A civil war refugee wave built one of the largest Somali communities in North America
Somali Toronto
Somalia's collapse into civil war in 1991 sent large numbers of refugees to Toronto, particularly to apartment towers in Etobicoke, building one of the largest Somali communities anywhere outside East Africa.
.jpg)
Advertisement
Somalia's central government collapsed into civil war in 1991, triggering a mass displacement that sent hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing the country, with a significant number eventually settling in Toronto through the 1990s as refugees and refugee claimants. The scale and suddenness of that displacement gave Toronto's Somali community a different character than immigrant communities that had built up more gradually over generations, arriving instead in a compressed period of crisis-driven migration.
A community concentrated in Etobicoke's towers
Many Somali newcomers settled in apartment towers in Etobicoke, particularly around Dixon Road, building a dense community concentration that became one of the largest Somali populations in North America. The community has built mosques, community organizations and businesses reflecting its scale, while also navigating the particular challenges of a population that arrived overwhelmingly as refugees fleeing an active conflict rather than through more conventional immigration streams.
Advertisement
Sources
Continue reading
Etobicoke
From a rural township incorporated in 1850 to a postwar suburb that grew from under 40,000 people to over…
Toronto's Tech Scene
Toronto has quietly become one of North America's largest tech hubs — enough that it's earned the nickname…
Seneca, Centennial and Humber Colleges
Ontario had no province-wide network of applied, career-focused colleges before 1965. A single bill from…
Michael Ondaatje's Toronto
Ondaatje's 1987 novel In the Skin of a Lion turned the building of the Bloor Viaduct and the R.C. Harris…