Toronto Chinatowns are ethnic enclaves in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with a high concentration of ethnic Chinese residents and businesses. These neighbourhoods are major cultural, social and economic hubs for the Chinese-Canadian communities of the region. In addition to Toronto, several areas in the Greater Toronto Area also hold a high concentration of Chinese residents and businesses.
When used directly, in Toronto the term "Chinatown" typically refers to the neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, which extends along Dundas Street West and Spadina Avenue. The Chinese community in this downtown Chinatown previously originated from First Chinatown, which was located in what used to be known as The Ward. With changes in the city and subsequent waves of immigration from the mid-20th century onwards, East Chinatown developed at the intersection of Broadview Avenue and Gerrard Street, as well as suburban Chinatowns in Scarborough and North York. In the Greater Toronto Area, Markham, Mississauga, and Richmond Hill, have all developed sizable Chinatowns. In fact, the large Chinese communities of northern Scarborough, Markham, and Richmond Hill actually form a continuous L-shaped belt.
History
Toronto's Chinatown first appeared during the 1890s with the migration of American Chinese from California due to racial conflict and from the Eastern United States due to the economic depression at the time.
19th century
The earliest record of Toronto's Chinese community is traced to Sam Ching, who owned a hand laundry business on Adelaide Street in 1878. Ching was the first Chinese person listed in the city's directory and is now honoured with a lane named after him. The first Chinese cafe opened in 1901 and that number grew to 19 in 1912 and to around 100 a decade after that.
The Chinese businesses in Toronto at the time were tuned to the politics of Imperial China and physically separated themselves into those that supported political reform of the Qing Empire under Empress Dowager Cixi and those that supported a revolution overthrowing the Manchu Qing dynasty. The 1909 Toronto city directory showed them as two distinct clusters of Chinese shops located at:
Queen Street East and George Street, adjacent to the reformist Chinese Empire Reform Association (保皇會) Queen Street West and York Street, adjacent to the Chee Kung Tong (致公堂), a Chinese secret fraternal organization supporting the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen.
20th century
When the Qing dynasty fell in 1912 the reform association became defunct and the business next to it moved away from the Queen Street East neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the Chinese community in Queen Street West and York Street continued to grow and moved into the adjacent properties within Toronto's Ward district () vacated by the Jewish population. This created Toronto's first Chinatown.
First Chinatown
The First Chinatown of Toronto developed between 1900 and 1925 along York Street and Elizabeth Street between Queen and Dundas Streets. Situated in what was then known as "The Ward", one of the city's largest slum areas for incoming immigrants, the area was expropriated and razed in 1955, despite myriad protests, to make way for Toronto New City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, with only one-third of this original Chinatown left south of Dundas Street. More than three-quarters of the neighbourhood was commandeered as a result of the forced dispossession.
Expropriation and Changes to Immigration Criteria
Following the demolition of a large portion of First Chinatown to make way for Toronto City Hall, Toronto's Chinese community largely migrated westward to the neighbourhoods around Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street West. This migration formed present day west Chinatown, also known as Toronto's downtown Chinatown.
The remaining parts of the neighbourhood were saved by Chinese business and community leaders in the 1970s including Jean Lumb, who established the "Save Chinatown Committee". Nevertheless, due to the city's disruption, much of the cultural and economic centre of the downtown Chinatown have since shifted west to Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street.
The Chinese population in west Chinatown continued to increased in the late 1960s and 1970s as the wives and descendants of the Chinese men already in Canada immigrated to the city when federal immigration legislation was adjusted to the point system in 1967. In subsequent decades, students and skilled workers arrived from Hong Kong, Guangdong province and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean further increased the Chinese population, prompting the growth and development of East Chinatown, Toronto.