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The picnic is simply an opportunity to socialize, eat, play Frisbee and take pictures. The annual Toronto event was started by Amanda Irwin and her friend Pan, both 27.

Ms. Irwin said she would see pictures of cosplay events in the United States when she was young and was “stamping her feet and whining” because Toronto had no such event back then. When she was 14, she decided to start her own.

“It was really meant to be a photo shoot,” she says.

This was before the days of Twitter and Facebook, so she posted on an international online cosplay forum that no longer exists.

“It had a small Canada section that no one ever looked at,” says Pan.

They welcomed others to join them on Centre Island, expecting about 30 people. To their surprise, about 100 arrived.

Since then, the pair have set the date and a few guidelines for what has become an annual get-together. This weekend, if the picnic doesn’t get rained on, they expect about 300 people.

The sight of so many in such distinctive and random costumes has drawn curious looks, but it is not uncommon for passersby to ask that they pose for photos.

Paul Moore imagines more ominous reactions.

A professor of communications and culture at Ryerson University, he is intrigued by the growth of the cosplay movement in the post-9/11 era and says they risk getting arrested if their event coincides with something like the G20.

“It’s very interesting that costume- and mask-making are being brought into the way people engage with public space through leisure and play in a time when, for security reasons and anxieties around terrorism, the law is moving away from allowing people to be masked and hooded in public spaces,” he says.