Church-Wellesley Village

[JasonParis]

Church St gets another bank
LOCAL NEWS / But BIA head is pessimistic about future
Krishna Rau / Xtra / Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Bank of Monttreal (BMO) will be opening a new branch on Church St this summer.

The branch will open at 500 Church St on the northwest corner with Alexander St, a space most recently filled by clothier American Apparel, by late June.

"This is a market we haven't been in before," says Alexandra Dousmanis-Curtis, the senior vice-president of BMO's Toronto division. "We were thrilled when this opportunity came up. We first heard about it at the start of 2007 and we were really excited."

Dousmanis-Curtis says the building needs to be renovated before the opening.

"We need a vault, number one," she says. "We want your money to be safe. Then there's the customer area and the service wickets. We've got approximately 3,400 square feet. It's a lot of work."

But Dousmanis-Curtis says the most important task is finding the staff.

"This is a branch where community development is very important to me," she says. "We're looking for a manager who can not only run the bank but who knows the community. The person has to be a leader but they also have to be involved in the community."

Sam Ghazarian, the chair of the Church Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area (CWVBIA), says the bank should fit in well.

"I think the Bank of Montreal will be a good mix in the neighbourhood," he says. "They should be a stable owner. It's a big space with expensive rent so we want a stable tenant not businesses that keep moving in and out."

Ghazarian says that he's less optimistic about filling some of the other empty commercial spaces along Church St.

"The rents are very high," he says. "We don't have much of a lunch business and we don't have much of a retail business. Retail businesses have failed. With the rents it's become harder to put together a business plan that will allow you to run a business."

Several spaces along the strip remain empty or soon will be. The site of the former Enigma Tranquility Lounge at 471 Church St is still unrented. Priape, which is moving in April to 501 Church from its current space at 465 Church hasn't found a replacement tenant.

"They have another year on their lease and they're trying to find someone to sublet," says Dean Odorico, the general manager of Woody's bar, which sublets 465 Church to Priape. "They were the best tenant and we're sorry to see them go. We hope to find another good tenant."

The space under Woody's will also gain a new tenant in April when Flatirons moves into the space at 467 Church from its current location at 95 Maitland St.

Loblaws' development of Maple Leaf Gardens also appears to be on hold. In November, Loblaws' senior director of engineering and construction told Xtra the project could be delayed at least six months.

"We haven't really decided with the new management what the new vision for Maple Leaf Gardens will be," said Onofrio Marcello. "We've had some problems with our distribution network which we had to fix first. To stick a flag on Maple Leaf Gardens and say, 'Here we are,' when we're going through these changes would be strange."

Because the Gardens were designated as a heritage building, any changes Loblaws wants to make to its original plan would require new approvals from the city.

Toronto city council approved Loblaws' original application to convert the building in 2004.

 

[JasonParis]

The Caribbean in general is homophobic. Jamaica just gets singled out because the popularity of machismo Dancehall Reggae (regh-GAY, what irony). Closet gays meet in neutral areas and number about 40, 000 out of a total popualtion of 2.7 million. If they're outed they're usually shunned by their families, imprisoned or in rare incidents publically stoned.

A timely cover story on this week's Xtra...

'Fleeing for my life'
HUMAN RIGHTS / Jamaican activist seeks refuge in Canada
Krishna Rau / Xtra / Thursday, February 28, 2008

A SAFER FUTURE. Gareth Henry contemplates life in Canada after 10 years of violence and death threats in Jamaica. (Paula Wilson)

Jamaican queer activist Gareth Henry was friends with 13 people murdered since 2004 just because they were gay. The bodies of three of them have never been found.

So it's not surprising that Henry — until recently the cochair of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, Allsexuals and Gays (JFLAG) and now a refugee claimant in Canada — breaks down when talking about the death of his coworker and one-time roommate Steve Harvey in 2005.

"It was a Tuesday night," he says. "We finished a meeting about 11 o'clock. We went our separate ways. I was called at about two in the night and told Steve was brought home by four men and the four men said to his housemates and his partner, 'We're going to kill Steve because he's gay.' They left with Steve. When I heard what was said, I said, 'That's one more of my friends who's been murdered.' Honestly speaking, there was no way I had the slightest hope he would be alive. The only thing I hoped was when they kill him that they leave his body in a place where we can find it, have a funeral and remember him.

"In the morning, it was the day before World AIDS Day, I was working on the case of a young man who had been beaten at his school by students and some teachers for being gay. I got a call that a body was found. I went and it was Steve. I was asked to identify the body because I was a friend. I broke down, I was crying. It was real bad to see a friend like that.

"The police officer says, 'You must be a batty man. Why is a man crying over another man? That's why Jamaica is the way it is, because you're so nasty.'

"The next day it was World AIDS Day, I was woken up in the morning. It was three police officers pointing to my window, saying 'Batty man, JFLAG man, we don't want him around here.'"

Henry, 30, continued to endure threats, harassment and beatings — often from police — until November, 2007, when he received another threat near his new home, a gated community with 24-hour security.

"I was stopped in traffic when a man got out of his car and came over to me and said, 'Gareth, we know who you are and we're going to kill you and burn JFLAG down.'I was really devastated by that threat," he says.

"I went for the very first time to live with my partner. But I didn't want to get him in trouble so I was basically living in solitary confinement. I was living in fear. I was being totally crippled by fear. If I heard someone on the outside I could not sleep. I said to myself, 'Nobody should live this way. I'm not in prison. I need to break free.' I had exhausted all possible options.

"I came to Canada on Jan 26, basically fleeing for my life."

***

Henry had already accepted an invitation to be this year's international grand marshal for Toronto Pride, although he hadn't been planning to come to the city until June. But once here he wasted little time continuing his campaign for queer rights in Jamaica.

On Valentine's Day of this year, Henry — with Pride, Egale Canada and the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto — launched the Call for Love campaign. The campaign, mirrored by similar ones around the world, calls for the protection of queers in Jamaica.

The launch included delivering a wreath to the Jamaican consulate in memory of the island's murdered queers. Henry also delivered a letter to the consulate asking the Jamaican government to ensure police "uphold their sworn duty to equally protect and serve all Jamaican citizens." The day was selected because it was the first anniversary of Henry nearly being beaten to death by a mob in Kingston.

"For the first time ever I was into doing something for Valentine's Day," Henry recalls. "My partner is into Valentine's. I went into a pharmacy. I saw three guys [from JFLAG] coming in with a woman behind them cursing and saying some really dirty things about gays and batty men, how they're dirty and must be killed."

The pharmacy staff, observing a gathering crowd outside, called the police and barricaded the store with Henry and his three friends inside. The first police unit to arrive said they couldn't help and left.

"The second unit arrived, saying we were nasty and the people have a right wanting to beat us," Henry says. "They said they can't help us right now, they have to call for backup. By this time there's over 200 people outside. So I got on my cell phone and called Rebecca Schleifer of Human Rights Watch. I found out later she had called the police commissioner.

"Finally seven police officers arrived and were very rude, saying we shouldn't be flaunting our sexuality in front of people. I said, 'Sir, this isn't the way you should be talking to us.' One police officer slapped me in the face. Another one hit me in the back of the head. They started hitting me all over, calling me batty man. They were dragging me, started hitting me again."

Henry says he resisted being dragged outside because of the memory of what happened to a friend on Sept 24, 2004.

"I remembered immediately Victor Jarrett, who was a friend of mine. I was standing about 80 metres away from Victor when he was being beaten by three police officers and an angry mob gathered and said to the police officers, 'Hand him over, let us finish him.' The police officers did throw him to the crowd who beat Victor and chased him through the town. The following morning it was headlined in the local paper, 'Alleged homosexual chased, beaten, chopped and killed.'

"So I was resisting because this picture was so vivid in my mind. The police started hitting me more, then one of the police officers used his gun and hit me in the abdomen and I was in severe pain. Then they walked off."

Henry says the staff of the pharmacy eventually helped the four men slip out of the store and into a car outside.

***

Mob attacks on gay men in Jamaica are common, Henry says. He almost breaks down again while remembering the death of Nokia Cowan, soon after Harvey's murder.

"Nokia was going about his business," Henry says. "Someone said, 'He walks like a gay man.' His only options were to be beaten by hundreds of people or jump into the harbour. He jumped. He couldn't swim. The crowd watched him gasping for breath. When he disappeared under the water, that's when the mob walked away."

Most recently according to Human Rights Watch, on Jan 29, a mob broke into the home of four gay men. Three ended up in hospital, one with severe wounds from a machete. The fourth man, still missing and presumed dead, is thought to have jumped off a cliff to escape the mob.

Nor are lesbians immune from attacks. Henry tells of two women he knew who were murdered in their home in 2006 and buried in a pit behind the house.

Henry says none of the perpetrators in any of these cases have ever been brought to justice.

Schleifer, with Human Rights Watch's HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program, says she is convinced it would have been just a matter of time before Henry was added to the list.

"I've been fearful for Gareth's safety for years," she says. "I came across the condolence card I wrote to JFLAG after Steve's murder. It made me cry but it also chilled me. I was so scared I would have to write a note like that for Gareth. I was deeply relieved that he was gone. But it's also sad. Nobody should be forced to leave their home like that."

Henry says that even with the danger he faced he wouldn't have left if he hadn't had a successor at JFLAG. But given that Henry has been with JFLAG from its start 10 years ago, he knows the change won't be easy for the organization.

"I had just turned 20," he says of JFLAG's beginning. "I was just doing basic administrative stuff and I fell in love with JFLAG.

"In 2004 Brian Williamson, who was the face of JFLAG, was murdered. When I went to his house people were celebrating, saying, 'We're going to get them one by one.' When I looked at what happened to Brian, I thought JFLAG was the right thing to be doing. I was asked to be the program manager and cochair. With my involvement in JFLAG at that level I really understood the magnitude of the homophobia."

The reality in Jamica, he says, is that homophobia is so deeply entrenched because the establishment — politicians, religious leaders, media, police and entertainers — all encourage it. All have fought against repealing Jamaica's antisodomy law, for example. The law can send men convicted of anal sex to jail for up to 10 years.

"The church in particular, its stance is we need to be healed and the law should not be removed from the books," he says. "Ministers preach hate and damnation from the pulpit and they go public with their views. Jamaica is deemed to be a very Christian country, hence religion plays an integral part in our politics."

Henry points to a proposed bill of rights that has been under discussion in Jamaica for years. The bill would take away the right of police to enter a home without a warrant.

"The church responds to this by saying it needs to exclude situations with gays and lesbians," Henry says. "Gays and lesbians can't be allowed to have privacy in their homes because gay men in particular are breaking the law."

And yet even gay men in Jamaica yearn for religion. Schleifer says she was amazed to hear from queers in Jamaica about their need for an organized church.

"One of the really stunning things I heard was gay men telling me, 'I can't go to church any more. When I go, I visit. I go from church to church where nobody knows me,'" she says. "I've talked to hundreds of people around the world about the abuses they've faced and none have ever said anything like that."

Henry himself founded a branch of the Metropolitan Community Church in Jamaica. Although, given conditions for queers in the country, the church has no actual building.

"We have created for ourselves a safe space for the community to worship," he says. "I reached out to the MCC at the end of 2005. We can't have a physical location which is public knowledge. But there are a lot of gays and lesbians who have suffered from the message from the pulpit and need a space where they can reconfirm to themselves that they are gays and some kind of spiritual beings."

Henry says that the media in Jamaica further fans the fires of homophobia. When JFLAG has tried to run public campaigns against violence, the group has been unable to find a single media outlet in the country to run their ads. But he says the media continues to celebrate homophobic musicians.

Music in Jamaica — particularly reggae and its offshoot, dancehall — has played a major role in stoking homophobia, says Henry. A number of popular songs call for queers to be beaten, burned, hanged or shot. The songs are numerous enough to have earned their own name: Outside of Jamaica, they're often referred to as "murder music."

"Music has played an integral part in how Jamaica responds to gays and lesbians," he says. "Jamaica celebrates reggae music. I might be the only person who hates reggae music with a passion. When these attacks are happening, when people are celebrating them, they're singing these songs.

"I remember in 2003 one of our friends was at this dance and this song was being played, 'Boom Bye Bye Inna Batty Bwoy Head,' by Buju Banton. When the song was finished playing our friend Kitty was lying on the ground with three shots to his head and that was the end of it. Nothing happened. Nobody knew who shot him."

Henry will be working with Stop Murder Music Canada, a coalition of groups that has managed to stop several homophobic dancehall artists from performing in Canada and is trying to persuade retailers to stop selling their music.

He will also be using his position as international grand marshal at Pride to try to persuade Canadians to join the fight against Jamaican homophobia.

"To be at the front of the parade, to be representing the country I'm from, I feel honoured," he says. "This will give me an opportunity to share with Canadians and others the harsh realities of what happens in Jamaica."

Henry says that Canadians can help to achieve change in Jamaica by pressuring their own government.

"Jamaica relies heavily on aid from countries like Canada," Henry says. "I would challenge all right-thinking people to think about how they want their tax dollars to be spent."

But Henry says that first he — and hopefully his partner who will be coming to Canada in March — needs to be granted refugee status on the grounds that he will be killed if he returns to Jamaica.

"If I'm denied refugee status I'll call my mother and tell her, 'I'm coming home. I won't live long,'" he says.

==================================

For info on the Call for Love campaign go to

http://www.Egale.ca

 

[adma]

And to come full circle, said "bunker" might not be so offensive to the "Concrete Toronto" generation--besides, it's the open balconied "apartment walls" that face Mosaic, more than it's blank concrete walls.

But I'm not hailing it over JCC, either.

 

[bjl]

Nice, be sure to spend your vacation dollars there, or in Bermuda, where they hate homo's as well.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

There are two unfortunate, even sad, aspects to your argument: 1. It is so disturbing that those who have experienced persecution go on to persecute others and seem not to have learned much from their experience,i.e., tolerance and compassion, especially among "god-fearing"folk. 2. It is impossible to comment on this unfortunate behaviour because you get labelled as a persecutor. You cannot even have a dialogue because of this kind of thing and that's scary.

I can totally empathize with your position. It's wrong that both blacks and homosexuals are been the target of unadulterated hatred and ridicule for so long. However at the end of the day, if one so chooses to not be outwardly flamboyant in a conservative setting, sexualities can be hidden on the down-low. Blacks will always be black (look what became of Micheal Jackson via changing his appearence) and will always suffer the stigma of being so in sufferable silence (no voice, no outlet).

There's parts of the GTA two gay men can't be out together. I've never seen two men kissing on the subway. There's just some social norms and codes of behaviour/etiquette that'll never change, within Canada, yet alone a fragile conservative community such as Jamaica.

If you molest a child, statistics claim that child will grow up to become a pedophile. It's a cycle of abuse. If blacks were enslaved and deprived of their basic human rights then all they'll see is victimhood and pass on their inner shame and grief onto the next underpriviledged subsect. I'm not justifying homophobia, just trying to put the reasoning into context. All I'm saying is that I actually resided in Jamaica for several years so I have a better understanding of the people there.

An ex-pat Jamaican escaping real and imagined hatred from Jamaica might preceive the place from a different critical angle as someone who enjoyed their stay. In Jamaican high school there was definitely a few gay characters. I didn't see them walking around with black eyes and acid burns as Western media makes it seem. My point is there must be common grounds with which these two cultures/ways of life can tolerate eachother without threat of violence or tourist pull-out.

Nice, be sure to spend your vacation dollars there, or in Bermuda, where they hate homo's as well.

Oh sure holding the economy of Jamaica at ransom, demanding instant change or else is the perfect solution to overcoming hatred for a group that askes for acceptance yet ridicules the beliefs of others. Some people would rather die poor if it meant getting their morally-enriched souls into heaven. That's the ideology the gay community needs to sympathize, empathize and then strategize with Jamaicans to overcome, not bully them into change. If your suggestion is the latter, then I think we'll get along just fine without your blood money.

BTW- The PC term is gays. If you're going to denounce bigotry with one hand you can't uphold it with the other, IMHO.

 

[bjl]

Oh sure holding the economy of Jamaica at ransom,

...by not supporting a thirld world country that executes homosexuals for no reason? Sounds like your homophobia is getting the better of you.
Your lack of reading comprehension is rather disgusting.

If your suggestion is the latter, then I think we'll get along just fine without your blood money.

In other words, you admit that you don't really understand what I wrote (it must be that poor comprehension thing), yet you throw insults and attack others.

Learn to comprehend, then, and only maybe, you'll be able to debate with adults....your hatred of Homosexuals (the PC term, BTW) is pathetic.

I notice you skipped right over my mention of Bermuda....ever hear of it?

BTW- The PC term is gays. If you're going to denounce bigotry with one hand you can't uphold it with the other, IMHO.

BTW, your last sentence is a load of crap, it means nothing, it's yet another of your many insults hurled at people you don't know. Bigot.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Excuse me but wasn't it you who said:

...hate homo's as well.

Unless that was posted by your doppleganger, it would mean that you used an anti-gay slur to describe gays. What did I tell you about cultural sensitivity again?!!

by not supporting a thirld world country that executes homosexuals for no reason? Sounds like your homophobia is getting the better of you.

I'm waiting for autopsy evidence showing that a gay traveller was murdered for being gay in Jamaica. Oh wait, there's none. You're only hurting yourself by being too vindictive to enjoy the sun, sand, surf and warm, welcoming people of Jamaica who fly under the banner of "One Love, One People". The lengths some mindsets will go to to destroy the progression of black republics is astounding. Furthermore if gays were being 'executed', as you so elloquently put it, at the rate Western media makes it sound then wouldn't the UN and civil rights activists be storm-troopering into Jamaica by now? In all sincerity, hate crimes would increase not decrease if gays asserted equal rights. The only way to achieve change is by reasoning with people on their level, not the Canadian hold-hands kum-by-yah campfire worldview.

I notice you skipped right over my mention of Bermuda....ever hear of it?

Yes because you associate all black republics with homophobia and therefore it fuels your drive to see all blacks genocided, if not physically then by crippling them verbally and in their wallets !

BTW, your last sentence is a load of crap, it means nothing, it's yet another of your many insults hurled at people you don't know. Bigot.

I guess you don't know me either cause my only purpose in councilling you is to expose your seething hate for the world of UT to see.

 

[bjl]

Yes because you associate all black republics with homophobia and therefore it fuels your drive to see all blacks genocided, if not physically then by crippling them verbally and in their wallets !

You see, if you'd actually research the things you like to post on, you wouldn't make such a bigoted fool out of yourself, all the time.
You're a racist and YOU bring race into every debate.
You're also woefully uninformed, and reveal this every chance you get. I almost feel sorry for you.

Bermudas population is about 50% 'white', is not a republic, and there has never been any 'black genocide'....sort of shows how little you really know, but reveals your hatred for the white man quite well.
Grow up, bigot.

I guess you don't know me either cause my only purpose in councilling you is to expose your seething hate for the world of UT to see.

...but instead, you do the opposite and reveal your seething hatred for all non-black people, archived for all the world to see.
You guess that I don't know you? You're not sure? wow...lay off the crack, man.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

Barn owner's accused murderer 'not guilty'

Gay lover leaves court a free man

Mar 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno

Janko Naglic arrived in Canada with 50 bucks in his pockets and an immigrant's dreams.

That is, if the immigrant dreams about opening up a gay bar on Church St. where the party never stops, the bodies are slick with sweat, and the alleged liquor violations a constant headache.

Yet Naglic, self-made entrepreneur, was by all outward measurement a huge success. There was money, there was gaiety; there was a downtown club and an uptown house; there was a yacht and a condo in Florida. There was respect in the community, if purported badgering from police and licensing officials.

And there was a lover, two decades younger, plucked from impoverished circumstances in Cuba, enriched by all that Naglic's money could buy, as well as something even more precious, most might say – the love of a good man.

It was a love that accepted, or at least tolerated, infidelities – the occasional sleep-about – of an inconstant partner, so long as that partner ultimately came home, to the house they'd shared, as man and man, for 13 years, a thoroughly legitimate and legally binding common-law relationship: Right through Marriage of Convenience No. 1 and Marriage of Maybe-Convenience No. 2, although the latter appears to have been well and truly consummated and meant something considerably more to its participants.

Late last night, a Toronto jury – after deliberating only about four hours – returned a verdict of not guilty on a first-degree murder charge against 41-year-old Ivan Mendez-Romero.

He did not take the stand in his own defence; not required to do so and no inference could be drawn.

His lawyer, Laurence Cohen, called no witnesses. Presumably, the defence reckoned that the Crown made their case for them – or failed to mount much of a case against them.

"In all the years, I've never seen a faster verdict,'' said Cohen. "I'm relieved.''

There was no forensic evidence to incriminate Mendez-Romero. There were no witnesses to the slaying, Naglic found – by Mendez-Romero – sprawled on the stairs of their Balliol St. home on Oct. 27, 2004, duct tape wrapped around his mouth and neck. Cause of death: Asphyxiation.

He appears not to have put up much of a struggle, given the minor injuries documented, but a large bruise to the head consistent with blunt force trauma could have caused a loss of consciousness.

Investigators found no sign of forced entry. The victim had $800 in his wallet and some jewellery on his person.

A month earlier, acting on suspicions of a lover betraying him with a wife, Naglic had trailed Mendez-Romero to a motel room, after which all hell had broken loose, with heated grievances on both sides. Naglic subsequently told friends that Mendez-Romero had threatened him, demanded half of all his assets, and warned Naglic not to reveal their relationship to the woman's family – which Naglic promptly did anyway.

This case was nearly all about what Naglic told others in the weeks leading up to his murder. The man, a drama queen, could not stop talking about it, which is understandable, although impossible for any of those claims – including the alleged threat – to be corroborated afterwards.

It's gossip. Or, in courtroom parlance, it was hearsay. But it was allowed in by Justice Gladys Pardu, with the jury left to make heads or tails out of who-said-what and who-done-what.

Innuendo, speculation and conjecture, sniffed Cohen, in his closing submission.

A circumstantial case, countered Crown Attorney Ann Morgan, but a strong one, with "overwhelming evidence of motive''.

After the verdict, Mendez-Romero got into a BMW and left the courthouse a free man.

The dream, at least of love-ever-after, died before the dreamer did.

 

[JasonParis]

Wow, I'm pretty shocked. Everything I read seemed to suggest he'd be found gulity. Not convinced he's innocent either.

 

[Patriot]

Anyone know when the new PRIAPE is opening at the former VICE location?

Is it true ManCandy is still opening this month?

 

[JasonParis]

There's a sign on ManCandy's door similar to the one on the window of the Church Street Bar about Warman's arrears. It isn't opening anytime soon and probably not ever.

I'd imagine PRIAPE would want to be open in their new spot by Pride, but I susepct it will be sooner.

 

[King of Kensington]

That's overstating things rather dramatically, isn't it? South of St. Clair Toronto has no kosher restaurants (save a Financial District snack bar), no kosher butchers, not more than a handful of full-time synagogues (from hundreds), a lone Jewish day school (from dozens), no stores that sell Jewish religious scriptures (from a dozen or so), and so forth.

That's not by accident. Sure, there are Jews all over the city. Koreans, Italians, Persians, too. But these and most other ethnic groups have areas of the city where their settlement patterns are more intense, their communal institutions more numerous, the commerces catering to their particular needs more plentiful, and so forth.

Acknowledging that isn't stereotyping. It's basic urban geography.



This seems a bit disingenuous, too. The reason why philanthropists -- who do not themselves live downtown -- funded the renovation of the Bloor JCC certainly does have much to do with history and that building's historic presence. The fundraising campaign was all about revival and outreach. The building's programming and use continues to involve much use by groups outside the Jewish community.

Those are all good things. But it's quite fair to say that Bathurst-Centre, say, is in a thick zone of Toronto's Jewish life today in a way that Bloor-Spadina once was, and now isn't. It's unfair to smear someone pointing that out as engaging in "stereotyping" or detached from "real life". If anything, it seems to me far less "real life" to announce that Toronto's Jewish community is no more clustered in, say, Thornhill-Vaughan than "all over downtown". This description (from here) seems a fairer statement to me:

While the densest concentration of Jews is along the Bathurst corridor north of St. Clair, the Jewish community around Bloor and Spadina is quite significant. The Annex in fact has quite a notable secular Jewish/leftist intelligentsia subculture, even if people in Thornhill don't know about it. They're just very loosely affiliated with the mainstream. Considering that the GTA is only about 3.5% Jewish and they're over 10% in the Annex (and the largest "ethnic" group bsides your run of the mill "WASPs"), I'd say it's more than just random distribution. The lack of day schools and synagogues that far south has more to do with the fact that this group is extremely secular - probably 80% of Jews there probably don't even belong to a synagogue, let alone attend regularly and that very, very Jewish parents there have any intention to put their kids in day school - rather than the lack of a significant Jewish population.

http://www.toronto.ca/demographics/pdf2/cpa95.pdf

 

[urbandreamer]

^I agree with the KofK and that's what I love about the Annex! Secular, "normal" people--the only nabe in Toronto that--aside from architectural style--reminds me of parts of Montreal or NYC.

I wasn't saying the JCC doesn't belong @Bloor and Spadina: it does; however, I'm suspicious that the architects and vision behind the JCC live at Bathurst and Centre or at any rate, are suburban-minded. So JCC interior/function good; exterior architecture bad.

 

[Disparishun]

While the densest concentration of Jews is along the Bathurst corridor north of St. Clair, the Jewish community around Bloor and Spadina is quite significant. The Annex in fact has quite a notable secular Jewish/leftist intelligentsia subculture, even if people in Thornhill don't know about it. They're just very loosely affiliated with the mainstream. Considering that the GTA is only about 3.5% Jewish and they're over 10% in the Annex (and the largest "ethnic" group bsides your run of the mill "WASPs"), I'd say it's more than just random distribution. The lack of day schools and synagogues that far south has more to do with the fact that this group is extremely secular - probably 80% of Jews there probably don't even belong to a synagogue, let alone attend regularly and that very, very Jewish parents there have any intention to put their kids in day school - rather than the lack of a significant Jewish population.

I no longer know what you are trying to argue (and think that this is probably in the wrong topic, by now -- maybe it needs to be in a separate thread called "Toronto has no Jewish neighbourhoods: true or false", or something).

If you're still arguing that it is stereotyping or somehow abhorrent to say that there are Jewish neighbourhoods in Toronto as there are, say, Italian or Armenian neighbourhoods ("Time to let go of some stereotypes of what it is to be Jewish nowadays") -- sorry. That makes little sense. You haven't demonstrated otherwise. And presumably your reference to "people in Thornhill" means something, rather than nothing.

The fact is that Toronto does have certain neighbourhoods which are heavily Jewish and in which the great bulk of Toronto's Jewish population lives. That doesn't take anything away from other parts of Toronto, nor invalidate the experience of those of us who are Jewish and who don't live in Jewish neighbourhoods. But it is a part of Toronto city life that it seems silly to denigrate as "stereotypes".

If you're arguing that, beyond Toronto's Jewish neighbourhoods, there are neighbourhoods where people of Jewish ethnic origins (the statistics you cited) are more likely to settle than others -- then, sure. I'm not sure why that's important, nor how it relates to the above, but I agree. Torontonians who report Jewish ethnic origin as a single or one of multiple ethnic-origin responses are, says Statcan, wealthier and more educated than the overall average. They are more highly represented in higher-average-income neighbourhoods, higher-average-education neighbourhoods, and higher-university-student-ratio neighbourhoods. The Annex certainly corresponds to all of these.

If you're arguing that there are Jewish Torontonians south of St. Clair in Toronto -- then, sure. This is not a debating point. All agree. Just as there are thousands of Italians outside Toronto's Italian neighbourhoods, thousands of Chinese outside the heavily-concentrated Chinese areas, and so on and so forth, there are thousands of Jews all over the neighbourhoods clustered in and around downtown, some of whom sometimes come together particularly, as pointed out above, for religious services on the High Holidays. I'm not sure that that aggregates all of those people into a tightly-knit "community", but certainly, it is worth acknowledging and, for those of us who live in proximity to such initiatives, worth considering partaking in.

Finally, if you're arguing that acknowledging all of the above requires ignorance of Jewish life in non-Jewish neighbourhoods, I'm afraid you're mistaken. The JCC is a good anchor institution. Sure.