MaRS opens its doors this weekend

Have you ever passed by the MaRS Centre and wondered, “What on earth goes on in that place?”

If so, you’re not alone: for a big building with a high profile, a surprising number of people don’t know what goes on within these walls.

MaRS is a complicated place. It’s home to more than 80 companies and organizations, it houses advisory services for Ontario entrepreneurs, it hosts thousands of events every year and more. It’s hard to boil what we do down into a sentence or two.

That’s why we’re throwing open our front doors this weekend and welcoming everyone into the building. On Saturday and Sunday, MaRS is taking part in Doors Open Toronto: one weekend, once a year, when close to 150 buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and social significance open their doors to the public for a city-wide celebration.

Come visit us! Learn more about the MaRS Centre: who works here, what they’re working on and how MaRS came to be. Visit our friends at the CFC Media Lab and see prototypes of three amazing projects. Contribute your ideas about city living to help create The Ideal City at The Martin Prosperity Institute. Find out what makes Ontario’s top scientists tick with The Tao of Discovery, a series of short films. Make a comic using Bitstrips.com, a company that’s worked with MaRS advisors for the past three years.

Thinking about making the trip to College and University? These other area buildings are also participating in Doors Open:

• Arts & Letters Club of Toronto – 14 Elm St.
• Canadian Blood Services – 67 College St.
• Chalmers House (Canadian Music Centre) – 20 St. Joseph St.
• Church of the Redeemer – 162 Bloor St. W
• Coach House Press – 80 bpNichol Lane
• Evergreen, Yonge Street Mission – 381 Yonge St.
• Gardiner Museum – 111 Queen’s Park Crescent
• George Brown House – 186 Beverly St.
• Japan Foundation, Toronto – 131 Bloor St. W Suite 213
• Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences – 222 St. Patrick St.
• Native Child and Family Services of Toronto – 30 College St.
• Queen’s Park (Ontario Legislative Building) – 111 Wellesley St. W.
• St. Thomas’s Anglican Church – 383 Huron St.
• UofT iSchool Institute – 140 St. George St.
• UofT McLuhan Coach House Institute – 39A Queen’s Park Cres.
• UofT Regis College – 100 Wellesley St. W
• UofT Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library – 120 St. George St.

You can download the Toronto Star‘s guide to Doors Open to help you get around.

Hope to see you this weekend!