Black neighbourhood hubs continue to face an uncertain future. Kofi Hope,
Greektown, Little India, Chinatown, Little Portugal, Corsa Italia. Our city is full of officially recognized neighbourhoods that speak to the legacy of the various ethno-cultural groups who helped build our city.
But in 2010, when a group of residents attempted to follow in this tradition by getting a small portion of the Danforth named Little Ethiopia, the local Business Improvement Association resisted and it was ultimately unsuccessful.
This highlights a reality in our city: There are no officially recognized neighbourhoods that acknowledge the presence and legacy of Black Torontonians. Even Little Jamaica along Eglinton West is “officially” referred to as the York-Eglinton International Market.
Here at the end of Black History month, I’ve been pondering the legacy and historical lack of support for Black spaces in this city. The pandemic has demonstrated how much place matters in Toronto: There is a clear geography to where we find those most affected by COVID-19.
And we know Black people in Toronto are increasingly concentrated in those parts of the city — lower-income neighbourhoods outside of the core, ill-served by public transit and other factors which promote community health.
At the same time as gentrification continues its steady march across every corner of Toronto, Black folks find themselves increasingly being priced out of the mega-city.
As we shift our gaze to Black futures, we can’t avoid the importance of place, specifically spaces where Black businesses, community organizations, cultural institutions and places of worship can cluster and provide a sense of belonging and mutual support.
This month, I want to take a journey reflecting on these spaces of the past and consider how we enrich and expand present day Black commercial and social hubs in Toronto.
When one explores the history of Black Toronto, there are two major periods of migration and presence in our city. The first goes from the mid-1800s until the 1950s and is primarily the story of Black communities with roots in the United States, many who escaped enslavement south of the border.
But we must never forget that slavery was part of Toronto’s history as well. For example, we know that Peter Russell (who Peter Street is named after) put out a newspaper ad in 1806 for the sale of two enslaved African-Canadians.
During this period, many Black folks would have settled in a low-income neighbourhood known as The Ward, whose borders were formed by College, Queen, University and Yonge Street. An African Methodist church built in 1845, located just north of Osgoode Hall, served as a hub for the community, and centre for the city’s abolitionist movement.
Interestingly, this first period was one of population decline. In 1855 there were 1,000 Black folks living in a city of 47,000, making up two per cent of the city’s population. This small but significant minority was a high point, as for the next 100 years the Black community’s share of the total population declined, as Blacks returned to the U.S., especially after the Civil War.
The second period was from the 1950s onward, as Canada’s immigration policy began to change. It started in the 1950s with women from the Caribbean being allowed to immigrate to serve as domestic servants in white homes.
Daniel Hill wrote a fascinating thesis about Toronto’s emergent Caribbean community in 1960, noting that in the 1950s, Toronto’s Caribbean
community “primarily yearned for two things: a distinct Negro district in Toronto, complete with its own businesses, institutions and social life, and open immigration for West Indians desiring to come to Canada.”
Both desires would be achieved to some extent over that decade, as our immigration system liberalized and West Indian people (primarily of Jamaican ancestry) settled across the city in working-class neighbourhoods like Jane and Finch, the Danforth and Malton.
In the 1970s, Lawrence Heights and the Village at St. Clair and Eglinton also saw significant arrival of people from the Caribbean.
But the two major hubs for the community were Bathurst Street and Eglinton West. In 2016, Chinedu Ukabam, with support and encouragement from a Different Booklist owner Itah Sadu, curated the “Welcome to Blackhust Street” exhibition chronicling the Black history of the Bathurst area.
Blackhurst’s heart was Seaton Village, a strip of businesses between Bloor and Dupont that Royson James called in this paper “the axis of immigrant Caribbean-Canadian life.”
It was a strip populated by barber shops, grocers, bookstores, a Black-owned auto shop, photography studio and the offices of community publication Contrast Newspaper.
I experienced that legacy of
finding connection along Bathurst. In 2002, shortly after I moved from Mississauga to residence at U of T, I asked my friend Nana Kwame, “Yo man, where should I go get a haircut?” He sent me to Golden Barbershop on Bathurst.
Soon I was making regular pilgrimages to Bloor and Bathurst to get a fresh cut and then wandering over to A Different Booklist to lose myself in books on African history and Black politics.
Later that year, I went out for lunch with my “uncle” Gervan — family friend and now Brock University president Gervan Fearon. He shared with me his own experience decades earlier of coming to Bathurst for haircuts, books and culture, explaining how many Black businesses had been lost over the years.
Learning that story and feeling that sense of connection across generations helped to ground me in Toronto.
That’s why these spaces are more than a collection of businesses and services, these Black hubs in our cities are anchor points, places where those of African descent can find connection and rootedness in a city where Black perspectives are many times absent from the mainstream.
The premiere space where this happens today is Eglinton West — Little Jamaica. City historian Richard Gerrard notes that the first record of the neighbourhood being referred to as Little Jamaica was in 1969. Little Jamaica runs
roughly from Allen Road in the East to Keele in the West.
As Cheryl Blackman, director of museums and heritage service for the city of Toronto notes, “Little Jamaica is the heartbeat of Black-owned and Caribbean-owned business in Toronto.”
Cheryll Case, whose practice CP Planning co-authored “Black Futures on Eglinton” with Black Urbanism TO in 2020, noted the rich cultural and musical legacy of Eglinton.
At one point it was one of the premier locations in North America for purchasing reggae music, with many titans of the genre having spent time living and recording along Eglinton, even earning a shout out in Black Uhuru’s 1981 “Youths of Eglinton.”
Appropriately, in 2014 a laneway at the corner of Eglinton and Oakwood was renamed Reggae Lane with a mural commissioned to celebrate the history of Black and Caribbean music in the area.
During the 1990s, music and culture would also take to the streets in Little Jamaica, with up to 40,000 revelers participating in Caribana’s Junior Carnival.
Today, Eglinton West is home to more than 80 Black businesses, the highest concentration in the city.
As Cheryl Blackman noted, “the roots of where the Black community has travelled is part of us, these places in our city tie us to a sense of belonging. When a place isn’t your traditional home and when we are here with a legacy of slavery and colonialism, belonging to these places means something … people who don’t live on Eglinton go there simply for a feeling of being at home.”
And yet this home remains under threat. Eglinton West is still not officially recognized as Little Jamaica, with Case noting that numerous attempts to do so over the years were resisted by the local Business Improvement Association.
And now its very existence as centre for Black life is hanging in the balance.
The disruption of the Eglinton
Crosstown has been incredibly challenging for business owners. From 2009-2019 Black-owned businesses have dropped from 98 to 87. Many other property owners interviewed for Black Futures on Eglinton reported that increasing rents and redevelopment threaten to soon push them out of the community.
From 2006-16, the neighbourhood population has declined by five per cent, but the loss of Black residents has been nearly three times higher. And this is all before the Crosstown has even opened.
Case said this is what happens when an area goes through targeted development without any attention paid to goals of affordability, local economic development or confronting anti-Black racism.
But after years of community outcry some municipal response is happening. A motion in September 2020 from Coun. Mike Colle launched an Eglinton West/Little Jamaica study to determine how best to provide compensation and support to businesses on Eglinton, develop a planning framework to guide development and create a Caribbean and WestIndian focused cultural district. Although a little late in the game, it’s a promising start.
But much more is needed. As Case noted, promoting Black ownership is critical in the community. “Many of the residents who use these businesses are lower income and newcomer, and so even if you see rents going up and Black businesses staying, are they still able to survive and sell products at an affordable rate?” she said.
One of her policy solutions is the creation of a commercial community land trust. Such a trust would be a non-profit organization with a mandate to buy and develop commercial real estate in the community, then make it available to Black businesses at an affordable rate.
Such a trust could be supported through a variety of means, including a levy of two to three per cent on new local developments. It is hoped that such a model of communal ownership might be considered in the city’s current study.
The reality is Black Canadians have a long and proud history in this city, and we must both recognize historical spaces, but more importantly, fight to protect and expand existing ones.
As Cheryl Blackman said, “Black futures in Toronto for me includes spaces where Black people have ownership of space, feeling of place, and a feeling of deep and meaningful belonging. Black futures are about prosperity and ultimately achievement of people’s fullest potential.”
That is a vision for Toronto I hope we can all support.