By Haley Cullingham

It all started with William Wallace.

Or, more accurately, it started with a double rainbow, arcing high over College St. It appeared moments after a Kensington Market deluge. Taking cover at Wanda’s and clutching sopping plastic bags filled with a box of one hundred and forty five short-short stories from This Ain’t The Rosedale Library, we cursed our moccasins and hoped the weather would miraculously clear up for the throngs of people about to flood the city streets to stare at light installations. And clear up it did-to just the perfect amount of chilly for late night drunk wandering.

So to begin at the beginning-copious bottles of wine and a screening of Braveheart to get us all in battle mode-a battle against crowds, cold, and tired-the three things you can’t allow to get the better of you at Nuit Blanche. Fight faces firmly secured, we stumbled into the night, wandering the streets filled with art enthusiasts, classy couples, bike-riding youth gangs, and people in spangled coats. First to Trinity Bellwoods, where a giant neon Nite Lite (by Alexandra (Alita) González) made of plastic bottles thrummed under a tree illuminated eerie purple. On-lookers, cozy under layers of knit hats, moved bottles from one slot to the other, coating their hands in a sheen of glitter.

We left the park and made our way west down Queen, where girls peeked out from behind masquerade masks and picture frames, and storefronts contained installations and artworks celebrating our humanity and heralding our demise. (Zombieland? 2012? Haven’t you heard-we’re fucked!) But a jaunt to Liberty Village was enough to secure my faith in the future of humanity. Why? Box forts.

Our travels took us under the Dufferin Bridge to a parking lot filled with what I can only imagine is the inevitable conclusion of all this end-of-world jazz. Stark spotlights illuminated a cardboard village; Take Shelter by the One Off Collective. Castles built from canned goods and torn up boxes, little groups huddling around their creations and building them up from the damp concrete, stacking higher and higher the soggy domiciles. A cardboard dragon was wheeled around in a shopping cart, a sad flame licking the end of his cardboard tongue. The fort-builders were a happy and serious bunch, completely enthralled with their shelter-making activities. After scooping one of them up to join us on our journey, we made our way to a giant day-glo bamboo forest (twofold by GALTstudio), and forgot our apocalypse woes by throwing our hands above our heads and running them through the giant shimmering bamboo chandelier.

Amid reports of Beatles dance parties at the Great Hall and friends peeking up the dresses of artists, we ended the evening with just-in-time pints at the back of The Ossington, and then headed home to talk until sunrise about art and rainbows. And for those less inclined to aimless wandering, some She Does The City team members went behind the night with Heineken tours, seeing some amazing art, drinking a free beer, and meeting cool people.