Canada's Creative Lakefront Hub Brims With Local Art And Global Eats Under An Hour From Toronto

On the north shore of Lake Ontario, about 40 miles east of downtown Toronto, sits artsy satellite city Oshawa, another of Ontario's underrated gems. It's home to over 200,000 people, and as one of the larger cities in the Durham Region it's a mix of vibrant new suburbs, waterfront nature, and older industrial areas. Today the city has a growing creative scene with independent galleries, live music venues, and community theatre groups across town but historically Oshawa was the center of Canada's auto industry.

The lakefront is one of Oshawa's selling points. With spots like Lakeview Park that sits right on the water with a beach, long shoreline trail, picnic areas, and of course Lake Ontario views as the name suggests, it's a green city these days. It's also connected to a larger Waterfront Trail system that runs along much of the lake. Beyond the waterfront, Oshawa has a lot of green space, with parks and rural land to the north where there's still farms and quiet country roads. Meanwhile downtown Oshawa is the move for small cafés, studios, and independent artsy businesses.

Getting there from Toronto is easy, whether heading to Oshawa from (perhaps the worst airport ever) Toronto Pearson or central TO it's just under an hour's drive east on Highway 401. If you're a train-loving public transport patron take the GO Train from Union Station directly to Oshawa GO that also takes about an hour, so no matter your route it's a straightforward alternative to Toronto.

Oshawa has a smaller arts scene than Toronto, but its manageable size makes it more intimate and impactful. The largest local institution in the city is the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, which is known for its collection of works by the group of Canadian artists, Painters Eleven, abstract painters from the 1950s. The group included artist Alexandra Luke who is an important figure in Oshawa because Painters Eleven first met at her studio near the city. The gallery was opened in 1967 thanks to donations from Luke and the McLaughlin family, and alongside the work by Painters Eleven, it focuses on displaying Canadian modern and contemporary art, especially postwar abstraction.

Nearby, streets of the downtown center have smaller creative hubs like independent galleries, studios, and artist-run workshop spaces that are welcoming and personal. Spots to add to your hit list are the Fresh Prints Gallery (brilliant pun hey?) which is a dinky print-focused space that showcases local printmakers and sells affordable work, and Shop Makers Oshawa Centre, a collective retail space that stocks and sells work by local artisans.

The streets of downtown Oshawa are something of a gallery too, with 29 large murals donning walls across the city, not dissimilar to the murals in Mont-Joli, Quebec. Visiting all of Oshawa's street art has been made easy and mapped out in this self-guided walking tour that takes around 90 minutes along a loop that's just over two miles in length – a great way to see the city center. It's also worth visiting during the city's annual Art Crawl that takes place in the downtown area every summer and is a great occasion to meet artists, learn about their creative process, try different workshops, and buy artwork.

After trawling the art scene, refreshments comes in plentiful and diverse plates thanks to Oshawa's global food options, with restaurants reflecting the multicultural communities that have settled in the city over the years. There's family run restaurants serving Indian, Nepali, Japanese, Italian, and Mexican in the downtown core, so it's easy to bounce between cafés, bars, and dining spots on foot.

Eden's Table Cafe is a fun lunch or dinner spot serving Caribbean style jerk chicken and curry chicken at really reasonable prices. A short walk away, Viva Burritos brings Mexican food to town with big portions of burritos, tacos, quesadillas and nachos. Korean fusion outfit Gomoku Restaurant and Bar is one of the city's highlights and something of a local institution — order the tapas style plates of Tom Yum Calamari or Wonton Nachos to get the gist. Downtown is also home to one of Oshawa's top tier Italian restaurants, Avanti Trattoria that's been part of the city's dining scene for years and serves pasta, risotto, wood-fired pizza, seafood dishes, and chicken parmigiana from ancestral recipes.

Street Momo is leading the South Asian and Nepali food scene in the Durham Region, known for its delectable steamed and fried momos, plus its chili chicken and butter chicken dishes that mix Nepali and Indian flavours. While a little further from the center in suburb Whitby, Kachiguda Junction focuses on Hyderabadi and southern Indian cooking, including biryani, dosa, and spicy curries.