By Maria Sokulsky-Dolnycky

Nuit Blanche is a night I look forward to; once a year, Toronto’s core is transformed into a magical world where the surreal becomes real. This year’s night started off with a jaunt through Toronto’s Financial District, where neon-green space critters danced in front of office towers and DJs hosted a radio show from a hut in a park.

Soon after, I found myself in the Toronto City Hall underground parking garage, transformed into a massive art space known as the Museum for the End of the World. The highlight of my Nuit Blanche experience, this museum boasted 14 exhibits centred on a post-apocalyptic vision of the future, including an abandoned camper van filled with lead-wrapped food cans and letters to loved ones, left in the City Hall parking garage by a man who was preparing himself for the end of the world.

As the night progressed, I moved from exhibit to exhibit, setting my sights on lanterns made from soup cans and listening to a rendition of the Moonlight Sonata, which involved a Morse-code sound wave being bounced off the surface of the moon before returning to Earth. As the crowds thinned and exhaustion set in, I knew it was time to turn in. The glittering lights and buzzing crowds of Nuit Blanche came and went, and so ended another well-spent sleepless night.