A world tour, one streetcar ride apart

Toronto's Ethnic Enclaves

Beyond the general neighbourhood map, Toronto has a specific set of streets that function as living cultural districts — three separate Chinatowns, a Greektown that was once the largest in North America, and more.

Chinatown along Spadina Avenue in Toronto
Chinatown, Spadina Avenue — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Advertisement

Our general neighbourhoods guide covers the city's broad geography. This is the more specific layer underneath it — commercial strips that function as living cultural districts, each with its own settlement history.

Chinatown (actually three of them)

Toronto doesn't have one Chinatown — it has three, plus several smaller nodes people casually call by the same name. The downtown Chinatown along Spadina Avenue is the best known, and it has its own layered history: the site was a Jewish immigrant district before it became predominantly Chinese, first through immigration from southern China and Hong Kong and, more recently, mainland China.

Little Italy

Centred on College Street between Ossington and Bathurst, Little Italy formed in the early 20th century and grew substantially after both world wars as Italian immigration to Toronto accelerated. It remains one of the city's most concentrated restaurant-and-café strips, and hosts a large public screening party during the FIFA World Cup whenever Italy plays.

Greektown (the Danforth)

Through the 1970s and 80s, the Danforth was regarded as the largest Greektown in North America — one estimate from 1976 put roughly 65,000 Greek residents in the surrounding area, though the strip has always shared space with Estonian, Lithuanian, Italian, Chinese and Finnish communities too. It's now also home to Toronto's Taste of the Danforth street festival each August.

Little India and Little Portugal

Little India, also known as the Gerrard India Bazaar on Gerrard Street East, traces back to one businessman opening a South Asian movie theatre and building a commercial strip around it. Little Portugal, around Dundas Street West, formed alongside Little Italy as part of the same mid-20th-century wave of Southern European immigration to west-end Toronto.

Advertisement

Sources

More in the Toronto Guide

Browse the slang dictionary → Read the history of Toronto slang →