Why We Created CityRoamer

Gooderham Building, Downtown Toronto

It was a cold, winter night in Toronto in early 2014 when the ideas of CityRoamer sprung.

Alan and I were talking about what we could do for fun in the city during the winter—it was just too easy to fall into routine and hibernate during these cold months. I mean, you could only hide under covers and watch movies for so long. Where can we go? What new activities can we try?

Making Google searches or sifting through various websites to look for activities or events to check out in Toronto was something we did regularly. Sometimes, we struck gold and found things that we were both interested in doing or seeing. But most of the times, we got frustrated at the lack of diversity of listed events we found on websites. They were either big, commercialized events or geared towards specific interests and niches.

Another frustration we had was that information wasn't listed all in one place. You'd have to jump to multiple websites to gather the details you need. If you don’t know how to get to the location, you’d have to open another tab and find the route and directions. Call us sticklers for details, but that’s what we wanted. We wanted to see everything we needed to know about an event and how to get there from our location.

Location and proximity—that’s another thing that we talked about. What activities or events can we go to that’s nearby right now? Sure, heading downtown is an easy option to jump into the heart and action of the city, but what if you’re just tired of that scene? What if you wanted to see what you could do around your neighbourhood or current location?

Fun fact: We love coffee.

Last year when we made last minute Winterlicious reservations, we had about two hours to kill. We were having coffee at a cafe and wondered if there was anything interesting to see or do close by. How awesome would it be to search for nearby events based on where you are? We talked about instead of having to sift through endless websites to look for things to do, it'd be so convenient to see what kind of events are happening nearby on your phone or laptop without spending so much time and effort looking for them.   

These were the conversations and questions that drove us to build CityRoamer. Yes, we complained and talked about what we thought was lacking in terms of searching for events and activities. But we took it a step further and decided to take it in our own hands and fill in that gap.

With CityRoamer, we want to make it easy for you to discover events and things to do in the city. It could be a small event, large event or something as obscure as a random garage sale—whatever it is, we want to list it and give you all the information you need to know and how to get there.

Since we started building CityRoamer, we've added more features to heighten your experience as a user. We’ll continue to improve and add more features on CityRoamer. We hope that you’ll join us on this journey.

Our blog will focus on lifestyle, culture, food and more. There will be updates and posts on CityRoamer here and there of course, but we have interests in different things that we’d love to write about and share with you.

A + J