Photos

Increasingly, Toronto's downtown "Chinatown" is becoming "Asiatown" as other Asian ethnic groups immigrate to Canada and settle in the area. This photo was taken in Toronto's oldest remaining Chinatown, in the area surrounding Dundas and Spadina. (There was an older one still, but it was torn down to build our new city hall -- see the notes for my photo The Pharmacist). We may still call it Chinatown, but there are an increasing number of Vietnamese businesses, especially bakeries and restaurants, like this one.

In the most recent figures I can find, there were just over 50,000 Vietnamese in the Greater Toronto Area in 1998, and Vietnamese remain amongst the top ten immigrant groups.

Mai B. Phan has documented the change brought to the Chinatowns by the influx of Vietnamese to the downtown core and the shift in Chinese immigration to outlying areas, noting in Sino-Vietnamese: Chinese sub-ethnic relations in Toronto’s Chinatown West District: "While still home to many ethnic Chinese, Chinatown West in Toronto has seen an increase in Sino-Vietnamese businesses moving into the area over the years since the late 1980s. Other Chinatowns have developed in the surrounding suburbs, such as around Broadview, Richmond Hill, and Scarborough with concentrations of Hong Kong, Taiwanese, or Mainland Chinese populations."

In this particular photo Toronto's multi-ethnicity is well represented, with a Black man walking past a Vietnamese restaurant in a Chinese neighbourhood. And that is just the way I like it.