The Magic Assembling:
Metropolitan Toronto Storefronts
and Street Scenes
© 1991 Multicultural History Society of Ontario
From almost every country in the world the immigrants come
like the magic assembling of a hundred constituents to form a chemical compound.
The elements that are to make the future Canadian are varied in national
color and character. Canada is the vast laboratory of grace in which God
is fashioning the final man. The final race will not be any one nationality,
but will be composed of elements from all races.
C.J. Cameron, Foreigners or Canadians?, 1913
FOREIGNERS? ALIENS? OTHERS?
Foreigners? Aliens? Others? These are some of the words that
have been used in Canada and elsewhere to describe groups deemed to be different.
Other terms include ghettos, ethnic enclaves, Little Italies,
and Chinatowns. As Robert Harney put it in his book Gathering
Place in 1985, these terms do not "describe the social system and
cultural life of particular groups of people in the city." Rather,
they "delineate the categories which such groups are supposed to inhabit."
People who accept these categories make no attempt to learn about or to
understand these groups.
This problem of terminology is ultimately a political problem. As participant
observers and political actors, we must realize that our words and understandings
are never neutral, just more or less biased. This said, the challenge remains
one of building (rather than burning) our bridges. Bridge building within
and between cultural groups takes many forms, whether it be exhibits such
as this one, or the acknowledgement and fostering of minority discourse.
Where immigration to Canada is concerned, understanding and tolerance are
particularly important now, a time when immigration - at close to half a
million in 1991 and 1992 - has reached levels that have not been seen since
the first decades of the twentieth century.
FOREIGNERS OR CANADIANS?
Foreigners or Canadians? The problem with this question is that
it transforms complex cultural issues into a single false and simplistic
division. First Nations peoples, Canadians and non-Canadians all have many
different identities, and in areas like Metropolitan Toronto, to be a Canadian
is to be a part of one of the most ethnically diverse urban populations
in the world.
Since the formation of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto in the 1950s,
immigration into the metropolitan area has gone hand in hand with dynamic
economic and cultural development. Given this history, Metropolitan Toronto
remains the number one destination for immigrants to Canada. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the study of ethnicity in Canada is best understood when
it is integrated into an urban framework. "No great North American
city can be understood without being studied as a city of immigrants, of
newcomers and their children, as a destination of myriad group and individual
migration projects." When Professor Robert Harney made this statement
in 1985, he invoked this warning from Italo Calvino's "pseudo-geography,"
Invisible Cities: "Beware of saying to them that sometimes different
cities follow one another on the same site with the same name, born and
dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves."
Getting beyond this lack of comprehension was one of Harney's objectives.
He spent several days before his sudden death in 1989 on the streets of
the City of Toronto, beginning a project of documenting urban storefronts
and street scenes. This exhibit includes some of the results of the photographic
work he directed, in addition to new words and images that extend beyond
the city into the metropolitan area.
STOREFRONT SERVICES
The [person] who had conquered the vagaries of English, [who]
could understand or circumvent the law, and [who] had some sense of the
situation could become the most important person in the "immigrant
community." People expected to pay in "cash and deference"
for "the use of knowledge of Canada" and its workings. A semi-professional,
commercial, and bureaucratic bourgeoisie was and is as much a part of an
ethnic neighbourhood- as their shopkeeper brethren.
Robert F. Harney and Harold Troper, Immigrants: Portrait of the Urban
Experience, 1975
The storefront services run by immigrants play an important role in helping
newcomers to adapt to and be assimilated in Canadian culture. At the same
time, these services enrich and are part of the ongoing change in our host
Canadian culture.
Immigrants need the services of experienced professionals from their own
groups not only for their fluency in the English language, but also for
their knowledge of Canadian economic, legal, and administrative practices.
Accountants and lawyers, bankers and travel agents offer services alongside
cleaners and tailors, florists and acupuncture therapists. Altogether, these
businesses bring a wide variety of international goods and services to city
streets.
It is true that the federal government sets broad policies for immigration,
refugee status, international development, and foreign aid. At the local
level within Metropolitan Toronto, however, thousands of immigrants earn
their living through wage labour and the businesses they run. Often they
share their prosperity with relatives and friends in their country of origin.
CULINARY CULTURES
Virtually every immigrant grouphas established its own grocery stores, restaurants,
and import and distribution companies. These ethnic establishments not only
provide for the special dietary needs of their people; they also add to
the number and the variety of goods available in Metropolitan Toronto.
* In Rexdale, a Jamaican vendor of tropical fruit and vegetables,
meat and fish, beckons to customers from the Caribbean community.
* An Italian meat wholesaler in the City of York has expanded from his traditional
market to cater almost exclusively to a new and growing West Indian clientele.
* In the City of Toronto, an elegant restaurant and banquet hall serves
authentic Greek cuisine.
* An Indian grocery and variety store in North York seeks a larger clientele
with a storefront sign in English and Italiese (Italian English).
These establishments try to appeal to the dominant English language culture
in Metropolitan Toronto, as well as to their own people and other groups.
Given the movement of ethnic groups through different areas of the city,
these entrepreneurs have got to be flexible to survive. The result is a
practical and potent form of multiculturalism.
WINDOWS ON THE WORLD
While Metropolitan Toronto still has remnants of "Toronto the Good"
in its character, Victorian parochialism has clearly given way to a new
cosmopolitanism. Since the 1950s, the growth of the Metropolitan area has
been shaped by massive immigration from other parts of Canada and from countries
outside the British Commonwealth. Today, Metro Toronto's storefronts provide
windows on this wider world.
In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan celebrated the idea of the global village.
Television, he said, would serve to unite us all, and in certain ways this
may be true. Within Metropolitan Toronto, everyone can watch the same channels.
Abroad, television encourages people in all countries to want economic well-being
and Western forms of democracy.
Metropolitan Toronto has been affected by this internationalism as much
as any other metropolitan area. Today it has one of the most ethnically
varied urban populations in the world.
ETHNOGEOGRAPHY
What is the shape of our metropolitan diversity? Toronto clearly does not
have a multicultural inner city surrounded by WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
suburbs. Stereotypes are being broken and labels quickly outdated by ongoing
urban transformations.
Italians are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Greater Toronto area.
The first waves of Italian immigrants settled in inner city neighbourhoods,
but in recent years the City of Toronto's Little Italy has been home to
fewer Italians. Storefront businesses from the 1950s and 1960s still survive,
and in some cases flourish. In terms of actual residents, however, Little
Italy is today more Portuguese than Italian, with significant numbers of
other groups such as Vietnamese, Chinese, and even ethnically nondescript
Yuppies.
Metro's suburbs are becoming less suburban. Areas such as Etobicoke, North
York, and Scarborough might be thought of as outer cities in relation to
the central city of Toronto. In addition to high-density clusters of buildings
these outer cities have their own Chinatowns and Little Indias. All six
of the municipalities in Metropolitan Toronto are multicultural in composition
and in character.
COMPLEX SUBJECTS
* Ethnicity is a North American process; it is a continual
negotiation of
identity within a context of the concentric circles of loyalty and
patriotism towards family, friends, city, country of origin ... and
country of immigration.
* The immigrant often lives in a whirl of conflicting or mutually
unintelligible written, spoken and semiotic texts which [serve as]
guides in choices of loyalty and identification.
Robert Harney, If One Were to Write a History, 1991
In this time of rapid global transformation, the above statements increasingly
apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants alike. To varying degrees, we
are all caught up in a swirl of "semiotic texts" and "negotiations
of identity."
During the last three decades, we have become aware that we have not one
national identity, but multiple identities. As the world becomes more complex
and more changeable, each of us has something to learn from immigrant experiences.
And across the metropolitan area, it is the hybrid nature of ethnicity,
as much or more than any single "pure forms," that we need to
embrace.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES!
Arnold Itwaru reminds us in his book The Invention of Canada that
a country is always in a state of flux between what it sees as its origins
and what it sees itself becoming. On the streets of Metropolitan Toronto,
the "new Canada" of the twenty-first century is not invisible
- at least for those who take the time to look. How do we frame and interpret
what we see?
During the course of making this exhibit (December 1992 through February
1993), Toronto newspapers reported that:
* By the late 1980s Chinese had displaced Italian as the leading
second
language in Metropolitan Toronto, reflecting the increase of "visible
minorities" among immigrants to Canada.
* By 1991, 38 percent, or approximately 1,450,000 of the 3.8 million
people who live in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area belonged to
immigrants groups.
At the same time, the national press reported intense debates on federal
immigration and refugee policies, while the tabloid press gave full colour
coverage to hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan.
For the most part, however, Metropolitan Toronto is not a place of polarized
extremes. Keeping it this way requires that every one of us must become
engaged as a citizen of the city, the metropolitan area, the nation, and
the world.
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Curators:
Michael McMahon, Metropolitan Toronto Archives
Dr. Lillian Petroff, Multicultural History Society of Ontario
Exhibit Photography:
Dr. David Coleman
Michael McMahon
Vince Pietropaolo
Photographic Printing:
Toni Hafkensheid
Riley's Colour Lab
Exhibit Research and Production:
Angela Iozzo
Manda Vranic
Text Design and Editing:
Jim Miller
Rosemary Shipton
Urban Alliance on Race Relations Collection:
The Urban Alliance on Race Relations was formed in 1975 to promote a healthy
multiracial environment in Metro. The U.A.R.R. encourages better race relations
in our multicultural population through education programs directed at schools,
the media, police, social service agencies, and various levels of government.
In 1992, the U.A.R.R. donated their papers to the Metro Archives. The collection
contains all of the files of the U.A.R.R from 1975 to 1990, including administrative
files, correspondence, research studies, and the journal Currents,
as well as extensive newspaper clipping files. It is valuable to anyone
interested in race relations or urban studies.
A Country of Immigrants
For the last two centuries, Canada has been one possible destination for
those wishing--or needing--to leave their countries of birth and make a
new life elsewhere. Today immigration to Canada is at its highest since
1957. In 1991, 118,630 people became new citizens of Canada.
The ethnicity of people immigrating to Canada has changed since the Second
World War. Then, most immigrants came from Britain and Europe. Now, immigrants
come increasingly from such countries as China, India, and the Philippines.
New Canadians may speak languages other than Canada's two official ones,
English and French, and all bring "cultural baggage" to their
new country. All levels of government--federal, provincial, and municipal--must
study and be sensitive to the needs of their new constituents.
Metro's Changing Population
As One of Canada's largest cities, Metropolitan Toronto attracts a high
proportion, 28%, of immigrants to Canada. Because of this, over the last
forty years, the ethnic makeup of the Metro area has changed considerably.
In 1951, 73% of people in the Metro census area traced their sole ancestry
back to the British Isles. Now, only 19% of the population does so.
This exhibit, The Magic Assembling, shows how Metro's streets have
changed under the influence of immigration. More subtle changes have also
occurred. For example, Metro has created a Multicultural and Race Relations
Division, to help all Metro residents live free from discrimination and
participate in all aspects of municipal life. Metro also offers its services
in a variety of languages.
Multicultural History Society of Ontario
The Multicultural History Society of Ontario was formed in 1976 to preserve
and record Ontario's immigrant and ethnic history. Its collections are an
important resource, containing oral, written, and visual history. The MHSO
also promotes current research, and publishes scholarly works, memoirs,
and other materials about the experiences and cultural contributions of
ethnic groups in Ontario.
Professor Robert Harney (1939-1989) was the founding director and president
of the MHSO. Photographs taken under his direction in 1989 were displayed
at the MHSO as an exhibit named The Magic Assembling. Some of those
photographs are in the updated version of this exhibit, which is displayed
in the Metro Archives today.
Website design: TG Magazine, 1996