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Lifestyle

Can-Do on Dundas

DO DESIGN runs Thursday to Sunday (January 27 to 30) on Dundas between Bathurst and Grace. Opening reception Saturday (January 29), 3 to 9 pm, at several venues. Free. dowest.ca. Click here for more info on MADE At Home and Capacity.


The sleepy stretch of Dundas west of Bathurst has been permanently branded as up-and-coming. The winds of change that blow so briskly on neighbouring Queen West, College and Ossington slow substantially here, tempered by long-standing and still-thriving Portuguese businesses and the stronger tides of change in those nearby areas.

Its perpetually under-the-radar status makes the area perfect for the Design Week sneak attack being launched today by a group of aesthetically savvy locals. For the next four days, Do Design fills the storefronts of 29 shops, restaurants, cafés and galleries between Markham and Grace with locally made furniture and housewares. The goal is to lure in outsiders and enlighten locals by showing off the strip’s design chops.

“The BIA was frustrated that the area is full of creative businesses but still struggles to draw traffic,” says MADE’s Julie Nicholson, who is on Do West’s committee with the store’s co-owner, Shaun Moore, plus Arounna Khounnoraj from Bookhou, Kia and Jerry Waese from R.A.D. and Sleeping Giant gallery’s Josh Glover. “Do West Design is about getting people into the shops and restaurants as much as it’s about seeing the design work itself.”

The first business to sign on was ML Lumber (856 Dundas West, 416-603-7878) at the corner of Dundas and Manning. Walk by this weekend and you’ll see one of Jean Willoughby’s wood and concrete dressers in the window. Lunch spot Porchetta (825 Dundas West, 647-352-6611) displays Jill Allan’s glass piggy bank on its counter, and vegetarian Katherine Morley has created a collection of How To Eat Meat vases extolling nose-to-tail consumption for the Hoof Café (923 Dundas West, 416-551-8854).

“We’re taking pieces out of the design community bubble,” says Moore. “Placing them in a new context exposes the work to a larger audience.”

Moore and Nicholson have a bit of experience turning people on to the once obscure Canadian design scene. The centerpiece of Do West is MADE At Home (867 Dundas West, 416-607-6384), the duo’s four-year-old design show, renamed from Radiant Dark to reflect its new location in the apartment above their shop. The single-floor flat is laid out like a local design lover’s dream apartment. Two blocks east, the new Capacity exhibition spotlighting female makers runs to February 6 at Bookhou (798 Dundas West, 416-203-2549).

“Do West is great not only for the neighbourhood but for our show, too,” says Erin McCutcheon, who co-curated Capacity. “We’re all working together to cross-promote the events and make the area a hot spot during Design Week.”

When the shows close, though, and the design crowd retreats, Nicholson hopes people who had never considered Dundas West a destination but experienced Do Design will come back.

“I don’t believe design alone will make this a great neighbourhood,” she says. “But I believe it will encourage what Dundas has always done in an interesting, ad hoc fashion: reinvent itself for the diverse community living along its reaches.”

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