AT THE MARKET, BEANS AND EMPTY STALLS
ByWard Market sellers tend their produce on a warm fall day. But with the number of agri-food vendors at outdoor stalls falling, some are wondering: For how much longer?
The ByWard Market, among the largest and longest-running farmers’ markets in Canada, is on the decline — and some fear it is headed for extinction.
Competing neighbourhood markets, scarce and expensive parking, construction and over-regulation, they believe, are conspiring to empty its sidewalks of produce growers and vendors.
It is a rare day when the outdoor stalls reserved for farm products, plants and flowers are much more than half-filled, while otherwise unused stands are given over to craft sellers or automobiles.
In the past four years, the number of agri-food retailers in the Market’s outdoor stalls fell by 22 per cent, from 86 to 67.
The trend has enormous implications for Ottawa. About 90 per cent of the 10 million tourists who visit the capital each year shop in the ByWard Market, and the farmers’ stalls are a large part of the area’s charm.
The farmers market, established in 1826, is also a rich part of Ottawa tradition and culture. The ByWard Market is a rare combination of fresh-produce stands, stores, restaurants and nightlife that is overwhelmingly popular with everyone, notes Ottawa architect and urban designer Barry Padolsky, who calls it “the National Capital’s universally loved meeting place.”
“It’s remarkable for its urbanity, human scale, history and gritty sensuality. You can’t find a place like this on Facebook. We need to conserve it forever and enhance it.”
Farmers say business is steadily declining. Only 20, Justin Cleroux comes from a long family line of ByWard Market merchants. His parents used to run a pair of stands while his grandfather, who was actually born in one of the stalls, operated three.
“Now, most of the time, one is too much,” he says, as he arranges produce in his Market stall on a recent day. “We lose 50 per cent of our customers from one year to the next, and that’s been steady for the eight years I’ve been here.” He motions to the row of white-tented stalls along ByWard Market Street. “This will be gone in two years,” he says. “Three at the most.”
Many farmers and vendors — “vendors” being the term used to denote re-sellers of produce, as opposed to growers — share Cleroux’s concern, if not quite his dire prediction.
From his father’s maple syrup stand at the corner of ByWard Market and George streets, Ross Valenta has noticed a “massive” decline in passersby in the past four years.
“It used to be an adventure just to get from one end of the market to the other, but not any more.”
THE PARKING PROBLEM
The scarcity of parking in the ByWard Market, or at least the perception of it, has always been a major hurdle to attracting shoppers to the area. “There’s no parking and when there is, the meter maids get you right away,” Valenta says. “And it’s expensive. Little things like that. Also, a lot of people don’t want to deal with the panhandlers here. They’re out here like flies and they’re everywhere. You can shoo them away that they’ll just be back in another hour.”
Chantal Brazeau, who works at Vars farmer Hervé Lacroix’s stall, says the city needs to provide more parking or be more lenient in its enforcement. “They say they want to bring people in, but boy, oh boy, the city’s making a lot of money on the parking tickets. They’re like hawks.”
She agrees that the ByWard Market has not long to live. “I’d say between five and 10 years,” she says. “There’s been a lot of decline, for sure, and in 10 years there will just be people selling clothes and jewelry from Montreal. Lots of crafts.”
Retired Gatineau school principal Jacques Pelletier, who has been going to the Market since his grandfather brought him as a youngster, wonders why Ottawa can’t adopt a system similar to the one used at Montreal’s Jean-Talon Market, where underground parking costs just 50 cents for the first half-hour, with more expensive rates kicking in after that.
“Why couldn’t they do that here?” he asks, pointing to the swath of meters along York Street between Sussex and ByWard. “Close that off and make it the farmers’ market parking.”
Seven or eight years ago, Pelletier and his wife started volunteering at a produce stand on Saturdays in September and October, mostly for a lark. For the past three years, though, Pelletier, 62, has worked three days a week at Hawkesbury farmer François Legault’s produce stall at the north end of the market building. He is convinced the Market is on extremely precarious footing.
“The Market is dying. There are a lot of other markets now. People go to the Main Street Market on the weekends. They go to Parkdale. They don’t come into Centretown.”
THE COMPETITION
Most agree that the ByWard Market has been hurt by the growth and popularity of neighbourhood farmers markets elsewhere in the city, a trend that really took hold with the opening of the Ottawa Farmers Market at Lansdowne Park in 2006. The Sunday-only market be- gan with just 19 farmers, but now boasts more that 100 producers.
Single-day markets favour smaller producers who may lack the resources to maintain a daily stand, and rents at these markets are often lower than those at the ByWard and Parkdale markets, the operations of which are overseen by the City. Neighbourhood markets also typically offer free parking.
Following the success of the Ottawa Farmers’ Market, other similar markets have opened in neighbourhoods across the city, further dividing the economic pie.
“Everyone that opens up is just taking a little bit away,” says Isaac Farbiasz, owner of ByWard Fruit Market, a longtime Market store.
“When we took over here 15 years ago, you could not walk down the sidewalk on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, from morning to night. It was pretty much impossible; it was packed. But then there were only two markets — ByWard and Parkdale. Now there are about 20, and more pop up all the time.”
For indoor produce merchants like Farbiasz, most of the sales come in the off-summer months. And the loss of income from weekend suburban customers has largely been offset by an increase in the number of shoppers who live nearby, as highrise condominiums have sprung up around the Market. Still, he suffered sales declines in June and July this year, a first in his decade-and-a-half in the Market, notwithstanding periods of street construction.
Farbiasz recognizes that the decline of farmers and produce vendors in the Market might not be beneficial to his business, either. “When you lose competition, you lose a draw, and that’s too bad.”
He’s trying to remain optimistic, but says he wouldn’t be surprised if the farmers market at the ByWard Market ended its nearly 200-year run sometime in the next five to 10 years.
“If you’re producing, it’s not too bad,” he notes. “But if you’re buying and selling, it’s not that easy, and the number of people selling is going down yearly. And a lot of these people are getting to the age where they’re going to retire, and who’s going to take over? It doesn’t pay.
“It’s like all things. (The ByWard Market) has to be revitalized. But it’s also possible that it’s the end.”
Brazeau says that if the city is serious about helping the farmers in the ByWard Market, it should consider allowing just the producers to sell fruits and vegetables when they’re in season, leaving the resellers to offer only out-of-season produce and items not grown in the area, such as peaches.
Otherwise, she says, there’s simply not the incentive for farmers to set up stalls. “There’s no one who wants to run these stands after the owners retire. The work is hard and the hours are long, and business has gone down because there are not as many buyers as before because of all the different markets.”
If it were just a matter people buying apples elsewhere, then market forces would take care of the matter. But the ByWard Market is peculiarly situated as Ottawa’s second-most popular attraction, after the Parliament Buildings, and the farmers’ market there is vital to the city’s tourism industry.
“Tourists don’t often buy from us,” admits Pelletier, whose gourds, plants and pumpkins make awkward carry-on luggage, “but if I got a dime for every picture that was taken of this stand, I’d be rich.”
City councillor Mathieu Fleury, whose Rideau-Vanier ward includes the ByWard Market, says the City of Ottawa has implemented some new initiatives with the hope of reversing the downward trend, with an eye to having changes in place by 2017, in time for Canada’s 150th anniversary.
Fleury said that he’d like to see the city hand over the running of the ByWard Market to a not-forprofit group that would, hopefully, be made up of farmers. “We want to enable them to thrive, and for us to do so, it’s not by working out of an old bylaw, because an old bylaw is very restrictive.”
Fleury adds that he hopes the renewal plan for the ByWard Market will include changes that have succeeded elsewhere, such as at Marché Jean-Talon.
“We want to redefine the public spaces. We want to put the parking underground on York Street and around ByWard. We have to support that sort of thing. It’s an amazing city asset, it’s historic, and for us it’s creating that balance of local, touristic and nightlife.
“If you have this offering of products across the city, then what’s your reason to come to the ByWard Market? What’s special? And that’s what we have to continue to evolve in our discussion.”