what’s on

Check out our ongoing and upcoming events and series.

events calendar

August 2025

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August 2025
Roller Skate Lessons: August 1
Learn how to roll with us! This summer, we’re offering weekly roller skate lessons for those who are looking to gain basic skills. Our expert instructors will help novice skaters build confidence on wheels and navigate our figure-eight trail. 
Art Socials: August 6
Curious about the world of bookmaking and type? In this workshop with local printmaker Phoebe Todd-Parish, you’ll ink and letterpress print your own alphabet from antique wood type on a line-o-scribe press—a midcentury sign press! While your print dries, cut out letters from previously printed alphabets to assemble your banner and share your message with the world to display wherever you please.
Roller Skate Lessons: August 8
Learn how to roll with us! This summer, we’re offering weekly roller skate lessons for those who are looking to gain basic skills. Our expert instructors will help novice skaters build confidence on wheels and navigate our figure-eight trail. 
Art Socials: August 13
Explore linework and pattern making with this fun and accessible approach to creating prints. In this workshop with local artist Sarah Aranha, you’ll create your own designs by carving custom foam blocks and then apply ink to these forms to print your own set of greeting cards, just in time for the approaching fall season. 
Roller Skate Lessons: August 15
Learn how to roll with us! This summer, we’re offering weekly roller skate lessons for those who are looking to gain basic skills. Our expert instructors will help novice skaters build confidence on wheels and navigate our figure-eight trail. 
Dino Run: August
If your kids like dinosaurs, they’ll love Dino Runs! This fun-filled morning starts with costumed Dino Specialists teaching participants about dinosaurs through song, dance, storytelling, and games. Then, the kids will set out as Dino Explorers on an exciting, non-competitive chase to recapture runaway dinosaurs. These fun and educational events sold out in 2024!
Art Socials: August 20
Try your hand at watercolour painting with local artist Sarah Aranha. You’ll learn some basic watercolour techniques and then put them into practice by painting watercolour postcards inspired by The Bentway’s seasonal theme Sun/Shade.
Sun/Shade Curators’ Tours: August 21
Go behind the scenes of our Sun/Shade outdoor art exhibition by joining a curators’ tour with The Bentway’s Programming team. Learn about the inspiration behind the season, the creation of each artwork, and how they fit together. Sun/Shade explores new ways of collaborating with the sun, as well as the importance of shade, in our urban spaces.
Roller Skate Lessons: August 22
Learn how to roll with us! This summer, we’re offering weekly roller skate lessons for those who are looking to gain basic skills. Our expert instructors will help novice skaters build confidence on wheels and navigate our figure-eight trail. 
From Milkweed to Monarchs  
Did you know that monarch butterflies migrate 4,800km each year from Canada to Mexico? Join us for this hands-on workshop to learn how milkweed plants help support this journey with presented with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority!
Art Socials: August 27
Get ready for an all-ages drawing night centered around making comics. Comic books are a fantastic art form for sharing stories of all kinds. But if you’ve never made a comic before, then where do you start? Join professional comic book artist Josh Rosen as he leads a series of fun, beginner-friendly comics activities. He’ll be sharing tricks of the trade and teaching participants the quick path towards making comics of their own.
Roller Skate Party: August
BEATS + SKATES events offer a unique blend of skate culture, dance, visual art and music production for the masses. Join the fun, skill-sharing environment at the skate trail featuring live painting by a local street artist. Roll and dance the night away to tunes from J YOUNG and Ms. Myles. 

on view / ongoing

  • Roller Skating with SUSO Skate Co.

    Roller Skating with SUSO Skate Co.

    June 11 – September 28, 2025. Wednesday-Friday: 4pm-8pm, Saturday-Sunday: 1pm-7pm, Roller Skate Parties: 6pm-10pm

    Our friends at SUSO Skate Co. are back this summer, making The Bentway Skate Trail the best place to rock and roll! Book your skate rental and time slot ahead of time on the SUSO website, then come on down for good vibes and memorable moments. Whether you’re trying roller skating for the first time…

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  • Second Shade

    Second Shade

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    Echoing both the towering structures of downtown skyscrapers and a forest of trees, Mary Mattingly’s Second Shade combines lush greenery and repurposed construction materials to make a unique 20ft tall urban canopy, showcasing the cooling potential of green roofs, soft landscaping, and responsive architecture.

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  • la sombra que te cobija / the shadow that shelters you

    la sombra que te cobija / the shadow that shelters you

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    A geometric pavilion invites you to cross under the Gardiner, casting both a cooling effect and ornate shadow patterns. Edra Soto’s installation references the shade-making façades of working-class Puerto Rican bungalows to create an expansive, sun-filtering threshold, reflecting on the intersection of heat-responsive architecture, place-making, and cultural heritage. 

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  • Casting a Net, Casting a Spell

    Casting a Net, Casting a Spell

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    Artist duo Celeste’s majestic, quilted canopy casts welcomed shade down to a seating area below, offering relief from the heat and a space for gathering. Like a suncatcher, Casting a Net, Casting a Spell embraces and harnesses the sun, weaving in archetypes that have surrounded the sun since ancient times. 

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  • Declaration of the Understory

    Declaration of the Understory

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    Secwépemc artist Tania Willard approaches the space below the highway as a tree canopy, reminiscent of the “understory” floor of southern Ontario forests, where pockets of shade and sunlight shape unique ecosystems below. In a stunning mixed-media installation, floral motifs, iridescence, and powerful slogans offer a mediation on the power of shade as a lifeforce.

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  • Bathed in Strange Light

    Bathed in Strange Light

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    Working in collaboration with the sun’s rhythms, Natalie Hunter’s photographs on the windows of The Bentway Studio (facing Canoe Landing Park) explore how ever-shifting sunlight shapes our experience of public spaces. As the sun moves throughout the day, translucent images cast down a colorful, slow-moving cinema.

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  • Seeing Celsius

    Seeing Celsius

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    What happens when we can see heat? By adding thermal-imaging technology to the familiar viewfinder found at scenic lookout points, LeuWebb Projects enables you to see the temperature differences across The Bentway space and the bodies that move through it. It’s a new perspective that will shift how you view urban spaces and the materials…

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  • Moving Forest

    Moving Forest

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    A flock of 50 trees in shopping carts playfully travels throughout the city, stopping to create a refreshing shade canopy in usually-sunny spaces. Follow their eight-week journey throughout the city – from The Bentway, to YZD at Downsview, to the Waterfront – enjoying pop-up readings and performances along the way.

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  • Waterfront ReConnect: Boom Town

    Waterfront ReConnect: Boom Town

    On view now

    Boom Town employs vibrant colour, playful characters, and environmental lighting to enliven the York Street intersection, improving safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists.

  • Waterfront ReConnect: Pixel Story

    Waterfront ReConnect: Pixel Story

    On view now

    Pixel Story references the multitude of vantages, scales, speeds, and distances at which to view the Expressway, enticing passersby to move forward towards the waterfront, or pause to reflect on its diverse stories.

  • Bentway Staging Grounds

    Bentway Staging Grounds

    On view now

    Bentway Staging Grounds is a site of active, environmental learning that continues The Bentway’s creative work along the Gardiner Expressway. Visitors are invited into a living laboratory for urban ecology, with experimental gardens that use rainwater run-off from the highway above to support the growth of flowering plant species.

  • Memory Work  

    Memory Work  

    On display May 1, 2022 onwards

    Situated at the western entrance to The Bentway, Memory Work is a mural made up of twelve embellished photographic portraits of revolutionary women and non-binary figures from a future Toronto. Initiated by studio From Later with artist Rajni Perera and Memory Work Collective, this speculative monument imagines a city characterized by collective care and politics…

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