Unexpectedly - considering its past - Toronto emerged in the last half of the 20^th century as one of the world's great multicultural cities. This paper explores how well Toronto has succeeded in integrating diverse communities into the fabric of civic life. Various approaches are adopted to assess the terms of newcomers belonging in Toronto. An historical introduction compares the successive integration experiences of four newcomer communities that by their numbers have stood out as among the most distinctive additions to Toronto's diversity over the past 100 years. Next, a contemporary scan of the present configuration of diversity in Toronto identifies challenges facing newcomers to Toronto. This leads to a consideration of immigrant community mobilization in Toronto to effect social change. Lastly, the paper assesses the City of Toronto's municipal response to newcomer diversity. We conclude that the terms of newcomer integration in Toronto have always been contested, and are resolved through the complex inter-play of newcomers and their new urban society.

Few cities have become so multicultural so quickly. Within a few decades, global migration has transformed Toronto into a remarkably diverse ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious metropolis. Consider the lived experience of Toronto urban affairs reporter John Barber. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Barber observed: "I grew up in a tidy, prosperous, narrow-minded town where Catholicism was considered exotic; my children are growing up in the most cosmopolitan city on Earth. The same place" (Barber, 1998: A8).

Yet few places, few cities, could have been less prepared for immigrant diversity than Toronto. From its late 18^th century origins until the middle of the 20^th century, a single ethnic community predominated in Toronto. In 1931, for instance, 81% of the city's population of 631,207 was British in origin. This prompted one historian of the day to conclude that "no other city of comparable size...is as homogeneous" (Lemon, 1985: 50). Indeed, the city was frequently referred to as the "Belfast of Canada", a British bastion of Orange Protestantism. As recently as 1971, almost 6 of 10 Toronto area residents still claimed British ethnic origin (Breton et al, 1990: 17). However by the time Toronto celebrated its 150^th anniversary of municipal incorporation in 1984, the city's "most salient feature", according to immigration historian Robert Harney, was "its preferred target of migration for people from every corner of the globe, its polyethnic character and its reputation for tolerance of human variety" (Harney, 1984: 1).

By 1996 only 16% of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) population of 4.2 million self-identified as exclusively British (Statistics Canada, 1998), and two years later the newly amalgamated City of Toronto -- with its population of 2.4 million citizens residing in the core of the CMA -- adopted as its motto: "Diversity Our Strength". The Toronto CMA is now home to immigrants from 169 different countries of origin, with 48 ethnic groups having at least 5000 members across the city region, while 106 groups can claim at least 1000 members (Symich, 2000: 8). Toronto is presently distinguished, therefore, by a wide range of immigrant and diaspora communities.

In scholarly literature, there is no general agreement on what "community" actually means. It is a contested term which has been applied to everything from geographic areas to groups of people who share a common bond, real or imagined. Ng et al. (1990: 14-16) identified two overall approaches to the study of communities. The first they call the standard or definitional approach, which proceeds by defining and redefining the concept. The criteria of what constitute a community include shared territory or space, and common needs, interests and concerns that unite people. This approach focuses on the positive elements in a community, but does not investigate how a community arises in the first place. The second approach is the descriptive or relational approach, which is aimed at describing and discovering the social forces involved in the constitution of community. This latter approach seeks to understand the dynamics that lead to the formation of communities, be they around common places of origin, shared identity or space.

For the purposes of this chapter, we lean toward the second approach. While we identify the common elements that give immigrant communities their cohesion, we do so by situating these elements in their historical contexts and their relation to the host society. Accordingly, Section I of this chapter begins with an assessment of the experiences of four major immigrant groups which illustrate the history of 20^th century immigrant community formation in Toronto: Jewish, Italian, Caribbean and Chinese. Common themes emerge across these experiences including: the hardships newcomers faced, the diversity within each community, the resilience of newcomer communities adapting to and making claims on their new homeland, and how these communities developed and changed in relation to the larger society they settled into.

In Section II, we provide an overview of the contemporary configuration of immigrant diversity in Toronto. The data presented paint a disturbing profile of gaps and inequalities (in terms of income, education, political representation, etc.) among distinct ethnic and newcomer communities in the city, as well as between men and women.

This adverse economic, social and political landscape has produced new forms of resistance and modes of protest and solidarity among diverse newcomer groups. This emerging pattern of community mobilization is the subject of Section III. Here we examine issues that led to the formation of new movements and alliances which cut across traditional ethnic and racial boundaries. We have selected four issues which illustrate patterns of immigrant cross-community coalescence and mobilization transcending ethnic, racial and social differences: gender equity, anti-racism, access to services and political representation. We are not suggesting these are the only issues of concern to immigrant groups. Rather, we use them to highlight the tensions inherent in Toronto's growing pain from a city dominated by a single group to one characterized by diversity. We use these "cases" as examples to show that traditional boundaries once imposed on group cohesion were no longer adequate to address the emerging issues that confront immigrants in Toronto.

Next, in Section IV we turn our attention to how government policy has responded to the increasing heterogeneity of Toronto's population. While reference is made to federal and provincial initiatives, our chief interest lies in the municipal level. Over the years, local governments in Toronto have charted a distinct orientation to immigrant diversity. We assess this "Made-In -Toronto" government response to diversity.

Finally, in our conclusion we address the significance of Toronto's experience of global migration and diversity. In our contemporary "age of migration", countries and cities around the world are increasingly characterized by unprecedented diversity of population (Castles and Miller, 1993). "Multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-national populations are becoming a dominant characteristic of cities and regions across the globe", Leonie Sandercock has observed, "and this is causing a profound disturbance to the values, norms and expectations of many people" (Sandercock, 1998: 164). What the world desperately needs are urban role models of cities that can make diversity work. Iris Marion Young defines contemporary life, (largely due to global migration), "as the being together of strangers" (Young 1990: 237). Successful cities, she contends, will affirm group difference without any attendant inequalities and exclusion. For her part, Leonie Sandercock invokes both a name and a prescription for successful urban diversity. Her imagined urban utopia is cosmopolis B a city characterized by genuine respect for differing human identities as well as a recognition of the common destiny and intertwined fate of diverse groups; a city devoted to inclusive democracy and the social justice claims of its more marginalized, less powerful communities (Sandercock, 1998: 44, 125).

Is there such a cosmopolis anywhere in the world? In her book, Towards Cosmopolis, Sandercock assesses and rejects the claim of six cities to this exalted status: New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Jerusalem. What about Toronto? Its claim on cosmopolis hinges on our assessment of a host of factors: Is Toronto a significant site of diversity? How has the city received the "strangers" who have come to call it home? Are there recurring, structural inequalities confronting newcomer communities? What opportunities have newcomer communities had to advance their claim to belonging in Toronto? How well have local institutions responded to diversity. These are issues we address throughout this chapter. As we demonstrate, diverse immigrant communities have always sought to influence the terms and circumstances under which they would integrate into Toronto. In the process -- despite adversities -- they have transformed Toronto.

Embedded in Toronto's transformation from homogeneity to diversity are a host of important dynamics and questions: How were immigrant newcomers received in Toronto? How did immigrants establish institutions and a sense of community in Toronto? How have immigrant communities been changed by Toronto? How have newcomer communities changed Toronto? How, in short, did Toronto go about integrating immigrant diversity? One way to explore these issues is to historically examine the experiences of the largest groups of non-British immigrants who arrived in Toronto through the course of the 20^th century: Jewish immigrants during the first half century; Italians during the 1950s and 60s; Caribbeans during the 1970s; and Chinese immigrants since the 1980s. By their religion, ethnicity and racialization these four groups represent -- sequentially over the past 100 years -- the newcomers who most explicitly challenged Toronto's self-definition by expanding the city's diversity. These four communities therefore constitute an interesting test of how immigrant communities developed and were treated in 20^th century Toronto. What emerges from their experience, as reviewed in this section, is a city opening itself to the world, but uncertain of the role and status newcomers should be afforded.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Jews comprised by far the largest non-British ethnic group in Toronto. Thanks to a huge wave of immigration during the first quarter of this century, the city became home to a flourishing Jewish community. Jews were Toronto's first large 20^th century community of newcomers to test the warmth of welcome to be accorded immigrants who brought to the city a distinctly foreign culture, language, religion and identity. Their experience up to 1950 did not reflect a host city open to diversity and difference. Through adverse circumstances however, Jews in Toronto succeeded in building a resilient and dynamic community.

While the earliest Jewish presence in Canada dates back to the 18th century, the community's significance is a 20th century story. From 1831 until 1901 Canada's Jewish population grew only modestly from 107 to 16,401 (Kage, 1981: 30; Tulchinsky, 1992: 154). Over the next quarter century soaring levels of immigration would create a community of over 125,000 Jews across the country. Most of these newcomers left persecution and poverty in eastern and central Europe (particularly Russia and Poland); and overwhelmingly they settled in Canada's largest cities: Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. Accordingly the City of Toronto's Jewish population rose by over 1000% in the first two decades of this century! Its numbers climbed from 3,090 in 1901 to 34,619 in 1921; and by mid-century the City of Toronto and its expanding suburbs were home to 59,448 Jews (Breton et al, 1990: 16). More revealing than these total numbers, however, is the relative place of this growing Jewish community in the total composition of Toronto's society.

Jews stood out in Toronto. In 1931 for instance, when 80.9% of the population claimed British ethnic origin, the city's Jewish population of 45,305 represented the largest non-British group at 7.2% of the city population (Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 32). Next in rank stood the Italian community at just 2.1% of Toronto's population. For over 50 years, from 1901 until the 1950s, Jews were the only non-British ethnic group with over 5% of the city's population. Philosopher Iris Marion Young has written that "city life is a being together of strangers" and that the well-being of cities will depend on how well they reconcile "the politics of difference" (Young, 1990: 240). The Jewish experience in the first half of this century reminds us how much Toronto would have to change before it could accommodate diversity.

Early 20^th century Jews migrated and settled in a Toronto most typically characterized as dour, narrow-minded, xenophobic and anti-semitic. Levitt and Shaffir contend for instance, that "Toronto in the early thirties was a parochial, provincial, and puritanical city that still felt a strong attachment to the British Empire"; a place where ethnic minorities such as Jews "were outsiders ethnically, religiously, linguistically, culturally, and economically" (Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 23). Sundays in particular marked the city as a distinctive urban community. As Robert Fulford has observed , "The 1907 Lord's Day Act, which forbade almost all public activity on Sunday except churchgoing, was obeyed with a dedication that visitors thought excessive." Far more scathing were the judgements of two unhappy writers who lived in the city for a time. As a young reporter for the Toronto Daily Star, American Ernest Hemingway felt himself incarcerated in Toronto which he characterized as a "City of Churches" where "85% of the inmates attend a protestant church on Sunday" (Lemon, 1985: 57). Writing to his poet friend Ezra Pound in 1923, Hemingway the writer was at a rare loss of words to describe Toronto, "It couldn't be any worse. You can=t imagine it. I=m not going to describe it" (Colombo, 1987: 382). Twenty years later, in the 1940s, the English writer Wyndham Lewis wrote of Toronto as "a sanctimonious ice-box...this bush-metropolis of the Orange Lodges" (Fulford, 1995: 2).

The Orange Order represented the dominant culture and tone of city life in Toronto. Founded in Ireland in 1795 amidst violent clashes between rival Protestant and Catholic groups, the Order's mission was to champion Protestantism and the ties to Britain. Transplanted to Canada, the Order was strongest in Toronto where an unwritten rule of city politics was the Order's influence in electing mayors and aldermen to council, and its control of appointments to the civic workforce B particularly police and firefighters. The Orange Order espoused a narrow definition of Canadian and Toronto identity based on a particular blend of religion (Protestant), nationality (British), language (English) and culture (restrained to the point of repression, in "Toronto the Good"). Inevitably other identities and cultures were regarded as suspect, threatening and potentially divisive. And as we have seen, few large cities anywhere outside of Britain had indeed succeeded in building such an ethnically homogeneous society. Multicultural Toronto was many years away in the future. Jewish immigrants arrived in a proud outpost of the British Empire determined to be "more British than the British", and "along with this hyper-Britishness went a suspicion of foreigners" (Levitt & Shaffir, 1985: 28). The dilemma facing Jews in Toronto during the first half of the 20^th century is acutely captured by an observation of historian D.C. Masters. Toronto at the time was a society, Masters has written, in which conventional public opinion believed that for citizens "to be on the streets on the Sabbath, for reasons other than church-going, placed their souls or their social positions in jeopardy" (Houston & Smyth, 1980: 156-57; C.J.H &W.J.S. UTP). This could only spell double jeopardy for Jews who worshipped on Saturday not Sunday, and did so in synagogues not churches.

Anti-semitism proved to be a pervasive by-product of this prevalent, restrictive definition of Canadian and Toronto identity. Gerald Tulchinsky is correct in noting that hostility towards Jews in Canada's past flowed from a "fairly generalized distrust of and dislike for foreigners at that time". Yet unlike Asians who were barred from entering Canada, many Jews were at least able to migrate to Canada during the early decades of this century. (Tulchinsky, 1992: 233, 232). Still, what is striking about the early experiences of Jews in Toronto is how blatant and pervasive were the prejudice and discrimination they faced.

According to Gerald Tulchinsky, Toronto was home to "Canada's best-known Jew-hater in the late nineteenth century", Goldwin Smith. (The same can be said a century later, as anti-semite, holocaust denier Ernst Zundel calls the city home.) It was a sign of the times that Canada's leading intellectual until his death in 1910 -- Smith was a University of Toronto Professor, essayist and journalist B peppered his lectures and publication with references to Jews as "Christ-killers", devoted to "wealth worship", pursuing "Jewish domination", concluding for good measure that "Jews are no good anyhow" (Tulchinsky, 1992: 231-38). Goldwin Smith appears to have had significant influence on at least one University of Toronto graduate who would go on, we will see, to have a profound impact on Canadian immigration policy and the fate of Jews in the 20^th century. Writing in his diary in 1946, near the end of his career as Canada's longest-serving Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King thought again of the old professor:

"I recall Goldwin Smith feeling so strongly about the Jews. He expressed it at one time as follows: that they were poison in the veins of a community...the evidence is very strong, not against all Jews...that in a large percentage of the race there are tendencies and trends which are dangerous indeed" (Ibid, 238).

Not even the Holocaust could dislodge such views from Canada's Prime Minister. King, in this respect, was a product of his society, where disregard and contempt for Jews was commonplace.

Prejudice seemed to intrude into many dimensions of Jewish existence in Toronto. They routinely faced discrimination in employment. This applied to high-level professional positions such as hospital doctors and university professors; as well as retail sales positions serving the public (Ibid: 240; Speisman, 1987: 318). Desirable neighbourhoods in the city were off-limits to Jews. (Speisman, 1987: 318, 327; Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 34; Lemon, 1985: 53; Colton, 1980: 44). Signs warning "No Jews or Dogs Allowed", or the more genteel "Gentiles Only" were common at Toronto beaches, dance halls and nearby summer resorts (Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 11,35). The reluctance of many Torontonians to do business with Jews was reflected in an extraordinary 1923 advertisement in The Star by a company run by the Glass family informing the public that contrary to "erroneous impression", the family was not Jewish, and assuring Toronto consumers that "[w]ithout prejudice or intended offense, we beg to state that this house is strictly gentile, owned and managed by Canadians in Canadian interests" (Speisman, 1987: 322). Newspaper editorials were another forum for anti-Jewish sentiment, none more vehement than the Orange-inclined Telegram. Calling for curbs on Jewish immigration in 1925 the paper railed: "An influx of Jews puts a worm next to the kernel of every fair city where they get hold. These people have no national tradition...They are not the material out of which to shape a people holding a national spirit". Deeming Jews not fit to be Canadian, The Telegram recommended that a poll tax be levied on Jewish immigrants steep enough to assure that only "a baker's dozen per annum" could gain entry (Speisman, 1987: 321).

Toronto's municipal officials and institutions were no more hospitable towards Jewish immigrants. In 1920 alderman John Cowan asserted during a debate on a motion to ban non-English (meaning Yiddish) advertising signs: "If foreigners who came here to make a living could not conform to English ways and customs they could return to their native countries" (Lemon, 1985: 53). Four years later a Board of Education trustee responded to complaints that Jewish children in the city's public schools were being compelled to sing Christian hymns by declaring: "Are we a Christian nation or a Jewish nation? As long as we remain a Christian nation we are not to be dominated by the Jewish people" (Speisman, 1987: 327). And three years later in 1927, a police officer's kick in the derriere of a Jewish youth on a Toronto street, followed by the order "You little Jew bastard move on", reinforced the Jewish community's belief that anti-semitism was prevalent in the police force (Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 38-39).

The worst eruption of public anti-semitism in Toronto history occurred during the summer of 1933. The timing was precipitated by a variety of factors, both international and local in origin. The lingering economic depression of the 1930s unleashed a mixed brew of desperation and resentment easily directed against 'foreigners'. Hitler's rise to power in Germany months earlier gave unprecedented publicity and legitimacy to anti-semitism. Within weeks, confrontations erupted in two Toronto locations where Jews had only recently become significant visitors or residents. In the east end of town, the Balmy Beach Swastika Club was formed at the start of August, ostensibly devoted to keeping the beaches area prim and proper. The fact that this included keeping "obnoxious visitors" from the area, led The Star to headline the Club's formation as: "Nazi Organization Seeking to Oust Non-Gentiles off Beach" (Levitt & Shaffir, 1987: 78). The Club's tactics included swastikas and 'Hail Hitler' signs in its beach clubhouse, swastika badges for its members, and parade marches of dozens of club supporters chanting anti-semitic songs and slogans. Within days there were several instances of physical attacks on Jews at the Beaches.

Two weeks later, the real showdown came in the west/central Christie Pits baseball fields as a predominantly Jewish team played in the city softball quarter finals. Jews had recently begun moving into the neighbourhood, much to the dismay of some local youths banded together as the "Pit Gang". During the first playoff game on August 14^th, spectators in attendance unfurled a five-foot long swastika; that night "Hail Hitler" was painted onto the park clubhouse. When the swastika re-appeared at the next game on August 16^th, the Christie Pits Riot was on. For six hours, hundreds of Jews re-enforced with Italian sympathizers did battle with mobs opposed to foreigners in their city and parks. Baseball bats and metal pipes were the weapons of choice, taking over a dozen combattants to hospital, prompting The Globe to conclude it was "a miracle that more were not seriously hurt" (Ibid: 157). Perhaps harder to fathom was a Toronto magistrate dismissing charges against those alleged to have incited the riots on the grounds that the provocation of Jews was intended as a joke (Speisman a, 1987: 335).

Despite B or perhaps because of -- the marginalized position accorded them in Toronto, Jews succeeded in forging a remarkably dynamic community grounded in shared space, spirituality, language, culture, employment and oppression. If Toronto could not quite bring itself to accept Jews as full and equal citizens, Jews created their own neighbourhoods and institutions to advance their identity and interests. Thus Stephen Speisman refers to the city's first Jewish neighbourhood B an area known early in the 1900s as the Ward, bounded by Yonge Street, University Avenue, Queen and College Streets B as "a miniature Jewish civilization in the heart of Anglo-Saxon Toronto", a part of town which "had become virtually a self-contained community as regards Jewish services and cultural, religious and educational facilities" (Speisman b, 1984: 107, 112). While municipal officials and the local press typically condemned the Ward as an overcrowded slum, it nourished a vibrant sense of Jewish community identity. This would not be the last time outsiders and insiders regarded immigrant neighbourhoods through different lenses.

The Ward was an affordable neighbourhood adjacent to the city's clothing and garment industries where the majority of Jewish immigrants worked, typically in exploited sweatshop conditions. As early as 1898, reports and news stories abounded of underpaid, overworked Jews toiling in unsanitary and dangerous conditions in clothing production. Not surprisingly these conditions would give rise to decades of union organizing and militancy among Toronto's Jewish garment workers. One indication of the extent to which the Ward had become a Jewish enclave, was evident in local school enrollment. By 1912, 87% of students in the area's two public elementary schools were Jewish (Tulchinsky, 1992: 172). Another was the presence of many synagogues, which Speisman identifies as the "most ubiquitous institution in the Ward" (Speisman, 1984: 113). Setting a pattern to be emulated by subsequent newcomer non-Christian faiths in Toronto, some early Jewish places of worship were newly built, some occupied converted churches or commercial sites; and others gathered in residential homes. Jewish stores, restaurants, health clinics, private schools and children day nurseries, Jewish theatres and newspapers dotted the neighbourhood.

Institutionally the growth of mutual benefit societies was perhaps the strongest indication of the ties of community and solidarity among Toronto Jews. In an era before the emergence of the welfare state unemployment, strikes, illness, disease and death could spell utter destitution for individuals and families. Immigrant Jewish communities across North America -- exemplified by Toronto's experience -- formed an extensive network of mutual benefit societies to provide members with emergency assistance in hard times, and social activities for good times. By 1925, there were 30 such organizations in town, ranging from 80 to 500 dues-paying members. Some societies like the venerable Toronto Hebrew Benevolent Society, (over a century old and still functioning), were open to Jews of all national origins, occupation, religious or non-affiliation. Others united immigrants from the same town or region of the old country.

Trade union and socialist organizations were other important defining elements of Toronto's Jewish community. Jews constituted much of the garment industry workforce, where poor wages and working conditions often prevailed. In response, Toronto Jews joined unions and a variety of left-wing political parties. Toronto's 12 branches of the Arbeiter Ring (Workmen's Circle) comprised a unique association of workers devoted to mutual aid, education and social change. Even more important were unions in the garment industry such as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, comprised overwhelmingly of Jewish members in Toronto. As historian Ruth Frager has written, during the first half of the 20^th century Jews in Toronto "formed a dynamic movement, born out of the vigorous reactions of a displaced people who fled from the persecutions of the Old World to find themselves thrust out of necessity into the sweatshops of Spadina Avenue" (Frager, 1992: 211). Unwilling to remain passive victims of their new environment, Jewish workers embraced unions and workplace strikes as the surest means of improving their conditions in the New World. As Frager describes, a crucial element of the Jewish labour movement was the prominent role played by women as workers, trade unionists and strikers. This was an immigrant community in which women took a lead role in advancing claims for equal treatment.

All the organizations previously cited -- synagogues, schools, theatres, newspapers, mutual benefit societies, unions -- confirm Stepehen Speisman's characterization of Toronto Jews as "a community of 'joiners'" (Speisman, 1987: 96). These organizations were the institutional mechanisms through which a Jewish community was created in Toronto. When Toronto's garment industry moved west to Spadina Avenue after the First World War, the Jewish community also migrated westward from the Ward to the Kensington Market area. Here, Toronto's Jewish community elected its first federal and provincial politician during the 1930s B despite prominent publications such as Saturday Night proclaiming: "Imagine a gang with names like that running a white man's country!" (Lemon, 1985: 53).

Yet while the Jewish community succeeded in getting its own members elected in predominantly Jewish constituencies, they were unable to secure favourable government policy when it mattered most. As Abella and Troper have shown, throughout the 1930s, the Canadian government turned a deaf ear to the Jewish community's pleas for Canada to provide haven for Jewish refugees of Nazi persecution. Mackenzie King's government would not open the doors. And even after World War II, Canada remained reluctant to take in survivors of the Holocaust. As Canada prepared to open wide its doors to post-war immigration from Europe, the lingering anti-semitism of Canada's political, economic and social elite was expressed by the anonymous senior Canadian official who in 1945 responded to a journalist's query of how many Jews would be admitted to Canada after the war by declaring "None is too many" (Abella & Troper, 1982: ix). Jews were about to be supplanted as Toronto's largest minority group. Ironically however, the Jewish community's greatest advance in Toronto society would come in the last half of the 20^th century, when other immigrant groups came to vastly outnumber Jews in the city. During the past 50 years, Toronto's Jewish community has generally prospered and succeeded by advancing in the city's business and professional ranks. In the public domain as well, Jews have held a prominence of place scarcely conceivable to earlier generations of Torontonians. Toronto has had three Jewish mayors over the past 4 decades including Nathan Phillips, after whom the landmark civic square at City Hall is named and Mel Lastman, the first mayor of the amalgamated City of Toronto. The election of Jewish mayors reflects not only the social mobility of Jews in Toronto over the 20^th century, but the extent to which massive multicultural migration to the city since 1950 has transformed assumptions of who is fit to play a lead role in the city's affairs.

In 1961 Pierre Berton wrote a book about Toronto titled The New City. The book celebrated the demise of staid, "Toronto the Good", which Berton described as "this town of quiet homes and quiet Sundays, of smug, satisfied Anglo-Saxons" . Now to Berton's delight a more dynamic and cosmopolitan Toronto was emerging. The first sign B and agent B of the city's transformation Berton identified in the book was the city's bursting "Italian Town" along College Street in the west end of Toronto (Berton, 1961: 19, 39). Yet the experience of Toronto's Italian community demonstrates the adversity and resilience involved in changing a city's prevailing values and customs.

Following the Second World War elements of both certainty and uncertainty characterized Canada's immigration prospects. It was clear that for the first time in two decades, the doors would have to be opened wide to newcomers. Since the mid 1920s, immigration into Canada had virtually come to a halt. By the mid 1940s, as Harold Troper has written, "[f]or the first time in thirty years Canada faced a peacetime shortage of workers" (Troper, 1993: 258). Canada's low birth rate occasioned by both the Depression and War meant the country lacked the workforce required by its booming post-war economy. Companies lobbied the government to bring in more immigrants. But where should they come from? In 1945, under prevailing policy, only a limited category of immigrants were allowed into the country: British persons, American citizens and farmers with sufficient means to farm in Canada (Hawkins, 1972: 89-90). Nor was there popular or political sentiment to cast the immigration net wider. A Gallup poll in 1946 showed 61% of Canadians opposed to permitting mass migration from Europe (Iacovetta, 1992: 22). The strongest opposition in this poll was expressed against Japanese, Jewish and Italian newcomers. A year later prime minister Mackenzie King reassured a skeptical public that "careful selection" would be exercised in determining who could enter the country. "The people of Canada", King declared, "do not wish, as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental alteration in the character of the population" (Ramcharan, 1982: 13). One official in the Immigration Department made it clear in a memo that Italians were not on the welcome list, saying Canadians "are not now anxious to receive an influx of Italians whom they do not regard as the most desirable type of immigrant". With insufficient numbers of immigrants arriving from traditional source countries, however, business continued to press the government to look further afield. The Canadian Manufacturers Association, for instance, had urged Ottawa to recruit "husky unmarried men" from Italy "to fill the gap" (Iacovetta, 1992: 23).

The first step towards a new outlook on immigration, which would transform Toronto, came in 1947. That year, Italy was finally removed from the wartime enemy alien list. (During the war some Italians were stripped of their citizenship, while a smaller number were interned as suspected aliens.) Then entry was extended to immigrants from across Europe able to work in resource and manufacturing industries. Once again, Canada's immigration policy responded to economic demands. Initially the number of arrivals from Italy rose modestly. Then during the 1950s and 1960s they climbed to record numbers year after year. From 1946 to 1972 over three and a half million immigrants came to Canada. The second largest group (after British arrivals) came from Italy. They numbered almost half a million in total, or 1 in every 8 newcomers over this period. By far the greatest proportion -- 70% -- came from the south of Italy, forsaking the struggles of agricultural subsistence for the promise of a better life across the ocean. Interestingly, Canadian immigration officials aggressively tried to recruit northern Italians as immigrants, regarding them as a better 'fit' into a Canadian society dominated by western and northern European peoples. Yet the great majority came from the south, illustrating yet again how migration movements can evade the micro-management of nation-state policy preferences. Toronto became, by far, the preferred place of settlement for Italian immigrants to Canada, becoming home to 40% of the new arrivals. Between 1951 and 1971 the number of Italians in the Toronto CMA increased ten-fold: from 27,000 to over 270,000. By 1961 Italians ranked as by far the largest non-British ethnic group in Toronto (Tomasi, 1997: 486; Ramirez, 1989: 7; Iacovetta, 1992: xxi; N. Harney, 1998: 179; Lemon, 1985: 196). .

The postwar period also saw the growth of other large "non-traditional" immigrant communities in Toronto with the arrival of Greek, Portuguese and Eastern European immigrants. But by their massive numbers, it was Italians who symbolized the changing face of Toronto through the 1950s and 1960s. By their numbers they helped to propel Toronto past Montreal as Canada's largest metropolitan centre. By settling into older central city neighbourhoods emptied by the exodus to postwar suburbs such as North York and Scarborough, Italians played a crucial role in preserving the central city as both viable and vibrant residential space. This would prove a major urban virtue for Toronto, in contrast to the demise of the central core in many American urban areas. And physically we will see, much of Toronto's extensive postwar city- building was literally built on the backs of Italian immigrants.

Yet it should be noted that Toronto's Italian community pre-dates the massive postwar influx. Italian explorers and adventurers, of course, were instrumental in the European colonization and settlement of North America. Though their names have long been anglicized, Cristoforo Colombo and Giovanni Caboto, played crucial parts in opening the New World to the Old. Yet as Clifford Jansen has noted, not until the 1880s, when work began on building the Canadian Pacific Railway and other construction projects, did significant permanent Italian settlement occur in Canada (Jansen, 1988: 17). The image of Italians as a hard-working, cheap and docile workforce took hold early with most Italians drawn to work outside large cities on railway construction, mining and logging sites. The rise of Canadian manufacturing in the late 1890s gave rise to the first significant Italian communities in Canadian cities. Estimates suggest Toronto was home to perhaps 1,000 Italians in 1900; 10,000 in 1914 and under 20,000 in 1941 (Robert Harney, 1983: 344; Nicholas Harney, 1998: 179). Language, nationality and religion set Italians apart from Toronto's dominant (English, British, Protestant) culture in these years, and relegated them B like Jews B to outsider status. Indeed during the first half of the twentieth century Italians and Jews had much in common. They shared neighbourhood space: first the downtown area known as the Ward, then College Street west of Spadina. Close friendships and unlikely bilingualism were often forged by Jewish families leaving their children with Italian neighbours during Saturday synagogue services, and reciprocating to care for Italian children during Sunday morning Mass church services. One unexpected result of these childcare arrangements was the number of Jewish children who learned to speak Italian, and Italian children becoming conversant in Yiddish. Interestingly too -- motivated by their own sense of victimization -- during the Christie Pits melee of 1933, many Italian youths rushed to join the fray in support of embattled Jews. And finally, Italians too demonstrated a strong inclination from the outset to build distinctive community in keeping with their traditions. As John Zucchi has shown, prior to the Second World War Toronto had three "Little Italy" neighbourhoods, three Catholic parishes, and a number of Italian clubs, associations and mutual benefit societies (Zucchi, 1988: 3). "From the earliest stages of Italian settlement in Canada", Bruno Ramirez notes, "one may observe the presence of ethnic associations" (Ramirez, 1989: 15). These organizations provided not only tangible services such as illness and death benefits, language classes, social and cultural activities; they were networks through which immigrant community was established and reproduced.

A significant Italian community had existed in Toronto as far back as 1900. Yet a recurring theme in academic writing about the postwar Italian immigrants is the discrimination they faced upon arrival. Iacovetta for instance contends that Toronto proved to be "an extremely cold and unfriendly place", where Italians were treated "as a target of scorn". More omenous still, she notes, "in the years before the large number of immigrants of colour from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean B a migration that would not reach significant proprtions for another decade B the southern Italians, by virtue of their darker skin colouring, were at times virtually ascribed the status of a visible minority." Few voices expressed this view more directly or crudely than the member of the Orange Lodge who wrote Ontario's premier in 1954 complaining of the recent infestation of "these ignorant, almost black people", born in "a Vatican controlled country", and whose young men were typically "armed with knives and...continually holding up people and especially ladies near parks and dark alleys" (Iacovetta, 1992: xi, 103, 106). Italians were neither the first nor the last immigrant group to be racialized and stigmatized in Toronto.

Discrimination against Italians in Toronto manifested itself in two prime domains: at work (affecting adults) and at school (affecting children). We explore each sphere briefly. Italian immigrants in the 1950s and 60s found work, as Jansen notes, "in the lowest occupational categories" (Jansen, 1988: 139). Italian men were overwhelmingly concentrated in construction and public infrastructure building, while women worked in manufacturing, particularly the garment and food industries. The work experiences of both Italian men and women was aptly described by Iacovetta's assessment that Italians "performed the dangerous or low-paying jobs that others shunned..." (Iacovetta, 1992: x). The massive Italian migration coincided with the most extensive period of construction and public infrastructure development in the city's history. A new two-tier metropolitan system of government was established in Toronto in 1954 to expedite the building of expressways, subways and sewer systems to accommodate continued suburban development. Toronto had never seen a building boom like it; Italian immigrants became its prime workforce and tragic victims.

Construction companies seemed to spring up overnight, and disappear just as fast. Wages went unpaid and Italians were regarded as a cheap, disposable workforce. Working conditions were often dangerous; safety enforcement lax or non-existent. In March 1960 fire swept through a sewer tunneling project in north Toronto leaving five Italian workers dead. Torontonians now read newspaper headlines which charged that Italian immigrant labourers were being "treated like animals" (Bagnell, 1989: 147). Unsafe work sites, poor wages and even threats of deportation characterized the newcomers' working lives. First the Italian community mourned its dead, and then thousands rallied to form new unions in the construction sector culminating in two bitter, though ultimately successful strikes in the summers of 1960 and 1961. Underlying both strikes was the workers' determination to be treated as full and equal members of Canadian society. One strike leader told a rally of Italian labourers: "Canada is a free country and immigrants should be treated the same as Canadians!" Another cried out for "an end to immigrant slavery", as the rally ended with mass chanting of the strike slogan, "Canadian wages, Canadian hours!" (Iacovetta, 1992: 169). Unionization became a means not only of improving wages and working conditions for Toronto's Italian immigrants, but of advancing their collective identity as Canadian citizens. One strike leader described the strikes as "a peaceful revolution by men who have been treated with disgrace" (Bagnell, 1989: 156).

The stereotyping of Italian immigrants as a cheap labour workforce negatively impacted on their children's life opportunities as well. Kenneth Bagnell contended that during the 1960s prejudice against Italians "had its most harmful expression in the country's educational system" (Ibid: 178). Ontario's school system was based on a philosophy of 'streaming', whereby students pursued either vocational or preparatory college/university studies in high school. While streaming was supposedly to be determined by academic performance many immigrant communities in Toronto B the Italians first! B complained that selection criteria had more to do with ethnicity and racial identity. Many school teachers and guidance councillors routinely shipped Italian students off to vocational schools, since this was the mainstream society's image of this immigrant community. As with their employment difficulties, Italians responded by organizing to advance their rights. Community and parent groups lobbied school boards to stop discriminatory streaming and become more diversity-friendly through such initiatives as heritage language programs.

Even more than earlier Italian immigrants, the postwar influx demonstrated a tremendous capacity for community building. This took two forms. First was claiming urban space and territorializing it to reflect the community's culture and values. 'Little Italy' neighbourhoods in the city's west end along College Street, Davenport Road and St. Clair Avenue turned traditional streets into piazzas. This literally transformed Toronto's use of street space. Long regarded simply as corridors for moving cars and pedestrians, streets now became public gathering and dining space as outdoor cafes proliferated. Secondly, Italians established a vast network of institutions to recreate and preserve their distinct identity in Toronto. Indeed by the 1980s, "an unusual degree of institutional completeness would be attained" by Toronto's Italian community (Robert Harney, 1983: 357). The term 'institutional completeness' refers to a minority community's capacity to create its own institutions: religious, educational, cultural and so forth; and therefore to meet its community members' needs internally. Italians in Toronto proved adept, not only at the physical challenge of city-building as we have seen, but also at the social challenge of community-building.

The number of Italian community organizations in Toronto climbed from 38 in 1954, to 240 in 1984 to over 400 in the 1990s (Nicholas Harney, 1998: 29). These organizations span a remarkable range of traditions, services and activities. Together they constitute the organizational foundation of Toronto's Italian community and warrant a brief discussion. The Italian Immigrant Aid Society was established in 1952 to provide a range of settlement services and support to newcomers. Two years later the Italian newspaper Corriere Canadese began publishing. In 1961 Centro Organizativo Scuole Technice Italiane (COSTI) was established to teach newcomers English and work skills. Four decades later, inspired by its motto "Integration through Education", COSTI has provided teaching and training to well over a hundred thousand learners drawn from every immigrant community which has made Toronto home. In the words of an early president, Lino Magagna, "COSTI is an expression of deep human feelings in our society. It is a way of reaching out by human beings and saying 'Here I am, don't be afraid, here's how you take the first step, let me help'" (Bagnell, 1989: 176). In 1974 the National Congress of Italian Canadians was formed, and based in Toronto as the umbrella organization and voice of Italian Canadians. Two years later, the city's Italian community officially opened Villa Columbo, a multiple facility complex including seniors housing, athletic facility, art gallery and community centre. The project was largely financed through internal community fundraising, and was regarded by many Italians as an opportunity to overcome negative impressions existing in the broader society. Nicholas Harney notes that Italians in Toronto were typically regarded "either as cafoni (rural louts) or Mafiosi". More than one Italian active in building Villa Columbo saw it as a means of achieving community acceptance in the city: "I felt we needed to prove we were good and hardworking Canadians, but of Italian extraction. What better way to do it than show some sort of civic responsibility, taking care of your own, by building an old age home" (Nicholas Harney, 1998: 158, 60). While some community institutions were built to win social acceptance, others were only established by overcoming exclusionary barriers.

Interestingly, it took something of a battle before Toronto's Italian community felt fully at home within the Catholic Church here. Over 90% of Italian immigrants to Toronto were Catholic, and by 1971 Italians comprised one third of the city's 841,000 Catholics, and belonged to 33 different parishes. Yet within the church, Italians complained bitterly of second-class treatment as evidenced by overcrowded churches, insufficient opportunity and advancement for Italian priests, and inferior access to space. As one parishioner recalled "It was a disgrace, the way we were herded into the basement, and the English get to have a real church, to worship with dignity" (Iacovetta, 1992: 134). Ethnic tensions within the church persisted for years, with the archdiocese gradually providing more resources for Italian worshippers, in the face of complaints from older Canadian parishioners that too much was being given to the newcomers. Accordingly, churches became important gathering points for the Italian community in Toronto. As Nicholas Harney notes, 'the ubiquity of social clubs' B typically located in storefronts sparsely filled with basic a kitchen, TV set, and playing card tables B constituted an even more grass-roots community institution (Nicholas Harney, 1998: 142). Frequently organized on the basis of common hometown origin, these clubs kept old networks alive and renewed in the 'new city of Toronto', which Italians not only now inhabited in huge numbers, but as Pierre Berton had noted, were transforming. In striving to make a place for themselves in Toronto, Italian immigrants confronted employers, teachers, school boards and the church establishment. As Iacovetta observes, postwar Italian immigrants to Toronto "showed a tremendous capacity to pool their resources together and a talent for finding ways to recreate culture and community in the new environment" (Iacovetta, 1992: 201).

During the 1970s and 1980s, over a quarter million Caribbean immigrants settled in Canada. This was the first substantial increase in the country's black community since the mid-nineteenth century. These newcomers would confront a problematic legacy of racialized exclusion and discrimination in their new homeland. Historian James Walker has observation that "black history in Canada goes back to our very roots, and that it was a history that began in oppression" (Walker, 1981: 10). By the end of the 20^th century, the Caribbean community's experience in Toronto was characterized B in the subtitle of the foremost study of the subject B as "Learning to Live with Racism" (Henry, 1994). This section explores the travels, troubles and triumphs of blacks who migrated to Toronto.

Slavery in Canada has been described as "one of our best-kept historical secrets" (Walker, 1981: 19). For over 200 years, slavery -- more than any other phenomenon -- defined the black experience in Canada. As we will see this entailed two very different dimensions: first, the lengthy record of slavery in Canada itself; and second, Canada's stature in the mid-nineteenth century as a refuge for escaped slaves from the United States.

The first black Canadian arrived as a slave in 1628. By 1759 when the British captured New France, over 1000 black slaves had been brought to the colony. Further east, there were black slaves at the French outpost of Louisburg, and black slaves were also among the first settlers of Halifax, numbering over one hundred in 1767 (Ibid: 19). Decades later when Toronto was founded in 1793, the first black settlers were slaves belonging to British officials and military officers. In 1799, 15 of the town's 400 residents were black (Hill, 1985: 76). Compared with the United States and the Caribbean, slavery in Canada was relatively limited and short-lived. Slavery was most widespread and brutal in plantation economies involving agricultural production and the need for a large rural workforce. The Canadian climate and geography were not conducive to such economic activity, and nor was slavery a feasible means of supplying workers to the major Canadian resource industries of the day such as the fur, fish and lumber trades. Most slaves in Canada performed domestic and servant duties, and Ontario (then known as Upper Canada) became the first British territory to legislate against slavery. In 1793 the colonial legislature prohibited the entry of any more slaves into the colony, and provided for the gradual elimination of slavery. Any new slaves brought in would immediately be free, any children born to resident slaves would go free at age 25, however already-resident slaves would remain captive their entire life. The last generation of Ontario slaves lived through the first part of the 19^th century.

Blacks who migrated freely to Canada early in its history, often encountered disappointment at the end of their journey. The first refugees to arrive in Canada were the Loyalists in the 1780s B residents of the United States who preferred to stay loyal to the British Empire following the American Revolution, and moved up to Canada. Beyond patriotism, promises of free land lured many northwards. Most settled in the Maritimes with smaller numbers heading to Ontario. Ten percent of all Loyalists B 3500 arrivals B were free blacks who typically were either denied land grants or allocated less fertile property in remote segregated areas (Walker, 1981: 30). Despite the town's rapid population growth, Toronto's black population remained tiny during the first decades of the 19^th century, growing from 18 persons in 1802 to some 50 families in 1837. Some were the community's last slaves, others worked in services, as tradesmen or owned successful businesses. Early nineteenth century Toronto provides confirmation of Cecil Foster's observation that "[a]s long as there have been Blacks in Canada, there has been a church at the heart of the community" (Foster, 1996: 54). A number of black churches B particularly Baptist and Methodist B were thriving by the 1840s.

During the 1840s and 1850s, growing numbers of black slaves fled the United States for Canada. Known as the Underground Railroad, a secretive network of supporters allowed thousands of slaves to escape to Canada, with most settling in southwestern Ontario. By the mid 1850s, Toronto's population of 50,000 included 1200 blacks (Hill, 1985: 88). The city quickly established a reputation for tolerance or at least an aversion to explicitly bigoted behaviour. One black journalist described the treatment of blacks in the city as follows: "Here there is no difference made in public houses, steamboats, railroad cars, schools, colleges, churches, ministerial platforms, and government offices. There is no doubt some prejudice here, but those who have it are ashamed to show it. This is at least true of Toronto" (Ibid: 89). Indeed the abolitionist cause B devoted to eliminating slavery in the United States B was particularly strong here. The Toronto Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1851 to provide support to runaway slaves, and to advocate an end to slavery. Heading the Society were some of Toronto's wealthiest and most prominent citizens including George Brown, publisher of The Globe and future Father of Confederation. The Society sometimes held its meetings at City Hall, chaired by the Mayor, with one of its meeting described in The Globe as "the largest and most enthusiastic meeting we have ever seen in Toronto" (Ibid: 90).

Why was mid-nineteenth century Toronto a bastion of abolitionism and human rights? Several factors may have contributed. First, Toronto's own black community carried considerable credibility. Loyal to the British Empire, many had left the United States after its independence, and even fought with the British against the Americans in the War of 1812. Economically the community in Toronto was well established, earning compliments from the likes of Toronto's first mayor (William Lyon Mackenzie) for their contribution to Toronto society. Second, Toronto for a few years during the 1850s was home base for Canada's first black, abolitionist newspaper, the impressive Provincial Freeman established by Mary Ann Shadd. Consequently many leading figures of the black abolitionist movement lived or passed through Toronto. Third, the fact that Britain had outlawed slavery in the 1830s now made abolitionism a major ethical divide between the British Empire and its renegade former colony, the United States. Abolitionism in other words, became one way of asserting a British rather than American set of values in what was then called British North America (to become Canada in 1867). And few places were more determined to display their British roots, we have already seen earlier in this chapter, than Toronto. Finally, it should be noted that opposing slavery in the United States made good economic sense for Toronto's civic elite. Slavery provided the competing American economy to the south a comparative advantage thanks to its low cost labour force. So a host of factors placed Toronto in the vanguard of the 19^th century anti-slavery movement.

Ironically perhaps, the end of slavery in the United States led to a sharp drop in Toronto's black population. By 1871 the community shrunk to 551 persons, and then reached an all-time low of only 408 in 1911 (Ibid: 102). Following the American Civil war, many recently arrived blacks in Canada returned home. Much of this had to do with the lure of larger black communities within the more prosperous American economy. But another factor was the virtual impossibility of blacks entering Canada as immigrants. Between 1896 and 1907, for instance, one and a half million immigrants arrived in Canada. Fewer than one thousand were black. From the days of the Underground Railway until the 1960s, Canadian immigration policy targetted blacks for non-entry. In the 1890s, for instance, the Canadian government reacted quickly when its promotion of prairie western settlement began attracting American blacks northward. Canada sent government officials to the U.S. South to discourage migration, and blacks who persisted were turned back at the border (Walker, 1981: 94).

For much of the 20^th century, Canada's immigration policies were explicitly racist, seeking to establish a "white settler" society (Stasiulis, 1995: 198). Canada's Immigration Act of 1910 specifically provided for the prohibition of "any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada" (Walker, 1981: 94). A year later Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier's government applied the law to exclude "any immigrants belonging to the Negro race" (Alexander & Glaze, 1996: 26). Almost fifty years later, the Immigration Act of 1952 reaffirmed that immigrants could be barred from Canada because of their "ethnic group" identity, their "geographic area of origin", or their "probable inability to become readily assimilated" (cited in Walker, 1981: 94). Strangely, these guidelines were used to exclude blacks who had been living in Canada since the 1700s.

Indeed, blacks faced more prejudice and institutionalized forms of discrimination in the first half of the 20th century, than during the 19^th century. This stemmed largely from the rise of pseudo-scientific, untruthful assertions of racial purity and superiority which became fashionable. This stereotyping of non-white peoples led to a host of discriminatory practices. Thus for the first half of this century it was legal and common for blacks in Toronto to be barred from certain jobs, theatres, hotels, dance halls, residential neighbourhoods, public beaches and skating rinks. In his memoir, for instance, the venerable native-Jamaican Harry Gairey recalls arriving in Toronto at the end of the First World War, and being informed at numerous factories displaying 'Help Wanted' signs that there were no jobs "for coloured people". Gairey describes the extent of segregation in inter-war Toronto (during the 1920s and 1930s) by noting that as a black, "[y]ou couldn't go to Eaton's and ask for a job, or to the Bell Telephone. It was unheard-of to go to a restaurant or a public dance." A generation later, when the first graduate nurse from the Caribbean was allowed into Canada, it would take 14 months for her to gain hospital employment, "and the only place that would hire her was the Jewish hospital, Mount Sinai" (Gairey, 1981: 7, 9, 35). Interestingly, a hospital that was established earlier in the century to provide Jewish doctors and nurses a place to practice, now provided the same opportunity to a another immigrant spurned by mainstream hospitals. Until the middle of the 20^th century there were no laws prohibiting discrimination, and the courts routinely upheld segregationist practices.

On the immigration front, until the 1960s, blacks were allowed into Canada only as a "last-resort" supply of cheap labour or skilled workers. This applied particularly to two periods when special programs were established to bring in Caribbean women as domestic, household workers. Thus from 1922-1931, 74% of the 768 Caribbean blacks who immigrated to Canada came as domestics; from 1955 to 1961, 44% of the 4,219 Caribbean immigrants were female domestics (Calliste, 1991: 136, 141). At the more skilled end of the job spectrum, Caribbean nurses were allowed into Canada in the 1950s provided they could demonstrate 'exceptional merit', and prospective hospital employers were aware of their racial origin (Calliste, 1996: 289). As Alexander and Glaze conclude, these limited and tightly regulated entry programs "did nothing to eradicate the underlying principle of Canada's Immigration Act: that there are superior and inferior races of people" (Alexander & Glaze, 1996: 179).

Following the Second World War, Toronto's black community became increasingly active in lobbying for more open, equitable immigration policies on black immigration. This mobilization of community stemmed from three sources: a sense of injustice; the belief among ex-veterans especially that since blacks had fought for Canada in World War II they should not be discriminated against; and the existence of a number of black organizations able to speak on their community's behalf. Like Jews and Italians before them, blacks relied on trade unionism as a vehicle of collective identity and expression. While Jews and Italians predominated in the garment and construction industries respectively, the occupation most associated with black men from 1900 to the 1950s was the railway car porter. The railways would not hire blacks in more responsible positions, and confined black men to lower paid, stereotypical service employment. Harry Gairey, for instance, worked for decades as a railway sleeping car porter. Segregated and demeaned into the lowest rung of rail industry employment, the black porters succeeded in building an important community organization on the basis of their occupational exploitation. As Alexander and Glaze claim, the "black porters' struggle for unionization and equality is one of the great achievements of Canadian black history" (Alexander & Glaze, 1996: 135). Challenging powerful railway corporations and prevailing anti-black prejudices, the Canadian porters formed branches of the Sleeping Car Porters union and affiliated with the large Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Workers. By the 1950s the union had succeeded in raising wages for porters, and pressing the railroads to open more lucrative occupations (including conductor) to blacks.

The union and its leaders also rallied to condemn Canada's discriminatory immigration policies. Joining the campaign were other black union activists who had begun moving into labour leadership positions in other manufacturing sectors such as the Auto and Steel workers' unions. In 1951, Harry Gairey and a number of other black union and community activists in Toronto formed the Negro Citizenship Association to press for equal immigration access for blacks. Many organizing meetings later, in 1954, thirty five black community activists from the Sleeping Car Porters Union and the Negro Citizenship Association took an historic trip to Ottawa. There they met and petitioned federal cabinet ministers to allow Caribbean blacks in through Canada's expansive postwar immigration doors on an equal footing with other British subjects. Their call for redress was not heeded. An opinion poll of the day showed nearly 60% of Canadians in agreement with the proposition that immigration to Canada should be more difficult for some groups than others (Winks, 1997: 436). It was a view held and expressed with particular vigour by Canada's director of immigration -- the senior civil servant overseeing the country's immigration policies who wrote in 1955:

"It is not by accident that coloured British subjects other than the negligible numbers from the United Kingdom are excluded from Canada. It is from experience, generally speaking, that coloured people in the present state of the white man's thinking are not a tangible community asset, and as a result are more or less ostracized. They do not assimilate readily and pretty much vegetate to a low standard of living. Despite what has been said to the contrary, many cannot adapt themselves to our climatic conditions" (Carty, 1994: 217).

Because whites did not regard blacks as 'a tangible community asset', another group of 20^th century prospective immigrants was met with the response: 'none is too many'. Rooted in racial and racist stereotyping and prejudice, Canada's immigration welcome mat remained reserved for white Europeans and Americans. In 1960 for instance, not one of Canada's 27 immigration offices outside North America was located in the Caribbean or Africa (Troper, 1993: 266).

When Canada finally globalized its immigration policies in the 1960s, opening itself to migrants from around the world, it was motivated less by ethics than by economics. With Europe's own postwar recovery now complete, fewer migrants were leaving the continent. Canada's own booming economy needed new supplies of labour. International trade and diplomacy considerations also came into play. Canada's stature in international arenas such as the Commonwealth and United Nations was being undermined by our discriminatory immigration provisions. For a variety of pragmatic reasons therefore, Canada amended its Immigration Act in 1962, specifying that henceforth every prospective immigrant would be considered "entirely on his own merit, without regard to race, colour, national origin or the country from which he comes" ( Winks,1997: 443). Five years later, on Canada's 100^th birthday year, the details of an entry-by-merit approach known as the 'points system' was introduced which would transform Canadian society in very short order. The new guidelines meant that all prospective immigrants, regardless of country of origin or identity, would be assessed on the same objective considerations related to their education, occupation, employment prospects and knowledge of English or French.

Caribbeans were by far the largest group of 'non-traditional' immigrants to first capitalize on a merit system of immigration. Canada's doors opened at precisely the time that Britain began curtailing Caribbean immigration, so many now flocked to Canada in hopes of improving their economic circumstances. In 1961 there were 12,000 Caribbean-born in Canada; by 1981 the number had soared to over 200,000; and by the early 1990s the Caribbean community in Canada (immigrants and Canadian-born children) was estimate at 455,000. Almost three quarters of all Caribbean immigrants settled in Ontario, with most drawn to the Toronto area. While the Caribbean comprises a large number of independent countries, four in particular provided almost 90% of the 309,585 Caribbean-born Canadian residents in 1992: Jamaica 102,440; Guyana 66,055; Trinidad & Tobago 49,385; and Haiti 39,880. As we will see these differing national origins have contributed to the establishment of diverse, rather than homogenous, Caribbean communities in Toronto. Another significant aspect of the Caribbean migration to Canada was the preponderance of women. This is a sharp contrast in the experience of most other immigrant groups to Canada, where men outnumbered women. By the early 1980s, there were 10 Caribbean women for every 8 men in Canada; while the ratio for Jamaican Canadians was 10 to 7. This gender imbalance reflected both the legacy of the domestic workers program of the 1950s, as well as the continuing pattern in subsequent decades for more women than men to migrate to Canada (Walker, 1985: 18; Henry, 1994: 29, 28). Regardless of their gender, regardless of which country they were leaving, many Caribbean immigrants likely shared the "romantic image" that writer Cecil Foster recalled drew him to Canada: "a place of pristine snow and streams, a home of tolerance, a country in the forefront of racial harmony" (Foster, 1996: 48). Once arrived in Toronto, however, the daily experiences of many Caribbeans daily would belie this idyllic image.

Frances Henry adopts the concept >differential incorporation' to describe the Caribbean experience in Toronto. The term, she explains, "refers to their unequal treatment and differential access to the economic, social, political, and cultural rewards offered in a plural society" (Henry, 1994: 17). A host of markers identify the difficulties Caribbeans and other blacks have faced in Toronto including: discrimination in employment and housing; alarmingly high school drop-out rates; insensitivity from cultural institutions; barriers impeding the establishment of community institutions; and disproportionate confrontations with police. The following examples drawn from recent years suggest the scope of marginalization facing Caribbeans in Toronto.

An early 1980s study of job hunting in Toronto found that when whites and blacks had the same qualifications, white applicants received three times as many job offers; subsequent data showed that despite higher levels of education, visible minority workers were paid less than other Canadians; and evidence surfaced that visible minorities were still being relegated to less desirable occupations despite having consistently higher levels of education than other workers in lower-paying positions (Henry, 1994: 116-118).Writing in 1990, Jeffrey Reitz contended that the prevailing under-employment of Caribbeans, (affecting not only whether they held jobs, but also what positions and wages they secured), could only be attributed to discrimination. Their place in the labour market lagged behind their educational and job qualifications. Caribbean males were predominantly employed in health care (often as hospital orderlies and janitors), industrial, taxi driving, security guard and clerical positions; Caribbean females were disproportionately employed in personal services, clerical and nursing positions (Breton et al, 1990: 162-65). As we will see further on in this chapter, labour market and income discrepancies have persisted, even intensified.

Educationally, there were signs of a serious mis-match between Toronto schools and black students. Sixty percent of black students quit high school before graduating; disproportionately large numbers who did graduate had been streamed into non post-secondary vocational programs; and black youth commonly complained of having their academic potential under-valued by teachers and guidance councillors (Foster, 1996: 131; Henry, 1994: 120-147). Two major cultural productions B the Royal Ontario Museum's Out of Africa exhibit, and Livent's performance of Show Boat B offended the Toronto black community for their cultural bias and mis-representation. Construction of a new community centre by the Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA) was held up for years by opposition from neighbouring property owners and the North York city council. "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy", JCA President Herman Stewart confided (Siemiatycki & Isin, 1998: 96). Finally it is clear that many Torontonians of Caribbean heritage believe that they are particularly poorly served by the city's police. Thus 80% of black survey participants told York University researchers they believed the police in Toronto treated blacks worse than whites; many black motorists regard themselves charged with DWBB -- Driving While Being Black -- to explain why they seem to be stopped so often by police; and most tragically, a string of police shootings of black men B resulting in 8 deaths between 1988 and 1992 alone B have left Toronto's black community feeling angry and vulnerable (Foster, 1996: 247, 5-8; Croucher, 1997: 327). In his 1992 Report On Race Relations In Ontario, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Stephen Lewis reviewed the experience of Toronto's black community (by far the largest portion being of Caribbean origin) and concluded, "what we are dealing with, at root, and fundamentally, is anti-Black racism" (Alexander & Glaze, 1996: 115). Two years later, based on the most comprehensive study of Toronto's Caribbean community to date, Frances Henry arrived at a similar conclusion, writing that the prime factor "to explain the differential incorporation of the Caribbean community in Toronto is that societal racism (original emphasis) affects all aspects of the lives of Caribbean people in Canada" (Henry, 1994: 16). An American political scientist made the same point several years later, contending that despite the city's widespread image of multicultural tolerance, "Toronto is not an ethnic and racial paradise" (Croucher, 1997: 320).

As for Torontonians of Caribbean origin themselves, many believe that a subtle but pervasive pattern of prejudice inhibits their life in the city. Cecil Foster speaks of encountering "racism with a smile on its face" in Toronto; a black lawyer contrasts the U.S. style of "dim-witted racism" with its "much more subtle, more finessed" manifestation in Canada; and many Caribbeans echo the experience of the Toronto community legal services worker who told a public enquiry that only after arriving in Toronto did her black identity become significant. "I am black", Beverly Folkes told the 1989 Task Force on Race Relations and Policing. But, she continued, "I never became aware that I was black until I set foot on the shores of this country. It was always there, but it was never important until now...I have become one of the people who is guilty until proven innocent, a total reversal of what the law should have been. I hurt. I feel helpless. I feel frustrated" (Foster, 1996: 14; Croucher, 1997: 332; 338-9). The Caribbean diaspora in Toronto is a reminder that the city has not yet achieved integration on equal terms for all its immigrant communities.

Frustrations among black, primarily Caribbean-origin youth in Toronto proved an important element in the events of May 4, 1992 which came to be known as the Yonge Street Riot. On that day a demonstration was organized at the American consulate building in downtown Toronto, to protest the acquittal in Los Angeles of police officers accused B and videotaped B in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. As fate would have it, just days before the planned protest at the U.S. consulate, Toronto police shot and killed a black man. Emotions ran high among many demonstrators at the Toronto demonstration, and exploded on the city's main commercial thoroughfare as protestors went on a wave of storefront vandalism and looting along downtown Yonge Street. While Canada's leading news magazine Maclean' headlined the rioters as "Black and Angry", other media and participants emphasized the multiracial nature of the protest (Kaihla and Laver, 1992: 24). While blacks were certainly not the only Riot participants, the event fundamentally challenged Toronto's prevailing image of ethno-racial harmony (Croucher, 1997: 326-7).

Frances Henry has concluded that while racism is the most significant cause of the adversity Caribbeans have faced in Toronto, she also contends that there a number of the community's own "cultural values and institutions that Caribbean people bring with them that do not work to their advantage in the new society..." (Ibid: 17). Among the problematic patterns identified by Henry are a high proportion of single parent families, prevailing rivalries that divide Caribbeans from different islands and countries, and a relatively low rate of political participation among Caribbeans in Toronto. "People of Caribbean origin", Henry concludes, "have not yet reached the level of cohesion necessary to enter the political process" (Ibid: 244). This is attributable to a variety of factors including: the relative recency of migration (compared with the more established Jewish and Italian communities); the pre-occupation with day-to-day economic and social pressures; the widely scattered residential pattern among Caribbeans which prevents them from numerically dominating electoral constituencies; and the divisions among Caribbeans based on island or national origin. Indeed as Henry asserts: "The Caribbean community in Toronto is not homogenous. In fact, the term 'community' is misleading and 'communities' is a more accurate description of a group that is clearly segmented by a number of factors" (Ibid: 268). Social class and birth country of origin have been the major divides within the 'community'. Associational life for instance has largely been organized by country of origin leading to the creation of groups such as The Jamaican Canadian Association, and the Trinidad and Tobago Association. While these organizations have provided a variety of support services and activities, they have also reinforced the institutional fragmentation of Caribbeans in Toronto. It is a divide some regard as problematic, and needing to be overcome. "What I would like to live long enough to see is one Black organization", octogenarian Harry Gairey said in 1981, "like the Canadian Jewish Congress, that would speak for all Blacks and appoint a spokesman, instead of all these little splinter groups" (Gairey, 1981: 42-3). Gairey's hope remains to be realized.

Chinese migration to Toronto originated in the late 19^th century. A century later, Chinese newcomers constituted the largest wave of immigrants ever to settle in the city in a short period of time. The city's recent emergence as the North American urban area with the largest Chinese population constitutes a dramatic renewal of multicultural Toronto (Nipp 1992: ?). While Toronto's Chinese community numbered no more than 5000 in 1950, by 1996 their numbers had soared to 380,000 and Chinese had displaced Italian as the second most commonly spoken language in the Toronto area (Cannon, 1989: 237; Wong, 1999: B1; Carey, 1999: A8). As Lo and Wang note, the Chinese community is Canada's "fastest growing ethnic group" thanks to its "accelerated immigration" in recent years (Lo and Wang, 1997: 49). However opening the door to Chinese newcomers has not necessarily meant a warm welcome for the newest Torontonians. "Aside from the indigenous people", Peter Li has written, "no racial or ethnic group in Canada has experienced such harsh treatment as the Chinese" (Li, 1998: 5). While weighing and comparing oppression among different groups is inherently problematic, Li's assertion reflects the adverse treatment of Chinese origin peoples ion Canada. Certainly, the limited size of the Chinese community in Canada for most of our history, stemmed from a series of government measures designed to keep the Chinese out. Those allowed in were often recruited as a vulnerable, easily exploited workforce. Ironically, now that Chinese immigrants are more likely to be well educated and affluent, they too B like their poorer Chinese predecessors B have had to integrate into a new society which at times both resents and requires their presence.

Chinese immigration to Canada began in the late 1850s, with settlement overwhelmingly concentrated in British Columbia. There the first Chinese Canadians -- numbering a few thousand at most -- worked either in mining or domestic service as cooks and cleaners. The largest arrival of Chinese immigrants (until the late 20^th century) occurred during the 1880s when some 15,000 Chinese labourers were brought in to work on constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway from central Canada to the Pacific Ocean. The shocking fact that over 3000 of these labourers died on the job B an average of one fatality for every mile of track laid B reflected both the treacherous task of blasting a railway through the Rockies, as well as the disregard and devaluing of Chinese lives by builders, contractors and governments of the day. Adjacent to one of Toronto's landmark contemporary sites -- the SkyDome stadium -- a stunning, recently-built monument pays belated tribute to the Chinese labourers who sacrificed so much to build a ribbon of steel across Canada.

In their own time, the Chinese Canadian community of the late 19^th and early 20^th century was dealt one blow after another. These setbacks of government policy were designed to admit as few Chinese newcomers as possible, and to assure that those in the country did not attain full equality and citizenship in Canada. As soon as the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, the federal government moved swiftly to restrict Chinese immigration. That year Canada introduced a head tax of $50 on all persons of Chinese origin entering the country. Ships travelling to Canada could carry no more than one Chinese person for every 50 tons of vessel weight. In 1900 the head tax was hiked to $100, and then to $500 in 1903. As intended, Chinese immigration to Canada fell sharply. Canadians of the day B and their government B racialized and demonized the Chinese as a foreign people unwanted in Canada unless they could be of some particular use, such as building the railway. But not only were the Chinese often ruthlessly exploited in the worst, poorest paying jobs; they were vilified by other Canadians for working for low wages, and presumably being responsible for depriving native Canadians of a living wage. Occasionally anger against the Chinese manifested itself in full-scale riotous assault on their community. Several such riots B which in another context would be termed 'pogroms': targetted attempts to destroy and evict a minority community B occurred in Vancouver. The worst occurred in 1907 when a parade organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League marched through the Chinese district carrying banners proclaiming: 'A white Canada and no cheap Asiatic Labor', and 'White Canada B patronize your own race and Canada'. Before long the march degenerated into full riot leaving a trail of ransacked and ruined Chinese businesses and homes. In 1923 came the most decisive move of all, when Canada's Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Act. Essentially the Act barred all Chinese immigration into Canada, and was not repealed until 1947. This was also the same year the right to vote was finally extended to Chinese residents of British Columbia, who for decades had been denied basic political rights and the ability to work in a host of occupations and professions Li, 1998: 31-37; Cannon, 1989: 106-112). Through much of Canada's history then, the Chinese were singled out as unworthy and unwanted Canadians. According to sociologist Peter Li, this perception continues to shape Canadian attitudes. "[T]he image of Chinese or Chinese-Canadians as belonging to a foreign race", he observed, "is ingrained in the cultural fabric of Canada" (Li, 1989: xiii). Chinese immigrants therefore, would face particular challenges becoming accepted as fully Torontonian.

By 1900 Toronto was home to a fledgling Chinese community of some 200 residents. Self-employment in laundries, cafes and groceries was the predominant source of livelihood. Yet even such a small presence was grounds for concern among some upstanding Torontonians. The city's very first neighbourhood association B the Rosedale Ratepayers Association B cited among its founding missions at the start of the 20^th century, the need to keep Chinese laundries out of the neighbourhood. By 1921, on the eve of the exclusionary Chinese Immigration Act, the city's Chinese population had experienced modest growth to 2,176 representing .4% of Toronto's population (Breton et al, 1990: 16). During the 1930s the first organization to advocate an end to discriminatory Canadian immigration policies towards the Chinese was established in Toronto. Leaders in the local Chinese community formed the Committee for the Movement to Abolish the Canadian Restrictive Immigration Policy Towards Chinese (Li, 1998: 91). The Committee lobbied the federal government, but to no avail. Canada would change its immigration policy not when the Chinese community requested, but when an open door served Canada's own interests.

Repealing the Chinese Immigration Act in 1947 did not usher in a sudden wave of Chinese newcomers. Nor was this the government's intent, as Prime Minister Mackenzie King informed the House of Commons. "Large-scale immigration from the orient would change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population", King declared (Canada, House of Commons, 1947: 2646). Until the 1960s, sponsored immediate relatives of Chinese Canadians were the only Chinese able to enter Canada. From 1949 to 1967 some 2.7 million persons immigrated to Canada; less than 2% B just 43,106 B were Chinese. Only when a 'race-blind', universal point system was adopted in 1967 to assess all prospective immigrants to Canada were large numbers of Chinese persons able to enter Canada. As we have seen earlier in this volume, the adoption of objective entry criteria based on education, skills and occupation was prompted by Canada's own needs. By the final third of the 20^th century Canada's economy faced labour shortages and a shrinking stream of migrants from traditional source countries in Europe. Canadian domestic economic interests plus our desire to retain strong relations with non-European states and economies all required opening our doors to global migration. No group has capitalized better by being judged on their merits than the Chinese. In the 30 years since the introduction of the points system almost 750,000 immigrants have arrived in Canada from Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. The 1990s have been the greatest period of Chinese migration in Canadian history, with the largest numbers arriving from Hong Kong. It was in this decade that Chinese surpassed Italian to become the third most commonly spoken language across Canada, and the second most common across the Toronto metropolitan area (Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 1999: 2,7; Li, 1998: 96,97).

Several factors account for the sharp rise in Chinese migration to Canada in recent decades. Since the largest number of Chinese immigrants to Canada have arrived from Hong Kong, its particular circumstances are addressed first. The return of Hong Kong to China's sovereignty in 1997 unleashed widespread anxiety among residents of the former British colony. For years leading up to the transfer, many Hong Kong residents feared the prospect of their free-wheeling, entrepreneurial capitalist society reverting to the control of the Communist People's Republic of China. The more affluent Hong Kong families, in particular, were eager to secure safe haven. The earliest wave of migration began in the late 1960s when political turmoil raised fears of mainland Chinese invasion, and Hong Kong was put under martial law for four months. The next wave began in 1982 when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared that Britain would not contest the end of its control over Hong Kong, as specified by the late 19^th century treaty which had turned the city into a colony of the British Empire. Political uncertainty weighed heavily on many. Ronald Skeldon estimates that by the early 1990s, 585,000 Hong Kong residents B 10% of the colony's population! B had already migrated (Skeldon :70). Record numbers more would leave in the years just before 1997. Margaret Cannon has identified "fear and desperation" as the "engine driving the Hong Kong exodus" (Cannon, 1989: 16). For his part Ronald Skeldon contends that "Hong Kong migrants are as much bold pioneers in transnational commerce as they are reluctant exiles" ( :68). To be sure, it has generally been the wealthier sections of Hong Kong's community who were able to emigrate before 1997. And Canada proved to be their destination of choice.

In the last decades of the 20^th century, Hong Kong emigrants constituted the advanced world's preferred immigrant pool. As affluent, educated, entrepreneurial and globally-connected business migrants, those leaving Hong Kong were actively courted by every traditional country of immigration, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. From the mid 1980s onward, Canada attracted by far the most migrants leaving Hong Kong. Thus in 1994 Canada received 43,651 Hong Kong migrants compared with 11,949 for the United States and 4,075 for Australia. A significant element of Canada's success was its aggressive recruitment of Hong Kong immigrants through newly established business immigrant categories established in the mid 1980s. With federal and provincial government agents in Hong Kong actively promoting businessperson's migration to Canada, it was not surprising that from 1986 to 1996, 40% of all entrepreneur immigrants and 47% of all investor immigrants to Canada came from Hong Kong. How the Chinese presence had changed in Canada since the late 19^th century! Then, as we have seen, Chinese newcomers were only allowed in as a menial, exploitable workforce to assume the most hazardous or poorest paying jobs in the country. Now they were being courted to invest in owning business and resource interests. In both instances, economic self-interest guided Canada=s outreach; and affluent Chinese newcomers, we will see, could encounter a chilly reception just like their impoverished predecessors.

It is important to note however that diversity B not homogeneity B has characterized Chinese migration to Canada in recent years. Certainly, not all immigrants from Hong Kong are wealthy. In 1990, for instance, 25% of Hong Kong immigrants earned less income than the Statistics Canada low-income cut-off, compared with 15% of the Canadian-born population and 19% of all immigrants (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 1996a: 9). But the variety of countries of origin, represents the greatest heterogeneity in Canada's Chinese population. By the mid 1990s, Toronto's Chinese community was a microcosm of the globalized Chinese diaspora: 40% of all Chinese immigrants were born in Hong Kong, 30% in Mainland China, 4% in Taiwan, 10% in Vietnam, 9% elsewhere in Asia, 3% in the West Indies, and 4% in the rest of the world (Lo and Wang, 1998: 53). The removal of emigration prohibitions in the People's Republic of China over the past two decades has resulted in a surge of newcomers to Canada. This cohort is characterized by incomes significantly below both Canadian-born and other immigrants in the country (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 1996b: 8,9).

Geographically, the Chinese presence in Canada has undergone a dramatic shift with the tremendous growth in Chinese immigration over the past few decades. Changing settlement patterns have been manifested both between and within urban areas. Toronto B not Vancouver B now contains the largest Chinese community in the country. Historically, we saw, it was British Columbia which contained Canada's largest Chinese community. In 1901 for instance, 86% of Canadian residents of Chinese origin lived in B.C.; by 1961 B.C. still had the largest share at 41.6% compared with Ontario's next biggest at 26%. But once the point system of the late 1960s opened the doors fully to Chinese migration, the tide turned to Ontario thanks to Toronto's appeal to Chinese newcomers. By the 1981 census, Toronto had eclipsed Vancouver (and Ontario led B.C.) as home to the largest number of Chinese. In 1991 Toronto's metropolitan area was home to 231,820 Chinese-origin residents compared with 167,425 in Vancouver; that year Ontario contained 46.7% of Canada's Chinese population compared with 30.9% in B.C. (Ng: C3). Several factors account for Toronto's appeal: its greater size; its stature as the country's economic centre; its strong tradition of public and post-secondary educational institution corresponded to the great value many Chinese immigrants placed on their children's education; and the fact that virtually all immigrants were now flying into Canada, (unlike previous cross-Pacific boat travel), eliminated any access difficulties to the country's mid-continent metropolis.

Within the Toronto area too, Chinese settlement patterns have changed dramatically in recent decades. The downtown core had been the site of a small 'Chinatown' since the early 1900s. In the span of a few years in the late 1900s, four more 'Chinatowns' sprung up thanks to the great upsurge of Chinese migration to Toronto. The new settlement areas reflected the diversity among ethnic Chinese in Toronto. Less affluent newcomers -- predominantly from Mainland China and Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese -- settled to the east of the downtown core; more affluent recent immigrants B primarily from Hong Kong B settled in the post-war suburb of Scarborough or the new edge cities of Markham and Richmond Hill. Differences of gender, class, language, nationality, religion, income and residential location now characterize Toronto's huge Chinese population. Distinctions may manifest themselves over matters ranging from homeland politics to preferred choice of restaurants, as Toronto writer Robert Fulford discovered. "In the northwest corner of Scarborough", he wrote in 1995, "wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong dine at magnificent oriental restaurants, and explain that they find the cuisine in the old downtown Chinatown around Spadina Avenue unsophisticated" (Fulford, 1995: 103). But riches may carry risk as well, with north Scarborough's Chinese community subsequently declared Toronto's "carjack central": the area most prone to theft of luxury vehicles (Abbate, 2000: A16).

Toronto's Chinese community is sufficiently large and affluent in sections, to promote an impressive commercial, media and marketing presence. In addition to its 5 Chinatowns, the Toronto area has dozens of distinctive 'Asian-style' malls and plazas, 3 Chinese language daily newspapers, 2 Chinese language television stations, several high profile English language magazines publishing Chinese editions and a host of businesses and advertisers engaged in niche marketing to sell to a Chinese clientele. In the words of Patrick Fong, head of Can-Asian Advertising in Toronto, "You turn social change into a marketing opportunity". A major client is the Ford Motor Co., eager to convince Chinese newcomers that driving a Ford has its own social cachet (Heinzl, 1999: M1). Chinese media, marketing and retailing have undoubtedly combined to strengthen the sense of community among Toronto residents of Chinese origin.

Ironically perhaps, the more affluent Chinese immigrants to Toronto at the end of the 20^th century have not been spared the prejudicial treatment their poorer predecessors confronted earlier in the century. A 1999 survey found that 65% of Chinese respondents in the city believed there was discrimination against their community in Toronto; 38% claimed they had personally experienced prejudice or discrimination. Verbal abuse and taunts were the most frequently reported difficulties encountered by both males and females, with Chinese women reporting far higher denial of service/access/promotion rates than men (Carey, 1999: A8). Perceptions of prejudice and exclusion are relatively widespread then within Toronto's Chinese community. Several public, high profile incidents have raised particular concerns within the community about Toronto B and Canada's B openness to diversity. In 1979, a national television program appeared to brand all Chinese as foreigners taking advantage of Canada. The result was a successful mass mobilization of the community to protest prejudice and stereotyping. The CTV program W5 broadcast a report on foreign students at Canadian universities titled "Campus Giveaway". The program contended that foreigners were preventing Canadian students from attending university, and claimed that Chinese students in particular were over-represented on Canadian campuses. Somehow the program overlooked the fact that many of the Chinese students shown were actually Canadian citizens. Clearly many Canadian institutions, including the media, were slow to recognize that full-fledged Canadians could be of Chinese ancestry. The Chinese community in Toronto rallied, demonstrated and formed the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) to express its opposition to the program. CTV issued a public apology for its racist programming, and the Chinese community gained strength from having defended its right to fair media coverage and equal access to Canadian institutions.

Fifteen years later, the tag of 'foreigners' was again labeled onto Toronto's Chinese community. In 1995 Carole Bell, the deputy mayor of Markham (edge city north of Toronto) warned that the prevalence of Chinese language signs in area malls was prompting long-time residents to move out of town. Again it appeared that even in multicultural Canada, use of a language other than English could brand Chinese newcomers as outsiders taking over a neighbourhood. Protests from the Chinese community and their supporters followed, but Ms. Bell remained adamant in her views. The town ultimately appointed an advisory committee to address the public's concerns, and without condemning Ms. Bell's remarks, the committee's report called for all newcomers to be welcomed to Markham. In reality however, Markham has responded by using its planning and development regulations to pressure new Chinese commercial establishments to use English in their public signs (Cousens, 1998).

While suburbs have thus occasionally faltered in fully accepting their Chinese newcomers, the City of Toronto has also periodically stumbled despite its longer history of Chinese settlement. In recent years a number of controversies have embroiled police relations with the community. The 1997 police shooting of a homeless, mentally ill Chinese man prompted the Chinese Canadian National Council to actively challenge systemic racism and treatment of the mentally ill by Toronto's police force. And twice in 1999, Toronto police had to retract and apologize for describing a crime suspect as "yellow", a derisive term commonly associated in earlier years with the term "yellow peril" (Immen, 1999: A1).

Primarily through the CCNC, Toronto's Chinese community is both vigilant and active in promoting equity, racial and social justice. The Council operates both at the national level to address issues of federal government responsibility, and locally to lobby municipal governments. In recent years, the CCNC has pursue a large and varied advocacy agenda. Interventions at the national level include preparing a court challenge seeking redress for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusionary Immigration policies, complaints to the CRTC regarding invisible and stereotypical portrayal of Chinese Canadians in television broadcasting, submitting reports on immigration law reform and educating the community about federal election issues. Municipally the CCNC has both a Toronto chapter and York Region chapter (comprising Markham and Richmond Hill). Issues of policing, municipal restructuring, social service cuts and local election education have been the main municipal issues addressed (Chinese Canadian National Council, 1997; 1998).

Undoubtedly one impediment facing the CCNC in the political arena is the under-representation of Chinese Canadians among elected politicians. Across the Toronto city region there are no politicians of Chinese origin in either the federal or provincial parliament. The municipal record is marginally better with 4 of the 263 municipal politicians elected onto municipal councils across the Greater Toronto Area being of Chinese origin -- 2 in the City of Toronto (a female and male) and 2 male councillors for the Town of Markham. Potentially, the Chinese community has the electoral advantage of strong residential concentration. Large Chinese Canadian residential communities can be a natural base of support for politicians of Chinese origin. But even municipally, the community remains under-represented in elected office. This is still in large measure a community of relative newcomers who lack both strong roots in Canada's political system, or extensive familiarity with competitive liberal-democratic elections from their homeland experiences. Increasing rates of citizenship among Chinese immigrants, combined with civic education campaigns by organizations like the Chinese Canadian National Council should raise the number of Chinese origin candidates seeking public office.

Meanwhile, despite adversities, most immigrants of Chinese origin to Toronto appear pleased to have a new urban home. 94% of survey respondents agreed that the Chinese community has generally found acceptance in Toronto. As one respondent declared: "Toronto has become the best of both worlds. You can have the tastes of many different cultures and still be part of a wonderful city" (Wong, 1999: B3).

"The more things change, the more things remain the same", goes the famous French saying. What conclusions are we to draw from this survey of newcomer settlement in Toronto over the course of the 20^th century? The experiences of Jewish, Italian, Caribbean and Chinese immigrants reflect both continuity and change.

To be sure, these four groups represent less than a handful of the many newcomer communities from around the world who have chosen to make Toronto their home. However because of their great numbers Jewish, then Italian, then Caribbean and then Chinese settlers comprised the four immigrant communities who most dramatically represented the changing face of Toronto through the 20^th century. Each group had to contend with discriminatory Canadian immigration policies restricting their entry to Canada. The doors opened to each group only when the country felt these newcomers could be economically useful: typically as a low-wage workforce, or more recently as wealthy globally-connected investors. Once in Toronto, each group experienced discrimination and racialization: treated as an exploitable workforce; regarded as unfit for higher status positions; excluded from various civic facilities; negatively portrayed in the media; poorly served by various municipal government departments.

These four newcomer communities responded to adversity through community solidarity and organization. They founded or joined a host of organizations to advance their rights and sense of belonging in Toronto. These included trade unions, synagogues, churches, temples, fraternal societies, social service agencies and community advocacy organizations. Women have played important leadership roles in each of these communities. Each of these communities was far more internally diversified across lines such as gender, national origin, religion, occupation and income than resident Torontonians typically recognized. In times of particular crisis (eg. the Christie Pits Riot or the Chinese community's difficulty gaining acceptance in new suburban areas) an embattled newcomer group could find allies among members of other minority communities. As we will see in detail further below, a pattern of multi-community mobilization has now emerged in multicultural Toronto.

Without question, the civic outlook in Toronto today towards diversity is unrecognizable from the city's defining values of 100 years ago. Immigration has made Toronto a truly global city, home to the world's population. Accordingly, the city exhibits no open signs of its past xenophobic, anti-foreigner sentiments. And yet as we show in the next Section, Toronto continues to display a surprising tolerance for inequalities rooted in identity. Advantage and disadvantage remain starkly divided in present-day Toronto.

Throughout the first half of the 20^th century, unequal access to public resources and policy making forced the onus of integration into Canadian society on immigrant communities themselves. The economic and political power structure was exclusionary, dominated by the British Chapter group. Institutional rigidities prevented access to new immigrant communities and opportunities for mobility.

As has been described in the first section of this chapter, the provision of settlement services to migrants in Toronto has largely been a history of voluntary self-help. Community-based immigrant and ethnic associations and religious organizations have long existed to provide immigrant economic assistance and integration services. Until the rise of the welfare state in the middle of the 20^th century, governments were not the primary providers of health care and income support to Canadians. This placed particular onus on individual and community self-reliance to care for people's needs. Among immigrants in particular, mutual aid was a powerful imperative. Voluntary fraternal societies and community health clinics flourished and filled a critical gap.

While historically religious and ethno-racial self-help associations have been the prime actors in the provision of services to their members, the public sector has also played an increasing role over the last fifty years. After the Second World War, in constructing the Keynesian welfare state, immigrant community service organizations became increasingly important partners to government in providing services as part of the state's primary role of building a network of both universal and needs-targeted social services and programs. With advances in government social services and programs from the 1940s through the 1980s, the state became the primary provider of income for the poor, the elderly and the unemployed; governments also provided substantial funding for a wide range of immigrant, ethnic, and minority group service and advocacy groups. This community-based sector was financially supported by the state to fulfil their role in delivering targeted settlement services. There was a well-developed community-based settlement service infrastructure in place through which government support could be channeled. Government support has been reflected through the provision of language programs and contracted services and grants to the community settlement agencies.

It was not until the 1960's that significant measures were taken to protect and defend the human rights of all citizens. The Canadian Bill of Rights was adopted in 1960, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission was established. And as has been noted previously, the restrictive and outright discriminatory nature of Canadian immigration regulations were not changed until 1967 with the introduction of the points system. These new regulations directly led to a dramatic increase in the number of non-white immigrants from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa from the 1970's on.

The principles encoded in the multicultural policies adopted by the federal, provincial and municipal governments throughout the 1970's included the commitment to full and equal participation of all citizens in the cultural, economic, political and social life of the country. The ideal that the circle of life should embrace all citizens equally includes the principles of equality of access, equality of opportunity, and the equality of all cultures. The consequence of these principles is that individuals should have access to societal resources and should be treated equitably by societal institutions irrespective of their race, ethnicity, immigrant status, or national origin (Breton 1998:60). The refusal, inability or disinclination on the part of societal institutions to respond to the needs of immigrant communities or to the differential needs of a diverse population was no longer tenable. More democratic development surrounding a range of more inclusive public policies have encouraged a shift in the nature of the relationship between immigrant communities and the 'mainstream.'

A host of factors propelled governments to this more pluralistic and rights-based approach to Canadian society and citizenship: labour market needs for a growing pool of immigrants, rising immigrant expectations and a host of political calculations such as government attempt to win electoral support among newcomer communities, to secure the goodwill of important immigrant-sending states, and to reduce the primacy of Quebec's claims on the country's political agenda by identifying multiculturalism as a defining characteristic of Canadian society. All these forces combined to contribute to formal and articulated commitments to human rights, access and equity. While such commitments and principles might be described as providing important symbolic support, they are essential in setting the tone of what is acceptable. They have provided the cornerstone in establishing a political and public policy basis for action, and in sending out signals regarding justice, equality and inclusiveness.

State intervention certainly increased throughout the 1970's and 80's. The pursuit of equality was reflected for example, in new human rights legislation, in employment equity, public education campaigns, and an opportunity structure of grants, research, policies and consultative processes that legitimized and supported ethnically based activities.

The last decade of the 20^th century however, has seen a significant pulling back of the public sector. Governments at all levels undertook deep cuts to their spending and services. A political culture of public and state responsibility for services and citizen well-being turned into a belief in markets as optimal distributors of services, and self-reliance as a primary human virtue. Significantly this retreat in government commitment to social spending occurred when Canada's immigrant newcomers were more diverse than ever; proportionally fewer than ever arriving from Europe, more than ever from Asia and Africa.

The neo-liberal assault on Keynesian public policy has created a crisis for immigrant community organizations. Already overextended, these agencies are expected to step up their level of service to replace retreating government support. While all areas of public sector activity have experienced Government downsizing and downloading, the immigrant and refugee sector has been particularly hard hit. A 1997 study of the impact of government funding cuts on community agencies titled "Profile of a Changing World", showed very clearly that settlement services received the largest funding cuts and were most at risk in terms of sustainability. This survey found that 43% of all programs for immigrants or refugees were at a high risk of being eliminated (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, 1957: 20, 37). While public sector funding probably peaked around 1994, funding cuts have varied from 20 percent for some of the larger multi-service agencies to 40 percent for some of the smaller, ethno-specific agencies, many of whom have since closed (Richmond 1996:3) Community-based settlement agencies, have become accustomed to operating in a climate of instability and chronic shortages in key areas at a time of growing need (Simich 2000:10).

This change in public policy and the consequent change in funding patterns comes at the same time as settlement of new communities in Toronto is increasingly being suburbanized. Settlement patterns in Toronto no longer conform to the earlier and traditional urban patterns of initial settlement downtown B where institutions and self-help groups have developed over time to facilitate the integration of newcomers. Since the 1970's Toronto's inner city is no longer the exclusive reception area for new immigrants. Indeed by 1996 eight municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area had higher proportions of residents who were foreign born than the (former original pre-amalgamated) central city of Toronto! In order, these more immigrant- concentrated municipalities were North York, Scarborough, York, Markham, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Vaughan and Richmond Hill (Siemiatycki and Isin, 1998: 78). Factors contributing to this suburbanization process have been the diminishing supply of inexpensive housing in the central area; the availability of financially accessible large-scale suburban apartment complexes; the attraction of edge city suburbs to more affluent recent migrants; and the absence of established support networks in the central area for new groups who come from very different parts of the world.

The suburbs of Toronto however, have generally been unprepared to serve as settlement areas for new immigrants. With inadequate information resources and services for immigrants, limited resources in the school system to serve the special learning and adjustment needs of immigrant children, limited availability of childcare, and limited public environments to meet and mix, suburban newcomers are experiencing very limited formal and informal supports which traditionally existed or are required. In addition, the sprawled pattern of suburban settlement can impede the development of communal and mutual forms of support among newcomers. This suburban dispersal is further compounded by the diversity of source countries of immigrants to Toronto. No longer is there a compact concentrated reception area in Toronto for immigrants arriving from the same cultural, racial or religious background. Today's immigrants are culturally, linguistically, religiously, and racially heterogeneous.

As a consequence of all these factors, the newer and smaller immigrant communities in Toronto, inevitably, have a somewhat fractured presence. The vast majority of African associations, for example, have only formed within the last decade. The greatest problem they face is chronic under-funding, as well as problems with lack of facilities, and lack of recognition of the services they provide. A study of settlement services for African newcomers noted that even if new organizational infrastructures to coordinate the activities of different African ethno-cultural organizations and service providers were to be provided, it would still not, in itself, guarantee effective settlement services to African newcomers. (George and Mwarigha, 1999:?) This example clearly suggests the need to take a very careful look at whether we can continue to assume or expect all ethno-racial communities no matter how small, to devote the resources and develop the capacity to build effective community-based infrastructures through which to provide appropriate services to their members.

The sheer size of the numbers of immigrants coming to Toronto; the composition of immigrants coming to Toronto from all parts of the world; the very different skills and expectations of the modern immigrant; the suburban and dispersed nature of settlement; the diminishing and redefining role of the public sector in supporting the settlement process; and the increasing racialization of inequality and immigrant poverty B all these factors combine to raise some very serious and urgent questions as to how immigrant communities will develop and relate to the large society as we move into the new millennium. In the neo-conservative world of the 1990's when multiculturalism came under increasing criticism as an attack on a common Canadian identity and culture, and the notions of diversity were seen as a threat to an otherwise unified, harmonious society (Bissoondath 1994:22), the political discourse at the turn of this new century confronts immigrant communities with a new and difficult political agenda in understanding their place in Canadian society.

While the principles of accountability, equity, participation and inclusion are fundamental tenets of our democratic system and are a constant refrain in government policy commitments, it is striking that so little effort has been given to actually assessing and measuring whether these principles have actually been translated into actual practice. Analysis of 1996 Census data shows how dramatically Toronto's population is changing, and how unequal the lives of our diverse population has become. In 1996, 48 percent of the population of the City of Toronto were foreign-born. With over 70,000 immigrants and refugees coming to Toronto every year, it is safe to say that today, those not born in Canada comprise the majority of the city's residents. One in five of Toronto residents arrived in Canada after 1981; one in ten after 1991.

As of 1996, Toronto residents came from over 169 countries of origin. This represents over 91 percent of the current members of the United Nations (Doucet 1999:4). Some 48 ethno-racial groups has at least 5,000 representatives in Toronto in 1996, while 89 ethno-racial communities in Toronto had at least 2,500 members, and 109 communities had at least 1,000 members. (Simich 2000:7). Before 1961, virtually all of Toronto's immigrants came from Europe, including Britain. Today, European born comprise less than 2 percent of Toronto's recent immigrants (Ornstein 2000:23). In 1961, people of colour represented just 3 percent of Toronto's population. Today, they are estimated to comprise the majority (Turner 1995:32). Over 100 languages are spoken by the people of Toronto and over one-third of all Torontonians speak a language other than English in the home. In 1991, it was less than a quarter. A very significant minority of newcomers B over 40% - speak neither official language in the initial stages of settlement. With respect to age differentials, European ethno-racial groups have fewer young people and more older people than the rest of the population. European groups represent 75 percent of those 65 and older, while those of British and French origin have only 5 percent under the age of 5. All the non-European groups, except East/Southeast Asians, have age profiles that are younger than the average. Those groups with 30 percent or more whose members are under age 15 include: Aboriginal, Ghanaian, Somali, Afghani, Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi. In summary, within a single generation, an almost exclusively white city, dominated by people of European, mostly British background has become one of the most diverse cities in the world.

But data from the 1996 Census also make it clear that there are stark hardships confronting immigrants in Toronto today. The most comprehensive recent study of ethno-racial inequalities in Toronto was published in 2000 by Michael Ornstein of York University's Institute for Social Research. "In e