The History of Tattooing in Durham Region (And My Own Journey to Oshawa)

People ask me sometimes how a shop in Oshawa ended up specializing in the kind of black & grey realism you'd expect to find in Miami or LA. The honest answer is that it took about twenty years and three continents to get here.

Tattooing's Long Road to the Mainstream

Commercial tattooing in Canada has a documented history that goes back much further than most people assume, and for a long time it existed on the margins — practiced quietly, without much oversight, and viewed with a fair amount of stigma. It's only in the last few decades that the industry has shifted toward being a regulated, respected trade, and Durham Region has been part of that shift.

How Durham Region Keeps the Industry Accountable

The Durham Region Health Department inspects tattoo and piercing studios under Ontario Regulation 136/18 (Personal Service Settings) and the Health Protection and Promotion Act. That means requirements like accessible handwashing stations, sharps that come from unopened, sterile packaging, and proper sterilization records for anything that breaks the skin. Worth knowing: the Region doesn't issue licences or certifications the way people sometimes assume — it inspects, and those inspection reports are available on request. That's genuinely useful information, and I'd encourage anyone getting work done anywhere in Durham to ask for a studio's latest report.

My Own Road to Durham Region

I started young. I learned the art of piercing in Tel Aviv when I was 15, and from there spent the next two decades chasing the craft across three continents. At 18, in 2004, I moved to New Jersey to pursue tattooing more seriously, then spent time in New York building on that experience. I went back to Israel at 19 and worked at Moreno Tattoo, before heading to the U.S. again — first to Fort Myers, then landing a role at Miami Tattoo Company, where I spent a couple of years surrounded by artists who pushed my work forward. From there it was Toronto, working at Chronic Ink and later Blugod Studios, with time spent in LA at Monna Lissa along the way. Some of the relationships from that period turned into long-term sponsorships I still work with today: FK Irons for machines, Allegory Ink for black ink, and FYT Supplies for needles and cartridges.

Bringing Twenty Years of International Experience to Oshawa

Opening Mor Ink Tattoo & Piercing here meant bringing all of that — the international studios, the sponsor relationships, the range of clients — into Durham Region, rather than starting from scratch. My focus is black & grey and color realism, and my process reflects the way I learned to work: I take one client per day, and I sit down with each person on the day of their tattoo to design something custom around a real moment in their life, rather than working from a template.

Contributing to the Local Scene

Part of what I care about now is passing that experience on rather than keeping it to myself. Alexia, who works alongside me, trained under me for over three years and has built her own strong reputation in illustrative realism, pointillism, and surrealism. My hope is that bringing that level of international, big-city experience into Durham Region raises what people expect from realism work here — not just adds one more shop to the map, but genuinely moves the local scene forward.