us for a week full of spooky stories, a ghost walk and, yes, the return of your favourite pup-friendly paw-rty, Howl’oween.
Neighbourhood Nuit (2023)
August 23, 2023
This Nuit Blanche, we invite you down to The Bentway and surrounding area for a series of installations that light up the neighbourhoods along the Gardiner Expressway.
BEYOND CONCRETE
May 14, 2023
Beyond Concrete brought together artists, architects, botanists, and neighbours to explore the nature of the Gardiner Expressway. In Summer 2023, we re-discovered a uniquely urban ecosystem – where human-made infrastructure intertwines with resilient flora and fauna – at a summer of free artworks, events, and celebrations.
Waterfront ReConnect
May 10, 2023
Waterfront ReConnect re-imagines the street-level experience of two under-Gardiner intersections through innovative approaches to lighting, color, and storytelling. The projects (located at York Street and Simcoe Street) showcase how the Expressway can better serve our city as a thriving civic asset – both above and below the deck.
Communal Table with The Depanneur
May 6, 2023
The Depanneur and The Bentway are teaming up again to bring you a fabulous lineup of diverse and delicious dinners. Guests are seated together across 10 tables of 6, sharing platters of food as part of a communal dining experience.
Confluence
October 1, 2022
Inspired by the water systems that have shaped Toronto, Confluence invited visitors to flow through an engrossing convergence of natural and human-made forces. The picnic table, a familiar fixture in parks across the city, contorts into a dynamic sculptural installation; twirling, cascading and cresting to evoke Toronto’s buried, lost rivers.
Pulse Topology
October 2, 2021
In the height of COVID-era lockdowns, The Bentway and artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer invited audiences to rediscover the Gardiner as a shared space for human connections, through an artwork powered by collective heartbeat. Pulse Topology took over a massive, enclosed storage chamber beneath the Expressway at Exhibition Place.