BTW, did East Indians actually live near Gerrard Indiatown in the past?
I believe I read somewhere that the South Asian-ification of the commercial strip here started with the opening of a Bollywood cinema in the 1970s. Over time, other establishments opened up on Gerrard to cater to the South Asians drawn down there by the cinema. As far as I know, there was never a huge South Asian population in the residential areas surrounding it. Interestingly, according to the City's
Neighbourhood Profile for Greenwood-Coxwell, the area's South Asian population has increased both in hard numbers and as a percentage of the whole in both periods from 1996-2001 and 2001-2006. They still only represent about 10% of the population, and the neighbourhood stretches all the way from Milverton in the North to Eastern in the South (so they're not necessarily living directly in the Gerrard area).
Interestingly, the 2006 census saw the decline of people in the neighbourhood who spoke Hindi and Pashto as home languages, while Urdu and Punjabi-speaking households increased. It's hard to track further changes in the South Asian community though as the 2001 neighbourhood profile recorded the numbers for "East Indians," while the 2006 profile breaks this down into "Indians" and "Pakistanis." This might not be so much a typical gentrification story as much as it is the result of the diversification of the GTA's South Asian community - i.e. Indian-origin Punjabi and Gujarati-speaking Sikhs/Hindus in Brampton/Mississauga/Etobicoke, Tamils in Scarbrorough, Urdu-speaking Muslims in East York, Bengali-speakers in the East End, etc. Though of course, as with any ethnic group, there are members of each scattered throughout the GTA in various concentrations. However, each of these communities are now large enough to have their own centres not necessarily relying on one shared commercial strip. Think of the parallel to the GTA's Chinese population, which has seen the growth of distinct neighbourhoods of Cantonese-speakers, Mandarin-speakers, Vietnamese Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, etc. The Gerrard Bazaar may be becoming a more local strip serving the area's South Asian community instead of a regional centre for the entirety of the GTA's South Asian communities. That said, this doesn't mean the Bazaar's days are numbered by any means.
Just as an aside, I wonder how "white" (read "WASP") gentrification remains in Toronto, or how long
that will last.