Ottawa isn’t only the home of the world’s longest skating rink, but it’s also home to the world’s longest street festival.
Spanning 2.3km from Island Park to Breezehill, the Taste of Wellington returns to Wellington Street West on Saturday, Sept. 20, for a full day of live music, markets, roller disco, car show, aerial antics, and more.
Dan Martelock paints a car at Taste of Wellington. Photo provided.
“First and foremost, [Taste of Wellington] is a day for businesses to kind of spill out on the sidewalk,” says Aron Slipacoff, Executive Director of the Wellington West BIA, in an interview with Apt613. “What’s really neat is they get to put on their best show that day. If you walk that 2.3-kilometre stretch, maybe back and forth, it’s gonna take you all day, but you will discover incredible little shops doing really neat little things and offering really cool stuff.”
He says this is a great way to discover the businesses and people in Hintonburg and Wellington Village.
The thing about our neighbourhood is it’s probably the greatest concentration of independent businesses in Ottawa… there’s not really another neighbourhood like it in Ottawa that way.
There’s a long list of activities for visitors, including three performances from Aerial Antics, a roller disco with rentals on site, a car show by Cars & Coffee, a live-to-air CKCU broadcast, free outdoor yoga by PranaShanti and SoulSpeak, and live art by Urban Art Collective, Brennan Bova, Daniel Martelock, and Jesus Rivera.
Last year was the first time the full length of the festival returned to Ottawa since the pandemic, Slipacoff says.
Taste of Wellington. Photo provided.
It was also the year he began working at the BIA. His first goal was to reframe the branding of the festival from something just about restaurants to something that included all the other businesses that make up Wellington Village, he says.
To tackle this, he spent some time on Google measuring the street to confirm that The Taste of Wellington was the world’s longest street festival, beating a similar festival in Aurora, Ont.
Taste of Wellington. Photo provided.
“Granted, I did find this amazing looking Cuban music festival in Miami, and it stretches about a block longer than us, but we also have Parkdale Park and the area around Somerset Square,” he says. “When you add it all up, we’re longer than that. [And] we’re not a music festival, either. So, that was my way of trying to get people’s heads wrapped around something other than restaurants.”
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The event continues to support the Parkdale Food Centre by offering visitors the chance to donate through donation jars, QR codes, and through an art auction, Slipacoff says.
But most of all, Slipacoff says Taste of Wellington exists to support the business of Wellington Street West.
“The best part of my job is to support businesses and the people behind them,” he says. “The community pride and energy of people who were so happy to come up to the street again [last year], and know that there were so many visitors to the neighbourhood, that community aspect really excites me.”
The Taste of Wellington will take place on Sept. 20, from 10am-6pm, rain or shine. For more information, visit their website. Buskers are encouraged to show up and perform.
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