Archival record · venue record, 1996–2012

Where the conference was held

Mission Fest Toronto moved venue several times across its run, and the moves track its size. The last conferences in the published record were held at Global Kingdom Ministries in Scarborough.

Global Kingdom Ministries, Scarborough

The conference's own directions place the church at 1250 Markham Road in Scarborough, Ontario, south of Highway 401 and north of Ellesmere Road, on the west side of Markham Road. It hosted the conferences of 2010, 2011, 2012.

By car, the published route from either direction on Highway 401 was to exit at Markham Road heading south, cross Progress Avenue and turn into the church. From downtown Toronto the route ran along the Gardiner Expressway east, up the Don Valley Parkway and east again on the 401.

For anyone arriving by transit, the directions listed a bus stop at the church's north-west entrance on Markham Road and another across the road. The routes given were the Markham Road 102 bus south from Warden Station on the Bloor-Danforth line to Tuxedo Court; the Markham Road bus north from the Lawrence East 54 or York Mills 95; the 102 south from the Sheppard East 85, Finch East 39 or Steeles East 53; and from Kennedy Station, the Scarborough LRT to Scarborough Town Centre and a bus from there.

The venues before it

The first two conferences were held at the Peoples Church. From 1998 the conference used the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, then the Toronto Congress Centre for its largest years, with single years at Queensway Cathedral and the International Centre. In full, the record names 7 venues: Peoples Church, Metro Convention Centre, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Queensway Cathedral, Toronto Congress Centre, International Centre, Global Kingdom Ministries.

The move back to a church in 2010 was described at the time as returning to the kind of setting where the conference had started. The year-by-year record, with each venue, is in the conference archive.

The other venues, and what each one implied

Global Kingdom Ministries is where the record ends, but it is the fourth kind of building the conference used. The first two conferences were at the Peoples Church — a large single congregation with its own auditorium, which is the cheapest way to hold a conference and the least visible. From 1998 the conference moved into rented halls: the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for six of the middle years, the Toronto Congress Centre for three, and Queensway Cathedral and the International Centre for one each.

Each type carries different logistics, and the surviving pages show it. The convention-centre years needed a hotel page and a meals page, because delegates travelling into downtown Toronto had to sleep and eat somewhere that was not the venue. The church years needed a parking page instead, and the volunteer guidance describes parking spread across a church lot and an overflow lot at Centennial College with attendants in all weather. A convention centre solves parking and creates an accommodation problem; a church solves accommodation by being local and creates a parking problem.

The transit directions are the part that dates the material most precisely. They route visitors from Warden, Lawrence East, York Mills, Sheppard East, Finch East, Steeles East and Kennedy stations onto Markham Road buses, and from Kennedy via the Scarborough LRT to Scarborough Town Centre — a line that has since closed. Anyone following these directions today would need a current map for the last leg, which is stated here rather than quietly corrected: the page records what the conference published, and the conference published a transit network that no longer exists in that form.

Why the venue sequence is the most useful thing on this page

Directions to a church for a conference that ended in 2018 have no practical use. The sequence of venues does, because it is the only continuous quantitative series the record contains — seventeen years, seven buildings, in a documented order. Attendance figures survive for a single year. Budgets survive not at all. But the venue tells you what the organisation could afford and expected to fill, every year, without anyone having to write it down as a number.

Read forward it is growth: church, then convention centre, held for a decade. Read to the end it is contraction, complete two years before the last documented conference and confirmed by the final event being a two-day regional programme in Milton rather than a weekend in Toronto. The full year-by-year list is in the conference archive.