On a recent Saturday, Sky Kumar braved bone-chilling winds with his signature smile, selling handmade scarves from an outdoor cart to shoppers visiting the St. Lawrence Market.

The longtime vendor has been peddling merchandise imported by his family from India at the Front St. location since 2000, and is one of some 40 participants in the Toronto landmark’s 27-year-old “Market Cart” program.

However, with the market’s north building slated to be demolished in the spring to make way for a new, grander marketplace and courthouse, these vendors will have to vacate their spots for a temporary structure that will house indoor weekend vendors displaced during the redevelopment.

The market cart vendors have launched an online petition asking the City of Toronto to reverse the eviction decision.

“Whether snow or rain, I am always here. This is my livelihood,” said Kumar, bundled up in layers of clothes, wearing two pairs of socks under his thick winter boots.

“We only learned before Christmas that we wouldn’t be allowed to work here after this winter. The management said we could come back when the redevelopment was done. But no one knows how long that would take, and we all still need to make a living.”

Related:

St. Lawrence Market’s north building won’t be finished until 2016

Cost rises on St. Lawrence Market North courthouse redevelopment project

In a notice to the vendors dated Dec. 22, Nick Simos, the city’s manager of the St. Lawrence Market Complex, said the market cart program would be “temporarily suspended” as of April 1, 2015.

A 9,000-square-foot temporary structure will not be able to accommodate all of the farmers displaced with the closure of the 12,000-square-foot north building, Simos explained.

“Finding suitable areas for the outdoor farmers during the summer harvest season will also pose some challenges given the confined space and limited number of stalls that can surround the temporary market structure,” Simos wrote.

“A large portion of Market Lane Park will be used as a construction staging area for the new North St. Lawrence Market building. This puts further pressure on the available real estate to accommodate the busy Saturday programming at the market.”

Vendor Marjorie Robles, an artist specializing in sculptural work, said the market’s north building is currently not fully occupied and there is plenty of room for artisans and farmers to co-exist.

“St. Lawrence Market is the only place (in Ontario) where artisans can go to and sell their work every day from Tuesday to Sunday and make a decent living.”

Evicting existing vendors, some of them there six days a week, to make room for the farmers who open only on Saturdays doesn’t make sense, Robles said.

According to the city’s own website, the cart program, initiated in 1987, aims to make the market area “more exciting, colourful and lively with people and market activities.”

Vendors — of art, jewelry, crafts and specialty products — are charged $10 or $20 a day from Tuesday to Friday, and $30 or $45 daily on weekends, depending on location.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Pat Heslin and Susan Buckley, both tourists from New Jersey, visited the St. Lawrence Market after hearing about it from friends. They were shocked when they learned from Kumar that all outdoor vendors must pack by the spring.

“Outdoor vendors make these markets more interesting, by bringing in colour and diversity. They are very popular among visitors and help draw people from outside,” said Heslin. “People don’t just come here for the food.”

The suspension of the market carts is also going to affect business owners such as David Gareau, who moved from outdoors to the basement of the south building three years ago under the market cart program.

“I am nowhere near any of the construction. The explanation of space limitation doesn’t hold water here. I have always paid out rent,” said Gareau, who has been a tenant for 27 years, selling vinyl records, handcraft guitar decors and imported bomber jackets.

“We offer products that aren’t available anywhere else in Toronto, and after all that, we are being kicked out?”