I hope everyone’s October is off to a wonderful start! Personally, I find this time of year to be one of the most calming and enjoyable. There’s something about the crisp autumn air that feels just right: cool and refreshing without being too hot or too cold. Add in the changing leaves, cozy atmosphere and shorter days, and it’s easy to see why autumn has such a special charm. But autumn isn’t just about cozy weather and beautiful scenery; it’s also a season filled with plenty of exciting events, activities and opportunities to get out and enjoy everything the season has to offer. Whether you’re looking for something festive, relaxing or simply a fun way to embrace the season, there’s sure to be something for everyone. Why not take a look at some of the events and activities I’ve mentioned below and see what catches your interest?
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Red Demon
Oct. 8–18
www.firehallartscentre.ca/event/red-demon
What keeps us from embracing those who are different? Can humanity ever truly coexist without prejudice or discrimination? Hideki Noda’s Red Demon explores themes of xenophobic fears of immigration and society’s struggle with intolerance by telling the story of a creature who washes up on the shore of a small beach town where no one understands him. The darkly funny play illuminates humanity’s behaviour in moments of intercultural conflict with all villagers speaking Japanese while the Red Demon speaks Spanish.
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Canyon Frights
Oct. 9–Nov. 1
www.capbridge.com/events/canyon-frights
Looking for family-friendly Halloween activities in Vancouver? Experience Canyon Frights at Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, where spooky lights, playful scares and eerie atmosphere transform the rainforest into a haunted woodland playground. Explore trails filled with graveyards, pumpkins and glowing mycelium. Look for watchful owls at Treetops Adventure, glowing mushrooms along the pond pathways, creepy crawlies and returning skeletal scenes, plus a few haunting surprises. And keep an eye out for the giant spiders!
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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo 2026
Oct. 10–11, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
www.odditiesandcuriositiesexpo.com
Prepare yourselves for the weirdest event of the year! The Oddities and Curiosities Expo, the ultimate celebration of all things peculiar and extraordinary, will return in 2026, descending on 40 cities across North America, including two days in Vancouver! Attendees can browse and shop for rare and unique items, including taxidermy, preserved animal specimens, original horror and Halloween-inspired artwork, antiques, metaphysical accoutrements, handcrafted oddities, bones and funeral collectibles. The expo also offers an immersive experience with photo opportunities, tarot readings, sideshow performances and various concessions to keep attendees entertained. For tickets and more information, please visit the expo’s website.
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Latin American Heritage Month
Oct. 14–Nov. 2
Discover the symbolism and Andean worldview that inspired this year’s Latin American Heritage Month artwork. Latin American Heritage Month celebrates the Andean vision of a living universe where all things remain connected across time. Through music, food, tradition, art and literature, the festival brought people together in Vancouver and extended its Día de Muertos celebrations to Burnaby for the first time. For a complete list of events happening, please check out the Latincouver website.
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Tenth Annual Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival
Oct. 16–18
The Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival showcases the work of visual artists and performers outside of mainstream art institutions. The festival strives to provide a platform for these artists to share their unique perspectives and artistic visions with the community. Be among the first to explore more than 400 artworks on display in the exhibition hall, offering a vibrant glimpse into the many perspectives, stories and creative worlds represented at this year’s festival. Speeches will be followed by an Indigenous Welcome and a performance by Yewchi, a Vancouver-based guitarist, singer, composer and recording artist whose music draws from roots, bluegrass, folk, jazz, blues and improvisational traditions. Check out the festival’s website for more information.
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Thirty-Fifth Annual Apple Festival
Oct. 17–18
www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/apple-festival
They’re back for the 35th time! A family event for all ages, the UBC Apple Festival celebrates one of B.C.’s favourite fruits. From learning about the diversity of apples to tasting rare and unusual varieties, the UBC Apple Festival is a great opportunity to discover more about this delicious fruit. Organized by the Friends of the Garden, this event is a fundraiser that directly supports education, research and conservation at UBC Botanical Garden. Check out the garden’s website for more information.
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Angela Grossmann: Unfolding
Oct. 20–Dec. 12
www.westvancouverartmuseum.ca/exhibitions/angela-grossmann-unfolding
Angela Grossmann paints from an interior record where memory, emotion and line precede narrative. Situated within a lineage of artists who privilege gesture and interiority over representation, Grossmann nevertheless resists abstraction. The human figure continually reasserts itself: partial, unstable and deeply present. Her work begins with a contour, a trace that feels discovered rather than constructed. The figures that emerge hover between presence and erasure, suspended in a space where identity is suggested but never fully secured. Grossmann’s figures are not portraits, but fragile, unresolved beings perpetually in the process of becoming or disappearing. What we encounter is not portraiture but presence itself: fragile, shifting and incomplete. It is in this pendulous space between articulation and disappearance that her figures feel most alive. They’re unfolding at the West Vancouver Art Museum; check out their website for more information.
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ODE
Oct. 23–24, 8 p.m.
www.dancehouse.ca/compagnie-catherine-gaudet-montreal
Coming on the heels of choreographer Catherine Gaudet’s astounding Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things), the company’s new work ODE channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation/exploration of group-think conformity and cultural collapse. Eleven performers, moving in lockstep formation, chant the word love. Anthemic, at first, but soon spiraling into desperation and chaos. The iron-clad dictum of happiness, derived from therapy-speak, self-help books, new age Ted-talks, bland as pablum and inoffensive to the point of banality, begins to transform into something more disquieting. Relentless positivity as a form of social violence and containment is only one aspect; the work channels multiple interpretations: Incantation, procession, confession and ultimately a form of secular prayer for a gentler world. For tickets and more information, check out the Dancehouse website.
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Lam Tung Pang: Out of This World
Oct. 24, 2026–Jan. 3, 2027
www.richmondartgallery.org/out-of-this-world
For his first solo exhibition in Canada, artist Lam Tung Pang presents a multifaceted body of work that spans the three-and-a-half years since his move from Hong Kong to Richmond. Since relocating, Lam has been developing a new visual vernacular that reflects the deconstruction and reconstruction of his own sense of self. Rooted in the intimate realities of leaving home and beginning again, his work speaks to the broader human experience of migration and belonging across today’s shifting global landscape. With a practice that has spanned Hong Kong, London, Beijing and Vancouver, Lam is part of a global movement of artists navigating transnational lives. Embodying a playful yet poetic style, Lam’s expansive exhibition Out of This World layers drawings, paintings, slide projections and video to transform the gallery into shifting fields of light and shadow. The immersive, site-specific installation juxtaposes empty domestic interiors – staircases, rooms, windows, furniture – with clips of iconic Canadian landscapes filmed during a road trip and the unbound vastness of outer space.
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