9 upcoming summer food festivals in Canada

Make the most of the warmer weather with these Canadian food festivals

By: Daniella Lopez

(James Sutton/Unsplash)

With COVID-19 restrictions easing across all of Canada, this summer is the perfect time to discover some of the country’s largest and most unique food and drink festivals. Here are nine festivals across the summer months you can enjoy in person. 

May

Canadian Festival of Chili and BBQ

Canada’s oldest and largest chili and BBQ competition returns to Downtown Langley, B.C., from May 13 to 15. This two-in-one festival combines taste-testing delicious foods and fiery competitions. With some of the lowest entrance fees, anyone is able to enter the different categories of competition. If festival-goers want to sample some of the competing dishes, they must make a minimum of $5 entrance donation to the B.C. Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund. To date, the festival has donated over 60 thousand dollars to the Young Burn Survivors Camp in British Columbia.

(Joshua Kantarges/Unsplash)

Okanagan Spring Wine Festival

Discover Okanagan Valley’s wine industry through taste-testing from May 5 to 15. Enjoy happy hour drinks for as low as $6, tour numerous wineries while enjoying the vineyard’s wines, or immerse yourself in a private wine tasting tour.

June

Edmonton Craft Beer Festival

Enjoy one of the fastest-growing beer festivals in the world at the Edmonton Expo Centre from June 3 to 4. Sample over 500 beers from more than 100 breweries, attend a seminar on cooking with beer, sample local cuisine or explore the festival’s distillery district. This is an 18-plus event so be sure to bring government ID.

Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival

Venture to Midland, Ont. on June 11 to immerse yourself in the wondrous world of butter tarts. Festival-goers can enjoy butter tarts from professional and home cooks alike, and anyone is eligible to enter their butter tarts for competition. Over 200 vendors will be spread out across the city’s downtown core including food trucks, merchants and entertainers.   

July

Taste of Edmonton

Enjoy one of Edmonton’s summer traditions, the Taste of Edmonton festival, from July 21 to 31 at Churchill Square. Since 1984, the festival has offered the city’s best food and drink vendors. You can also enjoy music from local artists ranging from folk to jazz.

Toronto Food Truck Festival

Enjoy some of Toronto’s best food trucks at Woodbine Park from July 29 to August 1. Taste local food, savour a cold beer and participate in live-eating challenges. Admission is free and the festival offers vegetarian, halal, gluten-free and vegan options.

August

Chocolate Fest

Venture to Canada’s Chocolate Town, St. Stephen, N.B., from July 31 to August 4. The festival goes back to 1984 and is a celebration of the town’s chocolate heritage — Canada’s oldest family candy company, Ganong Bros. Limited, is located here. Enjoy delicious candy-themed events including treasure hunts, pudding-eating contests, bingo and more!

Taste of Calgary

Discover all Calgary has to offer including food, drinks and music from August 4 to 7. Enjoy global cuisine from Calgary’s very own eatery and breweries, listen to Calgary’s local musicians or shop at unique city vendors. Festival-goers can buy sampling tickets for $1 and use them to try out different food and beverage items.

September

Canada’s Largest Ribfest

Finish your summer holidays off with a bang by attending Canada's Largest Ribfest in Burlington, Ont. on Labour Day weekend! Enjoy world-class BBQ from vendors, listen to music from emerging and established performers, or unleash your inner child by riding on carnival rides. With hundreds of thousands of attendees each year, the festival has raised around $5 million for local charities over its 25-year run. 

Toronto hosts second Winter Chocolate Show showcasing local and international chocolatiers, sustainable chocolate making

By Laura Dalton

The historical Enoch Turner Schoolhouse was bustling as the second annual Winter Chocolate Show commenced in Toronto.

The show concluded its second year on Feb. 1, fitting 27 local and international vendors into the cavernous schoolhouse.

The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

This year, co-founder Paola Giavedoni expanded the event into the church adjacent to the schoolhouse to fit the vendors. The church hosted the festival’s seminars and chocolate tastings. 

Giavedoni owns The Candy Bar, a chocolate and candy store at College Street and Ossington Avenue in Toronto. Her store, which opened in 2013, features the creations from chocolatiers across Canada.

“That business started that love for chocolate … So I created these walls of chocolate and it's all these makers that I'm representing in my shop so people can buy from [chocolate makers] across Canada,” she said.

Paola Giavedoni had her own table at the show where she sold some of the chocolates featured in her shop. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

Paola Giavedoni had her own table at the show where she sold some of the chocolates featured in her shop. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

Another business owner who attended the event, Nick Davis, is a former journalist and Jamaican originally born in the United Kingdom. Davis runs One One Cacao, a chocolate company he started in 2016, based in Kingston, Jamaica. 

Davis spoke on the challenges facing cacao producers in Jamaica, saying that the nation’s 7,000 small farmers are only producing 100 tons per year of raw cacao, where there is an export potential of 3,000 tons per year.

“It's a miniscule amount,” said Davis. “If you compare back to Haiti or compared to Dominican Republic it's a drop in the ocean.”

Davis added that the Dominican Republic exports as much as 66,000 tons annually.   

Davis sources sustainable cacao and works with farmers in Jamaica in an attempt to make cultivation more prosperous for the nation. The lengthy process of producing chocolate means Davis can only make one or two batches per year, making recipe improvements a challenge.

Davis’ chocolate won a silver and a bronze award from the Academy of Chocolate in 2017. The academy was founded in Britain in 2005 with the aim to bring awareness to the significance of fine chocolate over common confectionaries, and to promote transparent sourcing of cacao.

Ariane Hansen is a co-founder of DesBarres Chocolate based in Uxbridge, ON. Like Davis, she is very conscious when sourcing the raw cacao used in her chocolate and works directly with a farmer in Jamaica. She explained that she also orders samples of cacao from fairtrade brokers in Guatemala, Belize, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic and Madagascar. 

Desbarres chocolate bars featured at the show. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

Desbarres chocolate bars featured at the show. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)

Hansen said she uses the cacao samples to make a sample bar of chocolate and then decides which one is best for her chocolate. 

Originally from the Ottawa Valley, Hansen said that she started the business for fun and for the love of chocolate. Her partner Erik Hansen is the other co-founder of the chocolate show. 

Marco Mecozzi has been a chocolate maker since 2018. He is the co-founder of Tribe Chocolate based in Colborne, ON. Mecozzi sources his cacao from a supplier in Honduras, who tests the cacao for its quality. 

At the show, Mecozzi described the process of tempering, in which the chocolate is heated and then cooled — creating crystals in the cacao butter — and results in the hard and snappy texture of chocolate. 

After only two years, Toronto’s annual Winter Chocolate Show has expanded and touched the surrounding Corktown community. After only a few hours into the show, The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse was brimming with eager customers pining to find original and local chocolate.