One neighbourhood, five separate immigrant waves
Kensington Market
Kensington Market has changed its dominant culture at least four times in a century — Jewish in the 1920s, then Portuguese, Italian, Caribbean and Asian in succession — without ever losing its street-market character.
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Our general neighbourhoods guide touches on Kensington Market briefly. It deserves more room than that — few Toronto neighbourhoods have changed their dominant culture as many times, or as visibly, while staying recognizably the same place.
The Jewish Market (1920s–1950s)
Kensington Market took shape in the early 1900s as Eastern European Jewish immigrants, many arriving from the nearby "Ward" district near City Hall, settled the area west of Spadina and opened shops serving their own community's needs. Through the 1920s it was known simply as the Jewish Market, and the wave lasted into the 1950s and 60s before many Jewish families moved to other parts of the city.
Wave after wave since
As Jewish families moved on, Kensington absorbed successive waves of Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Caribbean and Vietnamese immigration through the 1960s and 70s — part of the same broader pattern documented in our ethnic enclaves guide, but happening within a single compact neighbourhood rather than spread across the city. Each wave left its mark rather than erasing what came before, which is why the market today still reads as a genuine layered patchwork rather than one dominant culture.
Pedestrian Sundays (since 2004)
Since 2004, Pedestrian Sundays has closed the market to car traffic on the last Sunday of each month from May through October — a "community, culture and ecology" event that turns the neighbourhood's narrow streets over entirely to musicians, artists and pedestrians, reinforcing the market's longstanding identity as one of the most walkable, human-scaled parts of the city.
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