8 Family Festivals in Your Community

The summer is more of a sprint than a marathon. With so many great kid-friendly festivals happening, it can be hard to find the good ones, especially those slightly outside our usual haunts. We've selected some of our favourites—a mix of oldies-but-goodies and some new loves—for you to experience this fine summer.

Fun. Food. Music. All in the tres cool Riverside area of Queen and Broadview at the Eats and Beats Festival (See? Even the name is catchy).

There's a whole lot of music, food, kids' theatre and local community flair happening on Dundas between Ossington and Lansdowne. Come for the collage party, stay for the food and frolicking.

What a great concept: The 100 in 1 Day festival consists of citizen-proposed and led ‘interventions' meant to make the city a better place. Cool ideas include planting a community garden in a canoe and beautifying a school's chain link fence.

Do your kids like parades? Carnival rides and treats too? Silly question. Everyone will love the Annex Festival on Bloor.

Dancing, deals, decadent munchies…there's a reason, or a few, why Roncy Rocks.

The Kids Zone alone at the Redpath Waterfront Festival is an amazing place with voyageur canoe rides, a huge inflatable beaver (for amazing photo ops), and a pirate ship bouncy castle. Let's just say that this festival could run all summer long and we wouldn't run out of things to do.

Kids. Ribs. Need we say more? Toronto's Ribfest also has a kidszone full of fun, like facepainting and more. Go hungry and pack the pepto!

So many delectable nibbles…so little time and tummy space! This event is great for promoting multiculturalism as well as introducing the kiddos' taste buds to some amazing new flavours.