The first ever Hamilton Veggie Fest was held yesterday and I hope this will become an annual event. Southern Ontario has become quite the hotbed of vegetarian activity with the Niagara VegFest born last year and the Hamilton Veggie Fest coming out this summer. Given the two festivals being less than two weeks and fifty miles apart, I wasn’t expecting see as many unfamiliar vendors as I did. The festival was held at Marritt Hall, meaning it was indoors, air-conditioned, and had bathrooms with running water. The hall was packed with vendors and included a kids area, speakers stage, and dining areas. The vendors were a good mix of food, products, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to vegetarian causes. As far as I could tell, all of the food was vegan and all the products, except the beeswax candles, were vegan, too. We ate a lot of food including a bunch of free samples. The highlights were some amazing raw crackers, Rawfoodz salad dressing and the impressive spread of Apiecalypse Now. The raw food was really excellent and perhaps that is because Veggie Fest explicitly includes raw food in it’s description instead of attracting vendors through the natural overlap between veg*n food and raw food. This was definitely worth the trek from Buffalo. Next year, I hope they have merchandise because I want a Veggie Fest t-shirt. This would be five stars if the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival wasn’t so geographically close and wasn’t the largest festival of it’s kind in North America.
