Not just a slogan

Toronto's Multiculturalism, By The Numbers

Toronto's reputation as one of the most diverse cities on Earth isn't marketing copy — the actual demographic numbers back it up, and they're the direct reason this dictionary exists at all.

Kensington Market, one of Toronto's most multicultural neighbourhoods — Kensington Market — Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 4.0

Toronto has been named the most diverse city in the world by both the United Nations and the BBC. That's not a slogan — it's the direct precondition for everything else on this site.

The immigrant population

According to the 2016 census, 49% of Toronto's population was born outside Canada — just under half the city, among the highest immigrant shares of any major city on Earth, trailing only Miami as an immigrant-gateway city. Toronto alone accounts for roughly 36% of Canada's entire immigrant population.

Visible minority population and language diversity

By the 2021 census, Toronto's visible minority population was about 1.54 million people — 55.7% of the city's total population. The Toronto region is home to people from an estimated 250 countries, speaking somewhere between 160 and 190 languages, with over 250 distinct ethnicities represented.

Why this is the whole premise of this site

Density this high, sustained across multiple immigration waves concentrated in specific inner-suburb neighbourhoods, is exactly the mechanism linguists point to for how Multicultural Toronto English — what this whole dictionary documents — actually formed. The numbers on this page aren't background trivia; they're the direct cause of every entry in the dictionary itself.

Sources

Related dictionary terms

Mans Wagwan Wallahi

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