The unequal geography of Toronto supermarkets
A new Rabba supermarket has opened on the corner of Jarvis and Charles Sts., just south of Bloor St.
This part of the city could be called the “Rabba District” as this is the sixth Rabba in a one-kilometre radius of Yonge and Bloor, almost a Starbucksian level of proliferation, where you can almost see one Rabba from another.
A welcome addition, its 24-hour lights will illuminate the sidewalk around the new condo building it inhabits. There are over 30 Rabbas in the GTA, a family business that got its start a few blocks from this new location at Charles and Balmuto Sts. in 1967.
When I was a Toronto newcomer, Rabba seemed particularly urban: not a convenience store, but smaller than a proper grocery store, open all night, and usually some kind of sidewalk display of produce, firewood or Christmas trees outside. Food whenever you want it. Not all places are as lucky.
Cities are all about food, and getting it into one as big as Toronto is a daily militarylike operation. The Ontario Food Terminal in south Etobicoke is the largest wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market in Canada, and one of the five biggest produce markets in North America. Toronto’s “food and beverage cluster” itself generates sales of $17 billion a year and is one of the biggest on the continent.
Most of us only see the food once it reaches our local stores, and the amount of visible food variety in neighbourhoods like Yonge and Bloor is stunning. There’s lots of choice here, from upmarket places like Whole Foods and Pusateri’s, to discount places like No Frills a few blocks east at Sherbourne. In the middle are the big Canadian chains with stores tucked in throughout the neighbourhood, in the main or lower floors of mixed-use buildings.
Toronto has some rather grand supermarkets, too. The Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws was carved out of the old hockey palace, complete with a dot marking centre ice and a giant Maple Leaf made out of old arena seating on one wall. In Leaside, a four-year-old Longo’s was built within the shell of the former Canadian National Railway steam locomotive shop that brings to mind Toronto’s once mighty industrial cluster, though they didn’t call it that then.
Supermarkets are also a measure of when an urban neighbourhood has matured, as they are usually one of the last businesses to arrive. They need a critical mass of people to make them financially sustainable. Nearly a decade ago, a Sobeys opened in the Terminal Building on Queens Quay, a near-last addition to the central waterfront that meant people didn’t have to leave the neighbourhood to shop. Similarly when CityPlace got its Sobeys on Fort York Blvd., west of Spadina Ave., the new neighbourhood started to feel complete.
The foodies will argue about which has the best produce or frown at chain supermarket butchers they’re not on a first-name basis with, but for many people being close to a supermarket is one of best things about living in a city, especially come summer when Ontario farms start producing truckloads of produce.
Not all of Toronto is like this though, and those of us who live in neighbourhoods with the grand food palaces and cheaper alternatives nearby may take it all for granted. The City and other organizations have found areas that are called “food deserts” and “food swamps”. A desert is where access to good quality and affordable food within walking distance is limited, and swamps are where there is an over abun- dance of unhealthy food.
In 2000, Toronto City Council voted in the “Toronto Food Charter,” placing food and access to “nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food” at the centre of its social and economic mission.
If you’ve got a few choices nearby, you’re doing pretty well, but as you move around the city pay attention to where you can see good food available, and where you can’t. It’s an unequal harvest still. Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.