Jami Mosque

The Jami Mosque, on Boustead Avenue in the High Park neighbourhood, is one of the oldest dedicated mosques in Toronto. It grew out of the Muslim Society of Toronto, founded in the 1950s by the small number of Muslim families then living in the city — a mix of families with roots in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Arab world. For its first years the Society held prayers in members' homes and rented spaces, since there was no dedicated mosque building anywhere in the city. It purchased and converted a building on Boustead Avenue, formally dedicated in 1969 — the first time Toronto's Muslim community had a permanent, dedicated place of worship.

A growing community

At the time it opened, the Jami Mosque served a Muslim population in Toronto numbering only in the low thousands. That population grew enormously after changes to Canadian immigration policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s opened the door to much larger waves of migration from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. As the community grew, new mosques opened across the Greater Toronto Area to serve it, but the Jami Mosque retained its place as one of its oldest institutions and remains an active congregation today.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Jami Mosque (Toronto)
• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Islam in Canada

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