A 16-metre tree with 40,000 lights, on the site of a Victorian-era whisky empire

The Toronto Christmas Market

The Distillery District's cobblestone streets, once home to the largest distillery in the world, now host a European-style holiday market credited with keeping foot traffic alive through the site's slowest season.

The Toronto Christmas Market takes place in the Distillery Historic District, a 13-acre, car-free heritage site built around the former Gooderham and Worts distillery, founded in 1832 and grown by the 1860s into the largest distillery in the world. The market launched in 2010 as a European-style holiday market, initially running as a ten-day event, and quickly became one of the city's signature holiday draws.

From market to winter village

In 2020 the event was rebranded and expanded into the Distillery Winter Village, broadening into a larger winter experience across a roughly seven-week run. Its best-known feature is a 16-metre silver fir tree strung with more than 40,000 lights at the district's central square. The market draws more than one million visitors annually and is widely credited with sustaining the Distillery District's foot traffic through the slow winter tourism season.

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