By Mark Edward Pfeifer Ó Copyright by Mark Edward Pfeifer (1999) Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Contents - [ Chapters - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 ] - Appendices - References Cited CHAPTER SIX VIETNAMESE RESIDENCE AND INSTITUTIONAL LOCATION IN TORONTO INTRODUCTION The ecological paradigm has strongly influenced how social scientists conceptualize the trajectories of residential behaviour exhibited by immigrant groups in North American cities. The ecological model postulates that members of an immigrant group tend to initially find housing in low-rent neighbourhoods situated in the inner city. The simultaneous processes of chain migration and the creation of ethnic institutions serve to promote residential clustering of immigrant group members in central city enclave communities. However, over time and with enhanced socioeconomic resources, ethnic group members will become residentially dispersed in higher status neighbourhoods located throughout the metropolitan area in a process of ‘spatial assimilation’ (Massey, 1985) . This orthodox model of immigrant residential patterns for the most part applied to the situation in Toronto until the 1960s. After this time, certain suburban districts joined central city neighborhoods as immigrant reception areas. Early in the 20th century, the Jewish population was concentrated to a significant extent in the Spadina district to be followed in subsequent decades by Chinese immigrants. In the same era, working class areas west of the city’s downtown turned from primarily British to Italian. By mid-century, Portuguese immigrants also became clustered in the west end, while Ukrainians and Poles moved westward from neighbourhoods just west of downtown to Parkdale and High Park and the southern portion of Etobicoke. At the same time, a sizable number of Greeks found housing east of the Don River. However, most of the east end as well as affluent North Toronto continued to be associated with largely British populations. By the 1960s, Jews had become a substantial presence in North Toronto and North York, especially along a corridor following Bathurst Street. Somewhat like the Jews, the geography of Italian residence exhibited a classic sectoral pattern of suburban movement from the west end up to the City of York and further north still through the northwest portion of North York to Woodbridge beyond Steeles Avenue and the boundary of Metropolitan Toronto (Lemon, 1996). After the late 1960s, the population of non-European ethnic minorities increased substantially in Toronto. Many of the more recently arrived immigrant groups have found housing in communities a considerable distance from the traditional immigrant port of entry neighbourhoods located adjacent to the downtown business core as well as the early sectoral paths of immigrants to the northwest and east. In part, the notably suburbanized residential distribution of some of the ‘visible minority’ immigrant populations who have arrived in recent decades may be linked to the location of lower-priced rental and owner-occupied housing in the Toronto metropolitan area. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Ontario Housing Corporation (OHC) along with the federal Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation greatly expanded the supply of social housing by purchasing existing private market apartment buildings and constructing new units in Metropolitan Toronto. A similar process occurred in the cities of Mississauga and Brampton in adjacent Peel Region. Most of the structures added to the stock during this time were situated in less accessible or less attractive areas – the suburban fringe, where land was not valued by builders for housing targeted to the general market. During the 1960s and the 1970s, large numbers of social housing units were added in such locations as the Cooksville and Bloor-Dixie neighbourhoods of Mississauga, the Rexdale section of Northern Etobicoke, along Jane Street in the Downsview area of North York, northeast North York, and along the primary east-west arterial streets in Scarborough (Murdie, 1994). In the same era, several provincially and federally funded programs provided assistance to developers for the construction of so-called "limited dividend housing", which was targeted primarily to lower-income households. Many of these structures were concentrated in the same portions of the metropolitan area as the newly added social housing units and for the most part away from higher income areas such as North Toronto, central North York, and central Etobicoke. In contemporary Toronto, the lower-cost rental housing, often inhabited by immigrants, is situated in several locales throughout the entire metropolitan region. Furthermore, many immigrants looking to become homeowners have turned to a large number of suburban neighbourhoods, where the price of owner-occupied housing is lower than in the central and northcentral parts of the urban area, including communities located in Scarborough, the Downsview portion of North York, and certain portions of Mississauga and Brampton (Ray and Moore, 1991; Moghaddam, 1994; Ray, 1994; Texeira, 1995; Skaburskis, 1996). Since the 1970s, and especially the 1980s, significant numbers of Chinese have moved to or have found housing as new immigrants in suburban communities including Scarborough, Markham, Richmond Hill, and Mississauga. African immigrants including Somalians and Ghanaians are clustered in Etobicoke (Opuku-Dapaah, 1993; Opuku-Dapaah, 1995; Owusu, 1998). Individuals of West Indian ethnicity are concentrated to some extent in the City of York, the Downsview portion of North York and in Scarborough (Henry, 1994; Ray, 1994). Persons of South Asian ethnic origin compose populations of considerable size in Scarborough, Downsview, Brampton, and Mississauga (Stasiulis, 1982). In this chapter, patterns of Vietnamese residential and institutional location will be assessed and compared to the predictions of the ecological model. Important factors influencing the trajectories of Vietnamese residence in the Toronto area will also be examined within the context of the larger body of literature concerned with immigrant residential behaviour. The following interrelated research issues will guide the analysis in this chapter: To what extent, if any, do the temporal patterns of Vietnamese residence resemble the predictions of the classical ecological hypothesis? In which respects, if any, do the trajectories of Vietnamese settlement in the Toronto metropolitan area differ from those posited by the ecological model of ethnic residential patterns? Given the disproportionate numbers of Vietnamese who arrived in Toronto as refugee newcomers, have other factors typically not accounted for in the conventional literature influenced residential settlement? To what extent does the distribution of Vietnamese institutions diverge or converge with the residential patterns of the group? Vietnamese residence was analyzed through the use of census, telephone directory, and key informant interview data. The most detailed empirical information regarding Vietnamese residence was derived from the annually published telephone directories. Cross-sectional data was sampled from 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1997 directories. Using both Peel Region and Metropolitan Toronto directories, data was compiled for individuals with the surnames of Nguyen and Tran. These are the most common Vietnamese family names and these two family names are not prevalent among members of any other nationality group. A three digit postal forward sorting area (FSA) was recorded for the address of each Nguyen and Tran household listed in the phone directories. The compilation of the FSA data facilitated the mapping of Vietnamese residential patterns over the four cross-sections and provided a significant level of detail in terms of the streets and even apartment addresses where Vietnamese residents were concentrated. The phone directory data was supplemented with an analysis of 1986, 1991, and 1996 census tract enumerations of the Vietnamese population in the Toronto CMA. More qualitative information concerning the residential trajectories of the Vietnamese population was derived from semi-structured interviews with a number of key informants. Informants were asked to describe and account for the emergence of significant Vietnamese residential concentrations in particular portions of the metropolitan area over time. The informants who were asked to assess residential experiences included four Vietnamese social service workers intimately involved in the local resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. These informants began working as settlement counselors during the time of the "boat people" crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The counselors met incoming refugees at the airport, brought them to downtown hotels, and assisted them in finding initial long-term accommodation. Two of these informants did resettlement work at the Vietnamese Association of Toronto, one at the provincial government’s Ontario Welcome House, and another at World Vision, one of the major non-profit voluntary agencies involved in the international resettlement effort. In addition, several informants involved in providing housing assistance to more recent Vietnamese newcomers were interviewed. These interview subjects include the aforementioned Ontario Welcome House counselor, who was employed by this agency until its closure in 1996, Vietnamese-speaking settlement counselors associated with the NOAH and COSTI refugee reception centres, and counselors employed by the Vietnamese Association of Toronto, the Vietnamese Community of North York, the Jane-Finch Community and Family Centre, the Dixie-Bloor Neighbourhood Centre in Mississauga, the Vietnamese Community Centre of Mississauga, and the Brampton Neighbourhood Centre. All of these service agency employees have provided assistance with finding housing to recently arrived Vietnamese clients as part of their settlement work. As part of their jobs, they also interact daily with co-ethnic compatriots residing in neighbourhoods of Vietnamese residential concentration. Several maps are included in the chapter. The data used to produce these maps varied. Figures 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10 were produced using postal forward sorting area data. Figures 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7 were made from tract-level census data. On the former maps, the location of Vietnamese households are randomly distributed within individual postal code areas (the three-digit forward sorting areas). It should be noted that most of the postal code areas are larger in physical size compared to census tracts, making for a somewhat more generalized presentation of spatial phenomena compared to the tract-level maps. Throughout the discussion in this chapter, reference will be made to several geographic districts within the larger Toronto metropolitan area. These include individual cities within the old municipality of Metropolitan Toronto – Toronto, North York, East York, Scarborough, York, and Etobicoke – as well as the cities of Mississauga and Brampton in adjacent Peel Region. The analysis will also direct attention to some sub-areas within these municipalities. Briefly, the physical boundaries of these sub-areas or districts should be defined. In the context of this chapter, west end Toronto refers to neighbourhoods in the older city of Toronto extending from west of Bathurst Street to east of Jane Street and north of Lake Ontario to St. Clair Avenue. The east end refers to neighbourhoods situated east of Parliament Street, west of Greenwood Avenue, north of Lake Ontario and south of Bloor and Danforth Avenues. References to Downsview imply neighbourhoods located in the area extending from Wilson Avenue on the south, Steeles Avenue to the North, with Dufferin Street to the east and Kipling Avenue to the west. Rexdale encompasses the area north of Wilson Avenue, south of Steeles, west of Kipling, and east of the Etobicoke/Peel Region border. TEMPORAL CHANGES IN RESIDENTIAL DISTRIBUTION Looking at the distribution of Vietnamese households in 1981, it is apparent that most of the Vietnamese residents of the Toronto CMA lived within the city of Toronto (Figure 6.1) At this time, the largest number of Vietnamese resided in Toronto’s west end, particularly in the Parkdale neighbourhood. A small Vietnamese agglomeration was also notable in the Regent Park area east of Toronto’s downtown. Moving forward to 1986, Vietnamese residential neighbourhoods had grown in Toronto’s west end and in the Regent Park/Chinatown area east of downtown. Also significant was the incipient emergence of residential agglomerations in the City of York and in the Downsview area in this time period. Between 1986 and 1991 Vietnamese residential enclaves continued to grow in the east and west ends of the City of Toronto (Figure 6.2). However, the most impressive increases were observed in Downsview and the City of York – where substantial clusters of Vietnamese residents had formed. Figure 6.3 shows the continued strong growth of major Vietnamese residential neighbourhoods in Downsview, Rexdale, and the city of York after 1991. The telephone directory data suggest that from 1991 to 1997, the growth of the Vietnamese population in the City of Toronto neighbourhoods of concentration has stagnated (Table 6.1). Conversely, very significant Vietnamese residential growth has been occurring in certain outlying areas, most particularly in neighbourhoods located within Downsview, Rexdale, and the City of York. Interestingly, unlike the phone directory data, the census tract data show a continued growth in the Vietnamese population within west end and east end Toronto as well as several more outlying tracts between 1991 and 1996 (Table 6.2). Perhaps an explanation for the contradicting trends may be found within the comments of informants who suggested the Vietnamese residents of Parkdale and Regent Park apartment buildings were probably substantially undercounted by census takers in 1986 and 1991. Many Vietnamese had resided in Toronto for only short periods of time at these census years and for many of these individuals filling out the census form was likely problematic.
In 1981, according to telephone directory data, there were only very small numbers of Vietnamese within Mississauga (Figure 6.3). By 1986, a couple of small agglomerations had begun emerging in the city.. At this time, most Vietnamese residents lived in the Cooksville and Dixie-Bloor Neighbourhoods of Mississauga. A small increase of the Vietnamese population was also apparent in Brampton. The Vietnamese population in Mississauga and to a lesser extent, Brampton, expanded considerably between 1991 and 1996 (Figure 6.4). Significant residential enclaves continued to grow in the Cooksville and Dixie-Bloor areas during this time period. These two neighbourhoods are the sites of several highrise apartment buildings housing large numbers of Vietnamese tenants. Also apparent in both the census tract and telephone directory data are the expanding numbers of Vietnamese living in several other neighbourhoods located elsewhere in Mississauga. The most recent figures also indicate the existence of a growing Vietnamese population in Brampton. While the Vietnamese have over time emerged as a significant population in certain suburban neighbourhoods, they are still quite clustered within a just a few subareas of the larger metropolitan region (Figure 6.5) Table 6.2 lists the census tracts with more than 200 enumerated Vietnamese in the 1996 census. In 1996, just under 40% of the total Vietnamese mother tongue population in the Toronto CMA lived in these 34 tracts. It should be noted that the CMA as a whole is composed of more than 800 census tracts. Figure 6.6 is a map of the tracts listed in Table 6.2.
TABLE 6.1 FORWARD SORTING AREAS OF VIETNAMESE RESIDENCE HOUSEHOLDS WITH NGUYEN AND TRAN FAMILY NAMES TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA 1981, 1986, 1991, 1997
Sources: Bell Telephone Directory Metropolitan Toronto, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1997 Bell Telephone Directory Halton and Peel Regions, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1997
TABLE 6.2 VIETNAMESE MOTHER TONGUE POPULATION TORONTO CMA CENSUS TRACTS, 1986, 1991, 1996
Source: Statistics Canada, 1986, 1991, 1996
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF RECENT IMMIGRANTS FROM VIETNAM Table 6.3 indicates the census tracts with the largest number of residents who arrived in Canada from Vietnam between 1991 and 1996. The figures include both ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese who moved to Canada from Vietnam. These numbers should be assessed with caution. Due to language barriers, among other factors, the census takers likely missed many recent immigrants from Vietnam. The data do show that enumerated persons who came to Canada from Vietnam between 1991 and 1996 settled in significant numbers in several neighbourhoods located in both the central city of Toronto and more suburban locales. While impressive numbers of recently arrived immigrants from Vietnam were observed residing in Parkdale, and elsewhere in Toronto’s west end as well as Regent Park and Chinatown East, impressive numbers of newcomers had also settled in the Jane and Woolner neighbourhood of the City of York, the Jane-Finch area of Downsview and the Bloor and Dixie and Cooksville neighbourhoods of Mississauga (Figure 6.7). NEIGHBOURHOODS OF VIETNAMESE RESIDENCE City of Toronto - Many of the Vietnamese who came to Toronto in the late 1970s and early 1980s were initially resettled in the city’s west end. Over time, a considerable residential concentration of Vietnamese has emerged in these neighbourhoods. A glance at the 1997 telephone directory data shows several street addresses which were home to many individuals possessing the two most common Vietnamese family names. These addresses included College Street west of the 500 block, especially in the 1100-1200 block near Dufferin Street. Dundas Street west of Bathurst also possessed many Vietnamese households extending to the 3000 block past Runnymede Road. The phone directory lists many Nguyen and Tran households residing on major north-south arteries in the west end including Ossington, Lansdowne, and Dufferin. Numerous Vietnamese residents lived on the stretches of these streets extending from King to Bloor. The most significant Vietnamese residential concentration within the west end existed in the Parkdale area. This clustering was very apparent in the phone listings. Single apartment buildings on several Parkdale streets including Dufferin, Queen West, Jameson, Tyndall, and West Lodge housed large numbers of Vietnamese households.
Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Contents - [ Chapters - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 ] - Appendices - References Cited
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