Keeper of the market

If you have spent any time in Toronto’s Kensington Market, you have likely passed by Reg Dried Foods. The Baldwin Street shop is a modestly sized emporium overflowing with rare spices, dried exotic fruit and nuts in every shape and variety, imported from all over the world.

Among the gleaming jars of saffron and green and purple tubs filled with crushed pistachios sits Reg Alex, the store’s owner and chief employee. For the past 41 years, she has watched Kensington evolve from a 1970s livestock market to a 1990s bohemian hippy paradise to the gentrified arena of craft breweries and artisanal grocery stores it is today.

After escaping communist Romania in 1976, Alex opened Reg Dried Foods later that year. At 80 years old, she has never taken a vacation, working seven days a week and 14 hours a day, only taking time off for Christmas and New Year’s. Her unwavering work ethic has woven her presence into the fabric of Kensington, right next to the kaleidoscopic graffiti alleys and corners overflowing with produce stands.

Decades of Toronto residents are familiar with the lady who sits outside the dried food shop and watches to make sure that you don’t accidentally pop a plump sliver of dried kiwi into your mouth before paying for your haul – but few actually know who she is. “My name is Reg,” she says, pointing to the store sign that reads Reg Dried Foods. “Reg Alex. That’s it.” As a wave of shoppers clad in trendy streetwear passes by, one gets the sense that there is almost too much to explain about the decades she has spent watching Kensington change. “Come here Corina,” she says, getting up and walking out into the street. “It’s Claudia,” I correct, though to her, I might as well be called Reporter Number 156.

“Ok Corina,” she insists, grabbing my arm. She points down the narrow road that now hosts a chocolatier selling hand-painted single origin chocolates and an artisanal sourdough bakery. “In the 70s these streets were filled with live chickens, and you could buy them.”

As she walks back to her stool between the soudani peanuts and dried papaya, I get the sense that our time is up. She has work to do, and when it comes to preserving the market’s ethos, it seems she has already done enough.