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In which of these decades do you think Toronto started to be considered "diverse"?

When?

  • 1960s

    Votes: 1 8.3%
  • 1970s

    Votes: 5 41.7%
  • 1980s

    Votes: 2 16.7%
  • 1990s

    Votes: 4 33.3%
  • 2000s

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    12

wild goose chase

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The message that Toronto's one of the most diverse cities worldwide is bandied around so much that it's almost a stock phrase, and I would say that millenial Torontonians would have probably grown up with it more or less their entire lives. What decade do you think that Toronto, by outsiders and locals, alike, was considered an exemplar of a multicultural city?

I'd say personally perhaps the latter part of the 80s to the 90s that it was the case. I feel like the whole celebration, acceptance and experience of multiculturalism really ramped up in the 90s onwards.
 
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I'd say the 80s as well - maybe starting in 1985 or so. When my family first moved to the "suburbs" (well, the Willowdale area) in the late 70s (I was born in '79), they still went down to "Chinatown" for Chinese food. I remember going to restaurants there when I was a toddler. We stopped going down some time in the mid-80s when a large number of restaurants and shops started opening in Agincourt (save for my parents' lunch breaks - they worked downtown, so Chinatown was, of course, much more convenient for them). We then started to spend more time in Markham in the early 90s. We could get whatever we wanted in Agincourt and Markham - without the crowds, bad parking and (perceived) crime.
 
It was actually probably in the early 1900s when there were floods of non-English Europeans moving here. Of course, though this was 'diversity' to those folks who were used to English, Scottish and Irish people, we would not consider it to be now but ....
 
I voted 1980s. I remember arriving from the UK as a lad in 1971 and where we lived at Derry Rd. and Winston Churchill it was remarkable to have one Asian kid in our class. By the late 1980s when I left the area was much more diverse.
 
I'd say Toronto started to be considered diverse on December 6, 1954. I think we can actually mark the precise date on the calendar rather than pointing to a decade.

Ah, the election of Nathan Phillips! An interesting demarcation choice!
 
http://www.yorku.ca/lfoster/2006-07...nUrbanLegend_TorontosMulticulturalLegend.html

The claim that the United Nations declared Toronto the most multicultural city (an urban legend as there wasn't any UN report ever found saying this) originated and spread throughout the media in the latest 80s and into the 90s.

As an 80s-born "millenial" I guess, I do vaguely remember a phase in my childhood growing up where Torontonian pride seemed to center around this (alongside the "tallest free-standing structure in the world" thing) because many adults around me (eg. teachers etc.) would keep bringing this up.
 
Like it or not, Toronto can be a very "classist" city. I think the whole multiculturalism thing came when more (visible and/or religious) minorities joined the middle class.
 

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