byward market's vendor village is the bmda's latest failure | opinion
7 minute read
rahimullah samandar poses for a portrait outside of his stall in the vendor village of the byward market.
spencer colby
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postmedia
when i ran into kafui salakor in the byward market recently, she wasn’t waiting for customers. she was packing up.
since mid-may, when she opened her déka trends shop in the market’s new vendor village — a cluster of a dozen shipping containers converted into retail shops beside the former hudson’s bay building — she’d been waiting for the business she’d expected.
it just never came.
salakor had reason to be optimistic. last august and september, selling from a stand on william street alongside the byward market building, her jewellery, clothing and engraving business had been good. customers especially liked watching her laser-engrave their photographs onto stone and tile while they waited.
this summer was different. sales didn’t come close to what she expected. unable to move to a york street tent because she doesn’t drive and had nowhere secure to store her inventory overnight, salakor decided to cut her losses halfway through the season.
“last september, i sold more than i have from may until now,” she said. “it’s become demoralizing. it’s hard to get up in the morning and want to come here.”
it might be easy to dismiss salakor’s complaints if she were the only one making them, but she’s not. and she’s not the only one giving up on running a business in the market.
during a recent thursday-afternoon visit to vendor village — a time when every vendor village business should have been open — only six of the 12 containers appeared to be operating as retail businesses. a couple sat vacant. others, although leased, were closed. one former vendor container, now manned by the byward market district authority (bmda), offered only visitor pamphlets.
over the next couple of weeks, i visited the village four times. it never got any better.
one of the few businesses still open when i last visited belongs to rahimullah samandar, an afghan refugee who came to canada less than three years ago. unable to find work in his former field — he was a business journalist in afghanistan — he turned to his love of gardening, and today sells succulents and cacti, as well as some clothing that his wife makes, out of his form & flora container.
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this is samandar’s third summer selling in the market, and he believed that vendor village was the next step toward owning a business that would eventually support his family. but his sales this year have been abysmal. he’s not quite ready to jump ship, but only because his inventory is living. he needs to sell it and, because of an absence of storage space, can’t move to a tent.
“then maybe i’ll have to find another job.”
rahimullah samandar carries plants to a table as he prepares his stall in the vendor village of the byward market on wednesday, aug. 5, 2026.
spencer colby
/
postmedia
another vendor, walaa sarem, said she planned to shutter her natural blend container shop early. her first experience selling outdoors at the market came two years ago, on york street, where on a decent saturday she might sell $1,000 worth of skin care products. last year, she had a container as part of the market’s immigrant entrepreneur program, and saw saturday sales of between $500 and $700.
this year, in the vendor village, her saturday sales plummeted to between $140 and $150.
between my visits in late july and early august, in the hours i spent at the village speaking with vendors, only once did a customer interrupt our conversations.
meanwhile, the litany of complaints i’ve heard from vendors could fill a shipping container. most are directed at the bmda, the municipal services corporation responsible for operations at the byward and parkdale markets, including vendors.
no single complaint, on its own at least, explains why so many vendors have left or are leaving. collectively, however, they point to the issue that vendors told me again and again: they don’t feel that they have agency over their own businesses and aren’t part of the conversations and decisions affecting them. that’s a difficult pill for someone with a vision for their own business to swallow.
vendors, for some reason, are not permitted to open on mondays and tuesdays, or before 11 a.m. many say they sell very little after 5 p.m. and would rather work a traditional 9-to-5 day than remain open until 7 p.m.
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the renderings they were shown when they agreed to be part of the vendor village showed a larger village than the current one, one that was located closer to william street, where foot traffic is better, and included food vendors.
numerous other site-specific issues include the painted “yellow brick road” that was to draw visitors to the village never materialized, while construction at the parking garage across the street continues today despite assurances from the bmda that it would be completed by mid-june.
for six weeks, the “wayfinding” direction sign that was erected at the ottawa sign pointed visitors away from the village. the paint used to enliven the vendor village sidewalk is dangerously slippery when wet. the batteries used to provide power to the containers has been inadequate. as a result, salakor stopped bringing her laser engraver to the market, promising only next-day service instead of 30-minute engravings.
if these sound like complaints from a messy divorce proceeding, you’re getting the picture.
many vendors i spoke with said they asked the bmda for some rent relief or forgiveness, but were told that’s not possible.
others said they committed to a full season before being told exactly where they would be located, with many forced to make inventory and staffing decisions months in advance without receiving all the information they needed from the bmda.
file photo of the byward market vendor village on sunday, may 17, 2026.
ashley fraser
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postmedia
suzanne curphey, who has been a market vendor for 30 years, says she was promised she would get two containers plus open space between them, and subsequently spent more than $60,000 last fall on inventory. she ultimately was not given a container in the village, and is instead selling jewellery and clothing out of a single 10-foot-x-10-foot tent on york street, where her sales, she says, were down 68 per cent over the first two months of the season. in an effort to make up for that, she has opened a bricks-and-mortar store on dalhousie street.
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vendors complain, too, that they are informed of decisions by the bmda, not consulted. concerns that they raise during weekly online meetings are paid lip service. they’re also concerned that, at least judging by the bmda’s online staff biographies, no one in the organization has any first-hand business experience.
the bmda, said curphey, “is heavy on the ‘a’ — the authority.
“i wish they’d stop using us as their guinea pigs in their little experiments,” she added. “i didn’t want to go out this way. what a way to end a 30-year career.”
what surprised me wasn’t the volume of complaints i heard so much as the number of vendors who were willing to attach their names to them. a year ago, vendors typically told me they would only speak with me off the record. “i still have to deal with the bmda,” was a common refrain.
today, vendors acknowledge that the bmda’s operating procedures guidebook caution that public complaints — “factual or otherwise” — could lead to “charges of slander or harassment. do not air these concerns publicly.”
yet the overriding sentiment i’ve heard from vendors this year seems to be “i don’t care anymore. i’ve had it.”
in an emailed response to questions i sent about many of the vendors’ specific concerns listed above, bmda executive director victoria williston ignored most of the operational questions. she did not say if the bmda had plans to fix the village this year and didn’t answer questions about the bmda’s recent job posting for an operations director. she didn’t address the concern i’d heard from some vendors who felt that the bmda’s unstated plan was to get rid of the outdoor vendors altogether. she also didn’t say why vendors had to stay closed on mondays and tuesdays.
victoria williston, the executive director of the byward market district authority, poses in a file photo.
tony caldwell
/
postmedia
instead, she noted that the vendor village “is a pilot in its first season.” the purpose, she said, “is to test something in real conditions and respond to what comes back, and that’s what we’ve done throughout the season rather than waiting for it to end. where issues have been raised, the bmda has made changes.”
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former byward market standholders association president henri groulx, a perth-based artist who was selling his work at vendor village before decamping to a york street tent at the beginning of august, laughed at that last sentence. “that’s not true,” he said. “they didn’t make almost any of the changes we recommended, and when they did make a change, they were absolutely so slow to do it.”
meanwhile, the idea that vendor village has been a pilot came as news to several vendors i spoke with. “i didn’t sign up for a pilot project. none of us did,” said roxanne delage, who moved her ragged ts t-shirt business out of a shipping container at the end of july.
indeed, the bmda’s launch announcement included no such caveat, describing the village as “a new curated vendor initiative … that will contribute to the ongoing revitalization of downtown ottawa and enhance the experience for both residents and visitors.”
the language of the bmda leader’s response didn’t surprise salakor, though. “pilot,” she repeated. “yeah, the new terminology they’ve been using for the past two or three weeks.
“they called us partners in a pilot project,” she added, “so i sent an email and asked, ‘as a partner in the pilot project, can you please tell me what planning was put in place for foot traffic? as a partner, it’d be nice to know what you did in advance.’”
when i spoke with salakor, a week after she sent the email and as she emptied her container, she hadn’t yet received a reply.
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