A WALK IN BECHTEL PARK WITH HIYAM MAHRAT

Born and raised in the United Arab Emirates, Syrian Canadian artist Hiyam Mahrat was used to a desert environment, but when she and her family moved to Canada in 2018, she quickly developed an appreciation for green spaces. 

“I did not think that I would fall in love with nature the way that I did when I came here,” Mahrat said. “There’s just something about being in trees, waking up to the sounds of birds. That’s why I’m now camping every summer.” 

We met in Bechtel Park to walk the trails, embarking on a hike by the water and ending on a bench next to the playground as we talked about Mahrat’s journey to the Waterloo Region and her artistic career. 

She arrived in Canada with a degree in medical laboratory science but found the bureaucracy of getting her credentials recognized laborious.  

After her sister suggested a performing arts program at Sheridan College, Mahrat decided to pursue her interest in theatre and discovered a love of acting. 

While she loved the program and performing, what came after was a challenge for Mahrat to navigate. 

“I would apply for stuff, but I wouldn’t hear back, especially in Toronto,” she said. “I [found] some challenges in auditioning, finding roles that fit me.” 

Mahrat and her family were living in Ajax at that time, but her sister had connections to the theatre community in Kitchener-Waterloo and facilitated introductions. Mahrat began volunteering with MT Space, and a conversation with the company’s founder Majdi Bou-Matar in 2021 shaped the direction of Mahrat’s artistic practice. 

“He told me about his challenges of going into the theatre community,” Mahrat said. “He did not get the chance to do the work he wanted until he recognized he needed to create his own opportunities…that really clicked in my mind.” 

From there, Mahrat focused on building her own project and seeking funding and collaborators to support the work. She went from volunteering with MT Space to working as an administrative assistant before finally landing in her current role as General Manager. In 2023, she convinced her entire family to move to Kitchener-Waterloo. That same year, she won the Waterloo Region Emerging Artist Award. 

The trail took us over a bridge to nowhere and we paused to appreciate the surroundings and the creek while Mahrat told me about Homecoming, a piece she created with Ameya Kale exploring the immigrant experience and housing issues in the Region. 

“What does it mean to create a home while you are still facing challenges in finding a house or a place to call home?” Mahrat said. “We tied the housing crisis to colonization…how that affected high prices and inflation, causing suffering.” 

Mahrat began exploring these ideas in 2022, and kept developing the work, including exploring the perspective of landlords as well as tenants. Under the guidance of director and mentor Nada Humsi, she and Kale unlocked a more physical interpretation of the text. In 2025, the piece was presented at MT Space’s Works-In-Progress Mini Festival, and Mahrat is looking at further development and touring. 

“The journey of creating something over multiple years [is] powerful, and it’s something you cannot just leave and move away from,” Mahrat said. “It stays with you…and it’s part of you.” 

The year 2025 also saw Mahrat tackle directing a full-length production for the first time. She pitched the play Scorched by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad and it was accepted into the KWLT’s season with Mahrat at the helm. The play was one she first encountered in her program at Sheridan. 

“The script has always been in my mind,” Mahrat said. “I had a burning passion for it, and I had to do it.” 

Passion is a guiding principle for Mahrat who believes in the connection between community and artist, and that each has a responsibility for the other. And for Mahrat, her identity as a newcomer remains at the forefront of her work. 

“All of my art now…talks about the war, colonization, my immigration journey, my journey as a woman of colour who wears the hijab and acts,” Mahrat said. “But I do wish to reach some point where I can talk about my internal struggles…I feel like we don’t have the luxury to do that.” 

The wind picked up as we finished our walk and Mahrat told me about some of her favourite camping locations. As well as planning time in nature, Mahrat also wants to explore bringing dance into her work. 

“I’m interested in the intersectionality of dance,” she said. “How dance can be a resistance tool, and a way of preserving culture.” 

Whatever the artistic medium, Hiyam Mahrat will continue to challenge, reflect, resist and above all persist as she creates and builds art and community in the Waterloo Region. 

A Walk Around Grand River Collegiate with Rochelle Williams 

Rochelle Williams, aka The Dessert Artist, laid the foundation for her career in blending the science of baking with the artistry of design while attending Grand River Collegiate Institute (GRCI) in Kitchener. To tap into those memories, she chose the school grounds for our walk, where her high school art classes inspired her to explore different creative mediums, including food.  

“[I]f I had a different upbringing, if society was different, I probably would have [gone] to school for visual art,” Williams said. “I’ve always had a passion for drawing and sculpting.”  

After high school, Williams studied pastry and confectionery artistry at Humber College. There she learned fundamentals, but her classes lacked the advanced decorating that Williams was drawn to. So, she called on her visual arts background to take her work to the next level.  

“My biggest passion is just making things look pretty, and I also just happen to love eating,” Williams said. “[G]ive me a medium and I’ll figure out how to make it work in my way.”  

Our walk takes us around the fields where Williams played rugby while attending GRCI. We pass the gardens behind the portable classrooms and walk by the new building, added after Williams graduated.  

While Williams takes great care and pride in her food artistry, she has no concerns about watching her works of art be consumed.   

“I do want you to eat it, because it also tastes delicious. So, if you don’t eat it, I’m actually more offended,” Williams said. “To me, the taste is more important than the artistry.”  

Williams never uses fondant in her designs, instead opting to sculpt with buttercream icing and explore the sculpting possibilities of modeling chocolate. She does all her decorating by hand, turning the repetition needed for large orders into a game to keep herself engaged and striving for the highest  quality of presentation.  

Since 2020, Williams has been investing in herself and her own business, first as The Painting Pastry Chef before rebranding in 2022 as The Dessert Artist. She continues to push her boundaries, introducing new products to her line like her Petite Patties, a spin on Jamaican patties.  

“When I get an idea, I have a hard time not doing it if I think it’s a good one,” Williams said. “[O]ne day [I thought] it’d be cool to have a dessert Jamaican patty.”  

Williams plays with traditional Jamaican flavours for her patties, including mango as a nod to her mother, who loves the fruit. She also offers a plantain patty and a rum-raisin patty in addition to the more traditional savoury offerings.  

The expansion into patties is not just a business decision for Williams. It is also a celebration of her heritage and the importance of creating representation in her Black-centric designs.  

“I saw a lack in the community that just needed to be addressed,” Williams said. “As a kid, I would have loved to see Black Santa, seen myself on a cookie…I can’t be the only one who wishes they had seen those things.”  

The decision to create representation in her work came with some uncertainty for Williams, so she started by making both a Black and a White Santa cookie.   

“I wasn’t sure how Black Santa was going to be perceived,” Williams said. “I quickly realized that if [the customer wasn’t] Black, people actually just weren’t sure if they were allowed to buy the Black one.”  

To address these concerns, Williams has included on her website that customers “don’t need to be Black to enjoy a Black Santa cookie.” She now only creates Black Santa cookies to ensure representation in the market.  

And while most customers appreciate the diversity in Williams’ work, she has received some negative responses, including people calling her work blasphemous, and White parents strongly preferring their children not choose a Black Santa cookie. When she asked a local business mentoring group how to market her culturally specific products to White customers, she was told to make products that would appeal to a mass market rather than focus on narrow cultural flavours.  

It is part of these reactions that Williams understands the importance of community in the work that she does.   

“I’m always like ‘community over competition’,” Williams said. “I want to help people. I want to build them up…I don’t want you to experience the same hardships. I want you to experience new hardships that we never experienced before, and we’ll manage those.”  

Working out of the Cafe Clementina kitchen, Williams has strong connections with other local bakeries. She is interested in collaborating and enjoys following the journeys of other local bakers in person and on social media.  

As we walked beyond the high school grounds, through Tecumseh Park and around the neighbourhood, Williams reflected on the role that nature plays in her life and work.  

“I think the biggest thing I hate about my job is that I’m inside so much,” Williams said. “[N]ature doesn’t necessarily influence my work, but it definitely influences my mood.”  

Williams enjoys working with clients to create fun, cool custom designs, and she is also thinking big when it comes to future challenges.  

“I would love to make a full-body cake,” Williams said. “Life-sized and accurate to a tee.”  

While Williams makes plans to create her dream full-size person cake, she will continue to blend artistry with pastry, seek out community, and ensure representation is present in the Region’s baked-good offerings.   

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