Global Convenience art installation
Harbour Square Basin, just west of the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal near Bay and Lakeshore, until October 2026.
Global Convenience is a temporary art installation on the Toronto waterfront, in one of the 16 host cities for FIFA World Cup 2026.
“Convenience stores, local markets, rum shops, bodegas, these are familiar places no matter where you’re from. So when people are visiting Toronto for the World Cup, we want them to feel that familiarity,” said Rashad Maharaj, the producer of the project. Nevertheless, this out-of-context representation of a store has layers of irony: an urban feature in a natural setting on Lake Ontario, advertising convenience for all but without any easy access, an open sign but actually closed, newly placed but with retro characteristics (exemplified by the use of the very 1970s typeface Zipper).
Despite the global, universal theme of the corner store, this version contains many localized details, such as the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation symbol in the window. The jug with the text “open seven days a week” was once used by the brand Becker’s, which was Ontario’s first chain of convenience stores, founded in 1957. It uniquely sold milk in returnable gallon jugs (instead of a daily delivery) and it was open seven days a week for fourteen hours per day, an innovation at a time when Sunday shopping was then highly regulated. Grocery stores in Ontario were closed by law on Sundays and holidays under the Lord’s Day Act (1906) until 1987.
While the art installation is viewable up close by kayakers, you still can’t buy anything there. It is perhaps a metaphor for the relative difficulty of accessing tickets to a World Cup match – anyone can view the games on TV from afar, but to get there in person will require means not available to all. Toronto is hosting six matches of the World Cup at an estimated cost of C$380 million to the city, provincial, and federal governments.
For context: a Becker’s storefront.
