Chinatown

Toronto's original Chinatown developed in the early 20th century around Elizabeth Street near Old City Hall, home to Chinese immigrants who had come to Toronto after working on Western Canadian railways and paying the federal head tax imposed on Chinese immigration. That original Chinatown was largely demolished in the 1950s and 60s to build the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, displacing the community west to a stretch of Dundas Street West and Spadina Avenue that remains the heart of downtown Chinatown today.

Surviving urban renewal

The Spadina-area Chinatown itself faced a second existential threat in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the proposed Spadina Expressway would have cut directly through the neighbourhood; a sustained community and citywide campaign helped kill the expressway project in 1971, preserving Chinatown's streetscape. The neighbourhood grew substantially through waves of immigration from Hong Kong, mainland China and Vietnam in the following decades, and remains one of the largest and most visited Chinatowns in North America.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Chinatown, Toronto
• Wikipedia — Chinatown, Toronto

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