Toronto's ethnocultural communities before 1945

[King of Kensington]

Would it be fair to say that many of Toronto's communities -- Jewish, Italian, and perhaps even the Chinese or West Indians/Black Canadians now present in places further afield, whether in North York, Vaughan, Markham or Scarborough, ultimately owe their existence to the older path paved by internal migration from the Ward (via places like Kensington, Chinatown, Little Italy) first, ultimately ending up towards the "suburbs"?

I mean, there's no doubt that growth in part, operates from immigrants directly moving to the suburbs, but do you think that the older (early 20th century, if not 19th) urban immigrants basically set a foothold first in other parts of Toronto, acting as trailblazers to settle before the foreign-born feel attracted to live there too? Or do some of the farther "ethno-burbs" (such as the Italians in Woodbridge, the Chinese in Markham etc., the Caribbean Canadians in North York/Scarborough) derive from "pioneering" (for lack of a better term) immigrants who basically settled suburbs first independently, without considering whether an older urban community of the same ethnicity was there or not?

It would make sense that some later groups (eg. South Asians) that didn't have much of a pre-1960s community in the city probably went directly to at least the former inner suburbs/metro Toronto first, without an inner city phase, but I wonder which ethnic communities have continuity with their earliest members in Toronto's inner city, like the Ward. Is it basically, if a ethnicity had a significant community before the post-war period, then it grew from city to suburb, but if it mostly stemmed from post-war migration, probably founding "ethno-burbs" directly was more likely?

In the case of the city's Jewish and Italian communities, absolutely. The Jewish community followed Bathurst St. north from Dundas/College/Harbord to Forest Hill and North York, and eventually Thornhill. Little Italy also dates back about a century, but a second concentration around Dufferin and Davenport existed pre-WWII before "Corso Italia" at Dufferin and St. Clair developed in the 1950s. The movement up Dufferin and Keele into Downsview and northwesterly into Woodbridge can be traced to a path established decades before.

Poles and Ukrainians followed a westward path along Queen St. These communities were centered around Bathurst and Queen, then followed Queen St. west towards High Park and into Etobicoke and Mississauga. A lot of Poles came in the 80s and 90s (I think they outnumbered the pre-war and post-war Poles) but they settled in the Polish

It's quite likely too that the Greek community is in the Danforth/East York because the city's pre-war Greek community was located east rather than west of the CBD. Though I believe there was a Greek community around Christie Pits before the Danforth took off.

In terms of the Chinese community, it's harder to say, the pre-war community was much smaller than the Jewish and Italian communities and there was a greater time lag between pre-war and post-war immigration. The present Chinatown at Dundas and Spadina developed from the old Chinatown and served as the impetus for Chinese immigration to the area. But as the community expanded a secondary Chinatown developed in the east end but that was almost certainly established independently of the pre-war community. Not sure why Agincourt developed as a Chinese enclave.

The Black/Caribbean community was located around Dundas and Spadina until the 1960s and at the time Jews were much more willing to rent to Blacks. The Oakwood-Vaughan-Eglinton West area had a sizable Jewish population (and was located just west of Forest Hill/Cedarvale) before it became an area of Black/Caribbean settlement (and I've read that played some role in why they initially went there (but I'm not sure).

Toronto didn't have a sizable South Asian community so there were no pre-war "pioneers." Also the different South Asian groups tend to live in different areas. Sikhs initially settled near the airport in Malton and expanded into Brampton for example, while Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Tamils all have their areas of concentration.

 

[King of Kensington]

Here's an article about Zanana Akande, the first Black woman elected to Queen's Park. She grew up in the Spadina area and went to high school at Harbord Collegiate:

http://section15.ca/features/people/2004/04/23/zanana_akande/

 

[wild goose chase]

In the case of the city's Jewish and Italian communities, absolutely. The Jewish community followed Bathurst St. north from Dundas/College/Harbord to Forest Hill and North York, and eventually Thornhill. Little Italy also dates back about a century, but a second concentration around Dufferin and Davenport existed pre-WWII before "Corso Italia" at Dufferin and St. Clair developed in the 1950s. The movement up Dufferin and Keele into Downsview and northwesterly into Woodbridge can be traced to a path established decades before.

Poles and Ukrainians followed a westward path along Queen St. These communities were centered around Bathurst and Queen, then followed Queen St. west towards High Park and into Etobicoke and Mississauga. A lot of Poles came in the 80s and 90s (I think they outnumbered the pre-war and post-war Poles) but they settled in the Polish

It's quite likely too that the Greek community is in the Danforth/East York because the city's pre-war Greek community was located east rather than west of the CBD. Though I believe there was a Greek community around Christie Pits before the Danforth took off.

In terms of the Chinese community, it's harder to say, the pre-war community was much smaller than the Jewish and Italian communities and there was a greater time lag between pre-war and post-war immigration. The present Chinatown at Dundas and Spadina developed from the old Chinatown and served as the impetus for Chinese immigration to the area. But as the community expanded a secondary Chinatown developed in the east end but that was almost certainly established independently of the pre-war community. Not sure why Agincourt developed as a Chinese enclave.

The Black/Caribbean community was located around Dundas and Spadina until the 1960s and at the time Jews were much more willing to rent to Blacks. The Oakwood-Vaughan-Eglinton West area had a sizable Jewish population (and was located just west of Forest Hill/Cedarvale) before it became an area of Black/Caribbean settlement (and I've read that played some role in why they initially went there (but I'm not sure).

Toronto didn't have a sizable South Asian community so there were no pre-war "pioneers." Also the different South Asian groups tend to live in different areas. Sikhs initially settled near the airport in Malton and expanded into Brampton for example, while Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Tamils all have their areas of concentration.

Thinking about it, it's probably the case there would only be overlap between the pre-war community and later waves when there is relative continuity between the two as well as the later waves feeling culturally connected to the previous so that they would want to live near one another. I didn't realize that the 80s and 90s wave of Polish settled in the same areas as the earlier waves though -- I would have assumed that many Eastern Europeans who arrived late in the Cold War period and post-Soviet Union would feel pretty distinct culturally from earlier 20th century Eastern European immigrants.

Also, I think for Chinese immigrants, what seems interesting is that Chinatown is still there and I assume still attracting/retaining (first generation immigrants?) despite numerous new Chinese ethnoburbs (eg. Agincourt, Markham). Many cities' (not just Toronto's but elsewhere even in the US like in New York and Chicago) Chinatowns seem particularly resilient to gentrification, often still thriving, especially compared to Little Italy's. I find it interesting that though both are common parts of cities' histories, Little Italy's across North America lost their Italians to the "burbs" but many Chinatowns are still Chinese despite the Chinese immigrants being even more likely to be new arrivals that should find "ethnoburbs" readily available to live in.

The Greeks in Toronto are also interesting in having their ethnic community still relatively intact while being in the "Old City" and fairly nearby to downtown, and despite Greeks being there since the early 20th century, they still concentrate there and there isn't a well-known clearly Greek ethnoburb like the Italians' Woodbridge or Chinese Agincourt/Markham. The Danforth is still much more Greek than Little Italy is Italian. By contrast, I noticed that despite Chicago being also a city known for its Greeks (eg. My Big Fat Greek Wedding set there, and I just found out that taste of the Danforth was also apparently inspired by Taste of Chicago) in a place like Chicago, the Greektown is just like their Little Italy there, basically just an area with a few restaurants and a remnant nod to past heritage, unlike Toronto's where Greeks actually live.

That Black/Caribbean and Jewish Torontonians had lived and grown up side by side for a long time in this city's history was something I had no idea about. Though I had heard that Jewish and Black Americans had landlord/business relationships when others refused them but didn't realize it was true too north of the border. I assume that Black Torontonians, although not facing necessarily the same times of legally enforced US-style segregation (residential separation, anti-interracial marriage laws etc.?), still nonetheless faced similar types of cultural/social discrimination as would be found across North America (not just the US) during that time period.

 

[wild goose chase]

"British" is more of a civic identity, "English" is generally an ethnic one.

If "British" is a civic identity but not ethnic then it makes sense that immigrants from the UK to say North America would identify more with the ethnic identity (English, Scottish, Welsh etc.) since civic national identity by its very nature is dependent on current participation and belonging within a country, which the diaspora would lose abroad.

Although I do wonder about the ethnic identities of English, Scottish or Welsh -- if say, a third-generation Punjabi Brit, had a Scottish accent, socialized with Scots, participated in Scottish politics and lived in Scotland all their life, could people reasonably accept him/her to claim Scottish as civic, if not ethnic identity? I know ethnic nationalism as traditionally defined against civic nationalism uses culture and ancestry, but I've never been clear on whether "ethnic" means literally have to have the ancestry or mean practicing the culture, possibly in addition to having the ancestry (I have heard usages of "ethnic" by people that have ranged from almost purely cultural to purely racial/genealogical).

American and Canadian are archetypically civic (if not the archetypes of civic), not ethnic identities but occasionally you get people using them as almost ethnic-like identities implying descent from earlier settlers (eg. American Southerners, Atlantic Canadians or Quebecois saying "American" or "Canadian" for an ancestry question). Yet I also knew a French-speaking woman from Montreal that identifies herself as Quebecois despite having immigrant ancestry and I heard that despite Quebecois being seen as more "ethnic" than "civic" as far as North America goes, many would say a first-generation completely Francophone Haitian immigrant that lived mostly in Quebec is more "Quebecois" than say, a white New Englander that has Quebecois ancestry but speaks no French and never travelled outside the US (in fact, one thing I find odd is when Americans with French last names pronounce them in an Anglicized way, and claim to speak no French but also still claim "French Canadian ethnicity").

 

[King of Kensington]

Thinking about it, it's probably the case there would only be overlap between the pre-war community and later waves when there is relative continuity between the two as well as the later waves feeling culturally connected to the previous so that they would want to live near one another. I didn't realize that the 80s and 90s wave of Polish settled in the same areas as the earlier waves though -- I would have assumed that many Eastern Europeans who arrived late in the Cold War period and post-Soviet Union would feel pretty distinct culturally from earlier 20th century Eastern European immigrants.

Well they settled along the same westward path of migration: Parkdale, south Etobicoke and into Mississauga.

The same pattern is evident in Chicago's Polish community BTW, with more recent Polish immigrants going to the northwest side and northwest suburbs, following a path set a century earlier.

Also, I think for Chinese immigrants, what seems interesting is that Chinatown is still there and I assume still attracting/retaining (first generation immigrants?) despite numerous new Chinese ethnoburbs (eg. Agincourt, Markham). Many cities' (not just Toronto's but elsewhere even in the US like in New York and Chicago) Chinatowns seem particularly resilient to gentrification, often still thriving, especially compared to Little Italy's. I find it interesting that though both are common parts of cities' histories, Little Italy's across North America lost their Italians to the "burbs" but many Chinatowns are still Chinese despite the Chinese immigrants being even more likely to be new arrivals that should find "ethnoburbs" readily available to live in.

Well Italian immigration basically stopped around 1970, so there would be few immigrants. And many Little Italy districts were on the decline long ago. Manhattan's Little Italy for example started to shrink in the 1920s, so postwar Italian immigrants bypassed it and went to Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. And in Toronto, College St. was surpassed by Dufferin-St. Clair by 1960 or so and College St. wasn't really an Italian neighborhood anymore by the time the area started to gentrify.

The Greeks in Toronto are also interesting in having their ethnic community still relatively intact while being in the "Old City" and fairly nearby to downtown, and despite Greeks being there since the early 20th century, they still concentrate there and there isn't a well-known clearly Greek ethnoburb like the Italians' Woodbridge or Chinese Agincourt/Markham. The Danforth is still much more Greek than Little Italy is Italian. By contrast, I noticed that despite Chicago being also a city known for its Greeks (eg. My Big Fat Greek Wedding set there, and I just found out that taste of the Danforth was also apparently inspired by Taste of Chicago) in a place like Chicago, the Greektown is just like their Little Italy there, basically just an area with a few restaurants and a remnant nod to past heritage, unlike Toronto's where Greeks actually live.

Didn't Mayor Daley Sr. rip up the Little Italy and Greektown areas in his urban redevelopment schemes? Chicago's Italian area today is in inner ring western suburbs like Norridge and Elmwood Park. Greeks I assume have gone to the suburbs too but I don't know where.

In Toronto, you're right the Danforth/East York area is the only area with a significant Greek concentration; as the Greek community suburbanized it did so in a more dispersed fashion.

That Black/Caribbean and Jewish Torontonians had lived and grown up side by side for a long time in this city's history was something I had no idea about. Though I had heard that Jewish and Black Americans had landlord/business relationships when others refused them but didn't realize it was true too north of the border. I assume that Black Torontonians, although not facing necessarily the same times of legally enforced US-style segregation (residential separation, anti-interracial marriage laws etc.?), still nonetheless faced similar types of cultural/social discrimination as would be found across North America (not just the US) during that time period.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, a lot of Jewish neighborhoods became Black neighborhoods in the US. This includes the South Bronx and much of Brooklyn, Chicago's Lawndale area, Roxbury in Boston, much of the east side of Cleveland etc. Jews were more willing to sell to Blacks (and were faster to move to the suburbs) while working class Catholics were more defensive of their "turf" and initially resisted. It really wasn't until the white flight of the 1970s and later that Blacks really moved into formerly Italian and Polish neighborhoods.

In Toronto, the history is quite a bit less "intertwined" as we didn't have an equivalent of the Great Migrations, and the Black community was very small until about 1970 or so. But there is a history of these communities living together in the inner city and Canadian Jews such as Kalman Kaplansky and Alan Borovoy were very active in fighting segregation.

 

[wild goose chase]

Didn't Mayor Daley Sr. rip up the Little Italy and Greektown areas in his urban redevelopment schemes? Chicago's Italian area today is in inner ring western suburbs like Norridge and Elmwood Park. Greeks I assume have gone to the suburbs too but I don't know where.

Yeah, he basically razed Little Italy and also nearby Greektown to make way for a university campus in the 60s, despite great opposition. So, I guess it's not fair to compare ethnic neighbourhoods whose residents were displaced by purposely planned schemes to those that faded away "naturally" as the original inhabitants voluntarily chose to move away. Perhaps, if left alone, they could have been still thriving well today.

I kind of assumed that in large part, ethnic neighbourhoods lose their character mainly from assimilation (where ethno-cultural ties are no longer present to keep people together) without new growth and the next generation moving elsewhere by choice, but come to think of it, with Chicago's example, maybe in a lot of cases, that's not the case. I suppose even in cases that are not outright eviction or forced removal, in situations where gentrification raises prices, at some point the choice to leave is based on economics/practicality and is not a reflection of how much a community declines due to "assimilation".

 

[wild goose chase]

It really wasn't until the white flight of the 1970s and later that Blacks really moved into formerly Italian and Polish neighborhoods.

Would you say there is any analog in Canada, if not in Toronto of what people called "white flight" in the US? I know I hear people say that we didn't since we didn't have an internal Great Migration-like scenario and since many (most?) Black Canadians are later arriving immigrants than the time that "white flight" happened in the US and having a smaller population, are more integrated residentially than would be stateside.

Still I have heard others say that "old-stock" Canadians avoiding or moving out of areas where newer immigrants came in counts as a similar process but then the fact that most Canadian visible minorities are a lot newer and don't have the same long-standing history/tensions as American whites and African-Americans means that some could say it's an apples-to-oranges comparisons. I think Black Canadians are actually more racially integrated than other Canadian minorities like Asian Canadians, while it's the reverse in the US (where Black Americans are more segregated than Latino or Asian Americans) but that could just be a matter of differing relative proportions of which minority is largest in each country in addition to differing histories.

 

[prosperegal]

Would you say there is any analog in Canada, if not in Toronto of what people called "white flight" in the US? I know I hear people say that we didn't since we didn't have an internal Great Migration-like scenario and since many (most?) Black Canadians are later arriving immigrants than the time that "white flight" happened in the US and having a smaller population, are more integrated residentially than would be stateside.

Still I have heard others say that "old-stock" Canadians avoiding or moving out of areas where newer immigrants came in counts as a similar process but then the fact that most Canadian visible minorities are a lot newer and don't have the same long-standing history/tensions as American whites and African-Americans means that some could say it's an apples-to-oranges comparisons. I think Black Canadians are actually more racially integrated than other Canadian minorities like Asian Canadians, while it's the reverse in the US (where Black Americans are more segregated than Latino or Asian Americans) but that could just be a matter of differing relative proportions of which minority is largest in each country in addition to differing histories.

I don't know if blacks are "more" integrated. Most areas I lived in were typically mixed white (usually Jewish, some Anglo/old stock), Chinese and South Asian (mostly Indian) with some Koreans here or there and our schools reflected that.

 

[wild goose chase]

I don't know if blacks are "more" integrated. Most areas I lived in were typically mixed white (usually Jewish, some Anglo/old stock), Chinese and South Asian (mostly Indian) with some Koreans here or there and our schools reflected that.

Well, perhaps in part because there are more (east and south) Asian than black visible minorities in the city, the odds are higher that an Asian Torontonian would live with others of the same ethnicity nearby than the odds that a black Torontonian lives in a neighbourhood with just blacks.

There aren't really very large majority black neighbourhoods in Toronto and the GTA like there are in the US -- many places with a black presence (eg. the parts of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York or Brampton) also have Asians (East or South) too, like Chinese, Indians, Sri Lankans.

 

[wild goose chase]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1996.tb01746.x/abstract

This is a study, 20 years old (though a lot of demographics would have changed since, such as there being a lot more visible minorities in general now) that found" African Americans in the United States experience a higher level of residential segregation than Asians in U.S. cities. On the other hand, blacks in Canada experience the same low level of segregation as Asians."

 

[King of Kensington]

The most common country of birth outside the British Isles was the US until the 1921 census, then it was Poland in the 1931 and 1941 censuses.

 

[wild goose chase]

Toronto is not nearly as segregated as Chicago:

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/ethniccity2000.html

http://www.usa.com/rank/illinois-st...tract-rank.htm?hl=IL031390400&hlst=IL&yr=9000

Yeah, unfortunately Chicago is one of the more segregated cities in the US. In Toronto, if you ride the bus it is rare to see areas where almost all the riders are of one race for many city blocks at a time going down a long stretch of road, unlike Chicago and many other US cities in the East or Midwest. Another Canadian upon riding public transit once also told me her shock at seeing this, like me not having experienced it growing up either.

 

[wild goose chase]

The most common country of birth outside the British Isles was the US until the 1921 census, then it was Poland in the 1931 and 1941 censuses.

Toronto's most common foreign country of birth seems to have changed many times throughout the city's history (though I don't know if exceptionally so compared to most cities).

 

[King of Kensington]

Irish-born population, 1870/71:

Boston 56,900 22.7%
New York/Brooklyn 275,184 20.6%
Toronto 10,366 18.4%
San Francisco 25,864 17.3%
Pittsburgh 13,119 15.2%
Philadelphia 96,698 14.2%
Chicago 39,988 13.4%
Cleveland 9,964 10.7%
St. Louis 32,329 10.4%
Montreal 10,590 9.9%
Buffalo 11,264 9.6%
Detroit 6,970 8.8%
Washington 6,948 6.4%
Baltimore 15,223 5.7%

 

[King of Kensington]

Catholic population by ward, 1871:

St. David's 3,072 27.4%
St. Georges's 951 26.9%
St. Lawrence 975 25.3%
St. Patrick 1,876 23.7%
St. Andrew's 2,029 22.8%
St. James 1,920 19.6%
St. John's 1,058 9.7%

Here's the map of the wards then (wish I could find a better one):

https://766fa1237ef2c73d5b9e41a6d10...TiFXSLcNmNMeEJDeW82Nlk/hmt/browne-mt-845x.jpg

Virtually all Catholics were Irish at the time.

Toronto's first large minority group wasn't particularly segregated, and didn't make up a majority of any ward, but were concentrated more in the eastern part of the city and along the waterfront.