When I went to Joe to pick up the cucumbers and wild dill for my annual batch of pickles he had a case twice as big as last year. 40 pounds! “That’s how they come from the guy down there,” was his explanation. Joe runs Augusta Fruits (65 Nassau Street), a produce wholesaler in Kensington market, one of dozens a few decades ago, now one of the handful left. “The guy down there” he’s referring to is one of his suppliers at the Ontario Food Terminal, where nearly all of the produce in Toronto makes a stop. The Terminal is where growers and large-scale wholesalers sell their product to local wholesalers, who in turn supply Toronto’s restaurants. And I’ve always been way-curious about this Shangri-La of fruits and vegetables despite many people telling me how unexotic it is.

Joe agrees to take me with him. When I arrive at the shop at 11am Brad the delivery guy asks me what’s up. I tell him and he asks, “Why would you want to go there?” Why indeed.

On the trip down to the Queensway Joe kvetches about credit extended to restaurants likely to go bankrupt and default. I was one of those people a year ago. Fortunately, before the rest of the staff and I fled for our safety, I managed to get the owner to pay most of Joe’s invoices and only left a debt of $60.

We park at a loading dock and, rounding the corner, the scope of the Terminal before me is momentarily stunning, much like Tsukiji in Tokyo. Granted it’s less exotic but the size of the beehive is so staggering. 80,000 square feet of cooler space makes a U around a parking lot. Tough and tired men zip around on dock loaders that look hella fun to ride. Each outlet houses their own specialty in massive piled crates: citrus fruits, root vegetables, berries, etc. Joe begins his rounds, greeting thick-necked men with names like Dom, Angelo, and Santini. He asks about what’s good, checks items off his list (he needs cherry tomatoes for tomorrow), and inspects individual boxes of items while negotiating 15 crates. And he’s already been here earlier today at 5am! This time he knows just what he wants and from whom. He’s seen it all earlier and he knows there’ll be more wiggle room to haggle at this time of day.

Inside one particularly cold storage room I bump into Rodney Bowers, Chef/owner of Rosebud and Citizen who tells me that he comes down here a few times a week to source his own produce. Joe tells me that Bowers’ zeal is admirable (not his words), but that he’ll never get the full advantage of the terminal where entire flats of prized items like chanterelles are put aside for buyers like Joe. Big dealers like these just can’t spare the time to specially order and reserve items for individual restaurants.

Despite the chill, the sugary breeze in a room loaded with plums is intoxicating. In another room, amidst towers of pears and pomegranates, Joe finds his cherry tomatoes. He motions me over to taste some. They’re sweet and firm and best of all they’re from Ontario (in early October). Do the eleventeen-year-olds at the local supermarket even know what’s in the boxes they’re unloading, much less care?

In the parking lot gulls and geese squabble over scraps of fruit, unaware that there’s plenty to go around.

Back in the truck, talk returns to the future of Kensington. When I was a kid there were still live chickens there. When Joe was a kid it was a wall-to-wall food market: a dozen butchers, a dozen fishmongers, two dozen produce stands. The Jews, Portuguese, and Jamaicans all came and left. Most of the new residents are kids. And each new business, while hip and innovative (an organic shoe store, a Spanish tapas bar, an artist’s gallery), is another layer of paint over the old Kensington. European Meats and Global Cheese will be around for a while. They’re family businesses already staffed with the children, nieces, and nephews of the original owners. But the white-haired man who sits proudly in the window of Max & Sons kosher butcher shop, he’s the son, not Max. He’s a museum exhibit in a case of his own design. The neighbourhood is decaying at the same rate as it’s blossoming.