The unequal distribution of visible minorities through the city is more a question of economic opportunities and economic barriers.
Hamilton still lags far behind the rest of the province in the rate of visible minorities.
Linguistic diversity
THERE’S BEEN A CHANGING of the guard in Hamilton over the past decade when it comes to language.
After decades at the summit, Italian is no longer the most common foreign language spoken at home in Hamilton. Arabic has now replaced it, with 5,210 speakers, compared to 4,850 for Italian.
In fact, Italian could soon be pushed to third behind Spanish.
It’s a sign that the city’s second, third and fourth generations of people with Italian heritage have become increasingly assimilated. Arabic-speaking and Spanishspeaking immigrants, by contrast, are relatively new to Hamilton.
“That’s a phenomenon that happens in lots of immigrant groups,” said Sara Mayo, a planner with the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton. “When an immigrant group is newer to a country, they are much more likely to be speaking it at home.
“As their children go to school and develop relationships with English speakers, all languages kind of dissipate,” she added. “It’s unfortunate in a way that we lose that linguistic diversity as immigrant groups get assimilated into our community.
“It just hasn’t happened with Arabic speakers yet because they haven’t been here for 50 years. It’s a newer language to Hamilton.”
As a mother tongue, though, Italian remains king in Hamilton and will remain so for a while longer.
More than 15,000 people in the amalgamated city list Italian as their mother tongue and nearly one-quarter of those people live in Stoney Creek.
The four neighbourhoods with the most people listing Italian as their mother tongue are all in Stoney Creek.
In the neighbourhood bounded by Barton Street, Millen Road, Highway 8 and Green Road, about one in six people lists Italian as their mother tongue, the highest proportion in the city.
The census reveals the city’s incredible linguistic diversity.
Aside from English and French, 123 different languages are listed as the mother tongue of people living in Hamilton, including 13 different Aboriginal languages.
Among the other languages listed as mother tongues: Tigrigna, Oromo, Bilen, Ilocano, Kannada, Afrikaans, Norwegian, Konkani, Shona, Dinka and Scottish Gaelic.
In the small neighbourhood across from Eastgate Square mall — bounded by Centennial Parkway, Barton Street East, Battlefield Creek to north of Queenston Road — residents there list 58 different languages as their mother tongue.
Welcoming and not
THERE’S A SMALL neighbourhood designated as census tract 72.03 that lies opposite Eastgate Square mall on the east side of Centennial Parkway. It’s less than one square kilometre in size and it’s home to the Dominic Agostino Riverdale Community Centre.
There are 6,550 people living in that neighbourhood and 1,080 of them are refugees.
Then consider the suburban communities of Dundas and Flamborough. That's a total of 65,500 people — 10 times the population of census tract 72.03.
Of the 65,500 people in Dundas and Flamborough, just 490 of them are refugees.
In other words, there are more than twice as many refugees living in the tiny census tract of 72.03 than live in all of Dundas and Flamborough combined.
Nearly 80 per cent of Hamilton's refugees live in the former City of Hamilton.
Economic barriers are one reason for the concentration of refugees in the former City of Hamilton, where rents are generally lower.
"And language ability in English is certainly a major barrier to service for new immigrants and refugees," said Sara Mayo, a planner with the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton.
The proportion of visible minorities in Hamilton has more than doubled over the past 20 years.