FIRST - Toronto's First Chinatown
N 43° 39.185 W 079° 23.084
17T E 630255 N 4834609
A plaque describing Toronto's FIRST Chinatown.
Waymark Code: WM5M1K
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 01/20/2009
Views: 17
The Toronto area is home to many cultural neighborhoods - it's how Toronto defines itself to the world. This is the FIRST location of Toronto's famous Chinese-Canadian neighbourhood, and the FIRST Chinatown in the Greater Toronto Area - today you will find Chinatowns in Markham, Mississauga, Richmond Hill and Agincourt.
Today, this is one of the largest Chinatowns in North America. The plaques here mark the location where this Chinatown originated, but was displaced with the construction of Nathan Phillips Square in 1950. There are still remnants nearby, but the heart of Chinatown has moved to Spadina Street now.
From Wikipedia:
"The earliest record Toronto's Chinese community is traced to Sam Ching, who owned a hand laundry business on Adelaide Street in 1878.[1] Ching was the first Chinese person listed in the city's directory.[2] Despite strict limitations placed on Chinese immigration with the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, Chinatown took shape over the next two decades along Bay Street and Elizabeth Street, as hundreds of Chinese men settled in Toronto from western Canada after helping to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.
By 1910, the Chinese population in Toronto numbered over one thousand. Hundreds of Chinese-owned businesses had developed, comprised mainly of restaurants, grocery stores and hand laundries. By the 1930s, Chinatown was a firmly established and well-defined community that extended along Bay Street between Dundas Street and Queen Street. Like the rest of the country, Chinatown suffered a severe downturn in the Great Depression, with the closing of more than 116 hand laundries and hundreds of other businesses.[3] The community began to recover after World War II as Canada's general economic fortunes improved. The Chinese population greatly increased between 1947 and 1960, as students and skilled workers arrived from Hong Kong, Guangdong and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and the West Indies.
When plans emerged in the late 1950s to construct the new Toronto City Hall at the intersection of Queens Street and Bay Street, it became clear that most of Chinatown would be displaced by the project. As Chinese businesses began to relocate, some stores were taken over by other developers, and most stores that occupied the project site were cleared through expropriation. Construction on City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square began in 1961. The Chinese community migrated westward to Chinatown's current location along Spadina Avenue, although a handful of Chinese businesses still remain around Bay and Dundas."
FIRST - Classification Variable: Place or Location
Date of FIRST: 01/01/1878
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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