Kennedy Road & Pacific Mall
Some of the best Chinese food in North America, in car parks, behind unmarked doors, in food courts. Ask anyone under thirty where to start and then go there.
Markham
A preserved nineteenth-century main street on one side and one of the best Chinese and South Asian food scenes on the continent on the other. Markham also holds a lot of the country's tech, which is why so many people here commute out of Toronto rather than into it.
Stock photograph. Not Markham.
Two towns at once
Feels like
40–50 min by GO
To Union Station
Eating, schools and a reverse commute
Go for
How to say it
Nobody just says Markham: they say the neighbourhood. Unionville, Milliken, Cornell, Cathedraltown, Markham Village, Box Grove. Learn the two nearest yours and you will sound settled immediately.
Heads up
Main Street Unionville is beautiful and about four blocks long. Most of Markham is plazas and arterial roads: judge it on the plazas, because that is where you will spend your time, and the food in them is the reason to be here at all.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
OJHL junior hockey
Markham Royals
Junior A on a Friday night for about the price of two coffees. The rink is small enough that you can hear the bench.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Markham.
Public places, parks, markets and the streets the independents are actually on. Nothing here is invented, and nothing here is a photograph of somewhere else.
Main Street Unionville
Four blocks of clapboard shopfronts, independent coffee and a pond at the end. Absurdly pretty and absolutely rammed on a Saturday.
Flato Markham Theatre
The region's flagship theatre: touring music, dance and comedy most weeks of the year, and a subscription series worth the drive.
Milne Dam Conservation Park
Trails along the Rouge on the edge of the national urban park, with a reservoir in the middle. Herons, and a dog-walking parade at six.
Markham Museum
Twenty-five acres of relocated historic buildings you can walk into. Better than it sounds, and the fastest way to understand why this place looks the way it does.
The year
What comes round every year.
Keyed to a month, never to a date. Dates move, and a page that prints last year's is worse than one that says “September”.
June
Taste of Asia
Kennedy and Steeles closes for one of the largest Asian street festivals in North America. Free, vast, and best approached hungry and on foot.
June
Unionville Festival
The historic main street shuts to traffic for a weekend of stalls, music and a midway. Running since the 1970s.
October
Markham Fair
An agricultural fair since 1844 and still one of Ontario's biggest. Livestock, tractor pulls, and a demolition derby.
HelloGTA.com
The GTA is enormous and most of it is unknown to everybody.
Including the people who have lived here twenty-five years. That is the whole brief: twenty-nine guides, and a question a week put to the region.