This March, as we move into Spring, Oshawa presents a feast of art. From Chinese cooking to maple syrup to beans, squash, and corn, visitors can relish local culture through global cuisine.
‘Beyond Bitter,’ an exhibit by Karen Kar Yen Law at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG), runs from February 25 through to April 19. In the exhibit, Law explores identity, culture, and intergenerational relationships through the medium of cooking, in this case, Chinese cuisine. Using airbrushing, screen printing, painting, and collage, Law creates artworks drawing on the history of Asian immigration to Canada, which includes the bitterness of racism, exploitation and exclusion, with the goal of how one moves beyond the bitter into something much more agreeable to the palate.
Very agreeable to the palate and very much part of the Canadian experience is maple syrup, and in 2025, the Purple Woods Conservation Area on the Oak Ridge Moraine is celebrating 50 years of its Maple Syrup Festival. The festival begins Friday, March 7 and runs through April, with many events planned over the course of the celebrations. The festival features self-guided tours, horse-drawn wagon rides, games, activities, and an all-day breakfast of pancakes and real maple syrup drawn from the hundreds of sugar maple trees in the Woods. There is also the Heritage Store for gifts to return home with.
The Oshawa Museum staff will be onsite at the Maple Syrup Festival all month on Saturday, March 8, 15, 22, and 29, to speak about the history of syrup and the Woods. The Museum complex, located at Lakeview Park in Oshawa, also has other activities and events throughout March, including, of course, for March Break, which includes a pop-up exhibit, ‘Indigenous Languages in Canada,’ which is on loan from the Canadian Languages Museum. At Guy House, learn the story of The Three Sisters Crops (squash, corn, and beans) and bring some plants home for your own garden.
This marriage of local art activities and global sources is reflective of the welcoming attitude of the City of Oshawa and the openness of its people to voices and faces from all over the globe. Because of the range of opportunities through its many manufacturing industries, Oshawa drew people from across the world, and the country and people with different cultures and languages found common causes in work. Working the line, sharing common areas, and even getting out of the parking lot at shift end required real consideration of other people and a willingness to find ways to communicate. Because of this city’s working class roots there is an inherent inclusiveness to Oshawa. Those working-class roots also breed an outrage at social inequality and exclusiveness.
‘Resistance’ is currently ongoing at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG). It features works from the Permanent Collection and focuses on how artists throughout history have used art to resist and disrupt social and political structures. Dana Claxton, Ed Pien, Michele Pearson Clarke, Michael Snow, and Robert Houle are among the artists included.
The RMG is located in the city’s downtown, within walking distance of literally scores of restaurants offering dishes from all over the planet. If all this food and art talk makes one hungry, it's an effortless pivot from palette to palate.
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