The Market Wedding

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Penniless lovers and loyal friends offer endless opportunities for a
good story, and Cary Fagan has shaped his fresh version of Abraham
Cahan’s classic tale, A Ghetto Wedding, very cleverly, giving his
adaptation a Toronto setting.

“Morris owned a fish stall in Kensington Market.” So opens The
Market Wedding. The love of Morris’s life, Minnie, sells hats from a
nearby cart, and the pair quickly become engaged. Morris has his heart
set on a magnificent wedding for his darling. Surely an expensive
wedding would elicit fine gifts? Minnie is not convinced. As for the
eagerly anticipated guests, no one shows up. It turns out that they felt
that their clothes and the gifts they would have liked to offer were not
good enough for such a splendid wedding. Eventually, all is explained
and the happy couple enjoy not only a wedding party but a host of
practical, spur-of-the-moment gifts to furnish their empty flat.

Award-winning illustrator and self-taught artist Regolo Ricci moved
from Italy to Canada at a very early age. His lively, full-page scenes
breathe the spirit of Italian opera and British music-hall melodramas,
along with the small-town feeling of old Toronto houses in the area
south of Bloor Street and west of Spadina Avenue. The Market Wedding is
highly recommended.