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Old 12-02-2016, 02:31 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
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One of the things you notice about Toronto is often you have "ethnic commercial areas" or areas where people from a certain ethnic community like to hang out which is different from where the ethnic community lives. How often are these where people live, and how often are they elsewhere?



Koreans: Mostly live near Yonge and Finch, and that area does have retail and such catering to them, but then there's also Koreatown around Bloor and Manning which doesn't seem to have a significant Korean population.



South Asians: lots of South Asian themed retail in the areas where they live, especially older areas like North Rexdale, Malton and Scarborough. I happened to be in Thistletown when India won the cricket world cup and there was a lot of celebrating in the parking lots around Albion and Islington so I guess that area must be one of the centres of their community, it definitely has lots of South Asian themed retail. In Brampton it seems like it's often just 1-2 South Asian themed businesses alongside a bunch of generic chain stores.

Then there's Little India which I'm not sure why that particular area was chosen since there aren't really many Indians living there and it's not as accessible as Chinatown or Koreantown or Greektown for drawing in tourists. You could say it's sort of in between the NW and NE South Asian enclaves of the GTA but I think it's too far from Brampton, Malton, etc to attract many people from there.



Chinese: Mostly it's a lot of Chinese themed malls near where most Chinese people live, centred around Pacific Mall. But there's also the two footholds near downtown with Chinatown and Chinatown East. However, unlike Koreatown and Little India, there is a decent sized Chinese community living near those two Chinatowns. There's a fair bit of Chinese restaurants around Dundas and Elizabeth, not sure if it's just a coincidence that that's where The Ward (Toronto's first Chinatown) used to be and now Chinese restaurants have set up there to cater to tourists and office workers?



West Indians: Mostly live in same areas to South Asians. Is Eglinton West and Oakwood-Vaughan still what it used to be to Toronto's West Indian community? Or have areas around Jane St and Weston Rd become more important? Eglinton West seems pretty mixed now and not very West Indian dominated at all when it comes to retail now, but I haven't been there 20-30 years ago to compare to how it used to be. Is there much West Indian themed retail in the east side anywhere?
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Old 12-02-2016, 02:41 PM
 
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Re: West Indians, more interesting is the holdouts around Bathurst and Bloor.

From the old African Canadian descended community, there's still a Black church on Huron St. right in the heart of Chinatown. Until the 1960s mass immigration, the Black community was concentrated around Spadina and Dundas. Today I believe Black Nova Scotians and their descendants make up most of the congregation, though they come from all over.
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Old 12-02-2016, 02:56 PM
 
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Another ethnic amenity that remains in an area long depopulated by the ethnic community in question is there is a big Polish church at Denison Ave. and Queen. In the early 20th century - prior to the shift to Parkdale and High Park (and onto Etobicoke and Mississauga) the Polish and Ukrainian communities were centered around Queen and Bathurst.

Also there's quite a few Jewish amenities in the South Annex/Kensington area. 60 years ago this was a Jewish neighborhood, but the community was moving northward up Bathurst into Forest Hill and North York. Today you still have the JCC at Bloor and Spadina (which underwent major renovations about 15 years ago), synagogues on Brunswick Ave and Markham St. and in Kensington Market, the Harbord Bakery, and two more recent Jewish-themed restaurants on College (Free Times and Caplansky's). To some extent this reflects the revitalization of Jewish life in the area. Today Harbord Village (aka South Annex) and the Annex proper are more than 10% Jewish, not as high as further up Bathurst, but still pretty significant. However, while Jews who have moved out do frequent the area, I suspect these amenities mostly serve the downtown Jewish community.
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Old 12-02-2016, 03:35 PM
 
Location: Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by King of Kensington View Post
Re: West Indians, more interesting is the holdouts around Bathurst and Bloor.

From the old African Canadian descended community, there's still a Black church on Huron St. right in the heart of Chinatown. Until the 1960s mass immigration, the Black community was concentrated around Spadina and Dundas. Today I believe Black Nova Scotians and their descendants make up most of the congregation, though they come from all over.
Interesting. I always wondered if Toronto had a historical black community.
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Old 12-02-2016, 04:11 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
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Downtown does have a pretty good sized Jewish community, around 10,000 or 5% of the downtown population, which is not as high a % as the Bathurst corridor further north, but should still be enough to support a few synagogues and Jewish businesses. Most areas still have a lot fewer Jews than that, although they're about 3-4% of the GTA population, most of them live around Bathurst which means most other parts of the GTA are <0.5% Jewish. Like Oakville has only 600 Jews but that's still enough to have a synagogue. Also somewhere like JCC is still quite accessible since it's right on the subway line that serves Toronto's Jewish communities further north and I'm sure many Jews head down that way anyways to work or shop downtown.

As for the Polish church, I can see places of worship like that sticking around longer than you'd expect. If you have a hole in the wall Italian restaurant, then ultimately the retail space is just a hole in the wall. The restaurant can easily move into a hole in the wall retail space in a strip mall in Woodbridge, and a Vietnamese restaurant (or w/e) can easily take it's place. However churches like that are quite an architectural achievement, not to mention each denomination will have their own preferred architectural style, so it'll be rather awkward to convert it into Buddhist temple... And although some religions aren't too fussy about how their places of worship look (ex Muslims?) I'm not sure they'll appreciate the beauty of a Gothic revival church the same way as people for which that kind of architecture is part of their culture.

And the Baptist Church at Huron St... How many Black churches are there in the whole GTA? Are there even any others? And where do those Black Nova Scotians (and anyone else that would consider going there) live? If they're all spread out from Peel to Toronto to Durham, but they're not numerous enough to support multiple Black churches, then I guess having the church in the middle of the city is not such a bad location.
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Old 12-02-2016, 05:10 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanLuis View Post
Interesting. I always wondered if Toronto had a historical black community.
In 1951, Toronto (current city limits) had a population of 1,117,470.

Major ethnic groups were

British: 812,498
Jewish*: 59,448
French: 31,853
Ukrainian: 29,262
Italian: 27,962
Polish: 26,998
German: 19,329
Dutch: 12,452
Scandinavia: 6,657
Russian: 5,846
Other European: 41,482

Asian: 9,786
Other: 33,897

So about 96% European. I'm not sure how much of "other" would be black, as opposed to other groups - the main one I can think of would be Natives (Indians), my guess would be a decent portion.

*ethnically Jewish, 66,773 were religiously Jewish


It's only by 1971 that Native Indians got their own category in the census.
By that point, it was
Toronto: 2,086,015
European: 1,782,065
Native Indian: 5,540
Asian: 65,640
Other: 232,770

I'd assuming most of the "other" group in 1951 were blacks since even by 1971 the Aboriginal population was still low and what else could that group include? So maybe 25-30k blacks?
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Old 12-02-2016, 05:29 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
Downtown does have a pretty good sized Jewish community, around 10,000 or 5% of the downtown population, which is not as high a % as the Bathurst corridor further north, but should still be enough to support a few synagogues and Jewish businesses. Most areas still have a lot fewer Jews than that, although they're about 3-4% of the GTA population, most of them live around Bathurst which means most other parts of the GTA are <0.5% Jewish. Like Oakville has only 600 Jews but that's still enough to have a synagogue. Also somewhere like JCC is still quite accessible since it's right on the subway line that serves Toronto's Jewish communities further north and I'm sure many Jews head down that way anyways to work or shop downtown.
That's right. Virtually all Jews in the GTA live in inner Toronto, North York and York Region.

The major Jewish concentration in Toronto is of course is centered along Bathurst, from St. Clair to Thornhill. Secondary concentrations exist in York Mills, North Toronto, the Annex and Yorkville, and St. Clair West - and even those areas aren't too far from the Bathurst corridor.
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Old 12-02-2016, 05:32 PM
 
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That "other" figure from 1951 includes European groups not listed. There were perhaps 5000 Blacks in Toronto then from the estimates I've seen.
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Old 12-02-2016, 05:42 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
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Quote:
Originally Posted by King of Kensington View Post
That "other" figure from 1951 includes European groups not listed. There were perhaps 5000 Blacks in Toronto then from the estimates I've seen.
Except you already have the "other European" category for that, which I'm assuming would include mixed European ancestry (unless you just went with the ancestry of the paternal line back then?). To me that implies "other" means "not European, not Asian". So that would be mixed race, American indian, and Black/African, and I suppose North Africans which aren't really Black, though I doubt there were very many of those.
https://archive.org/stream/195198195...ge/n3/mode/2up
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Old 12-02-2016, 06:14 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
There's a fair bit of Chinese restaurants around Dundas and Elizabeth, not sure if it's just a coincidence that that's where The Ward (Toronto's first Chinatown) used to be and now Chinese restaurants have set up there to cater to tourists and office workers?
That stretch of Dundas has been more and more dominated by Japanese businesses in recent years, it's now been branded as "Little Tokyo".

http://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2016..._little_tokyo/
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