Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've found that montreal's european enclaves seem to greater define the city's than toronto's. The greek and Italian influences on montreal not to mention jewish are more pronounced in the city than Toronto's it seems. Even though numerically toronto likely has more members.
I've found that montreal's european enclaves seem to greater define the city's than toronto's. The greek and Italian influences on montreal not to mention jewish are more pronounced in the city than Toronto's it seems. Even though numerically toronto likely has more members.
Yes, Montreal reminds me of an east coast American city, just further inland and French-speaking......Toronto just feels differant...not east coast, nor midwestern
Yes, Montreal reminds me of an east coast American city, just further inland and French-speaking......Toronto just feels differant...not east coast, nor midwestern
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,060,466 times
Reputation: 11862
I was actually surprised Canada had more Italians per capita than Australia. Sydney and Melbourne in particular often seem defined by their European culture...can't count the number of times I've heard Melbourne described as a 'European' city. Italian, Greek and other European culture is very much a long-standing part of culture - Italian restaurants, cafes, gelaterias, etc everywhere...some places have more Italians than any other group, and it's still common to hear Italian spoken in the city. Perth, too, has areas that are very Italian, dominated by Italian restaurants, cafes, businesses.etc.
Italian was, after English, the second largest mother tongue in Toronto sometime during the 1980s (the years of The Kids of Degrassi Street!).
I have the atlas book Canada and the World: an atlas resource. published in 1985, and on one of the pages featuring Toronto there is a visual graph/chart showing "First Languages in Metropolitan Toronto" (which is the same as the city of Toronto itself now, post-1998 amalgamation, so it's not going to include Woodbridge or anything). And I will now post what I see on the page since I do happen to have the book on hand.
Looking at the graph, it looks like about a bit more than 32% of the population had a non-English first language then (actually I'm guessing maybe they used the 1981 census) and 8.5% of that was Italian. Chinese and Portuguese both made up 3% each, and German and Greek both were 2% each. Ukrainian was 1%, and Polish looks like 1.5%. French looks also like 1.5%, maybe less. A full 10% was composed of "other" languages.
Also, on the same page, there are choropleth maps of Metropolitan Toronto by first languages and first language Italian-speakers did occupy a lot of census tracts on the west side of the city (with a few census tracts that were over 42% mother-tongue Italian-speakers, and a fairly large number of census tracts that had 20-something or 30-something % of them).
These stats represent Toronto in the 1980s, but as someone who grew up in the '90s, indeed, a fair number of my classmates were of Italian descent, and I was aware of an elementary school that had an Italian-language immersion program, because a friend of mine went to it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
but if you ever write the book, let me know!
