Tracing Chinatown: Understanding Toronto's Chinatown West as a Space of Cultural Placemaking

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Toronto’s Chinatown West has played a big part in my four years in this city. It’s a role that has evolved as I’ve gotten to know its character and the daily dances of life that are negotiated on its pavements. I am surprised every time a new layer is pulled back, and struck by how much more rich and complex this place’s story is than can be encapsulated in one measly research project. This zine is a storybook in some ways - grounded in historical and research-based fact, but spun in a narrative that is easy to follow. While nothing has been falsified, the nature of a narrative is that not everything will be included in the story. Chinatown is deeply complex, constantly changing, layered in history and present day politics, engaging in daily negotiations of space and identity both small and large, full of contradictions and divisions, bursting with different opinions, and far more nuanced than can be captured in these few pages. I hope this provides for you, dear reader, simply a glimpse into these layers - and that next time you’re in Chinatown, you’ll start to look for them, too.

-Yours truly, Charm

Thank you, dear friends who have: listened to me talk about this project far too much, shared your work with me and served as inspiration, and given your time to give helpful advice. Thanks to Professor Lo and the School of Cities staff for facilitating spaces for work like this to happen. Special thanks to Erica Allen Kim and Arlene Chan for the lovely, thought provoking conversations and much-needed encouragement.

This zine will attempt to trace a select narrative of Toronto’s Chinatown West through a place-based lens. We will move from past, to present, to speculative futures, and look at specific types of spaces that have played a role in forming Chinatown as a place.

Chinese laundries were the first and oldest Chinese businesses to appear in North America. They often formed the heart of a new Chinatown in the early days as a practical response to lack of employment opportunities for Chinese in white Canada.

The first Chinese immigrants to Canada were poor migrants from China’s south, who came first to search for gold, then to build Canada’s railways. Then, after the completion of the CPR, they had to fight racist laws to stay here. Western society’s dominant discourse of “yellow perilism” led to discriminatory legislation such as the head tax and other laws that restricted rights to immigration, voting, land holding, and employment, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923. But at the laundry, the Chinese business owners were their own bosses, and they often hired family and friends to work there, building a safe workplace free from the hostilities of the society around them.

On one hand, here the Chinese residents were active agents in their own placemaking. The Chinese laundry is an illustration of the Chinese people in Toronto taking matters into their own hands when opportunities were scarce and shouldering for a place for themselves in a new land that wasn’t quite welcoming. On the other hand, this isolated community was formed out of necessity, as a reactionary response to the hostile forces of the society around them.

Associations formed in Chinatowns as a means for individuals to find support and protection, necessary for daily survival in a country that did not allow the Chinese legal or employment rights.

In Toronto, associations formed around common families (such as the Lee Association, Lem Society, or Wong Association, which can still be found in Chinatown today), home county or geographic areas, or political interests.

These associations served as quasi-governmental forces for its members, often solving problems within the community internally and representing the Chinese to the larger society. They would offer services to find employment, help with immigration, taxes, and health care, interpreting, and letter writing, as well as banking and loans.

They also provided a place for the community to gather and socialize, and to remain connected to their language, culture, and religious traditions.

If we are to speak about placemaking, then we cannot ignore Toronto’s Chinatown deep history with the opposite force displacement.

Toronto’s original Chinatown was built in “the Ward”, which was the city’s densely populated, largely immigrant neighbourhood. Bounded by the streets Elizabeth, Dundas, University, and Bay, it was the place where those who were otherwise told to “stay out” of Canadian society went to settle.

In 1947 the entire area was approved by the city for expropriation, and by 1958 two thirds of Chinatown was razed to the ground to make way for the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square. The majority of residents and businesses were forced to move against their will, and the Chinatown West that we know was formed as the community uprooted and moved along Dundas to Spadina, while others split off to move eastwards to Broadview and Gerrard.

For a diasporic people with a collective history of displacement and migration, it is wholly unfortunate that in the new country that they hoped to call home, they would once again be forced to uproot and move.

So then, why should anyone care about displacement now?

Because it is not a thing of the past, and it affects the most vulnerable people in our communities. Current threats of redevelopment come with the very real risk of losing local, culturally competent businesses, affordable food vendors and housing, and a wealth of intangible, unquantifiable heritage. And while the forces of change are inevitable and constant in a place like Chinatown, local Chinese and immigrant communities are being excluded from the conversation, as has been the historical trend.

The Chinese grocery is the quintessential Chinatown staple. It’s the first thing I think about when I consider Toronto’s Chinatown West, because it’s where I can find all the things that make me think of home. For many just like me, the Chinatown grocery store is a space of familiarity, routine, and comfort, whether they are residents of the neighbourhood or frequent visitors from outside of downtown.

In the formative years of Toronto’s Chinatown, it provided its community with protection from an unwelcoming society. However, its role has changed over time. Chinatown now serves as an entry point in the city for newcomers who identify with the culture here, if not physically, then emotionally and mentally.

The Chinese grocery, now more aptly named the Asian grocery, is a clear illustration of the role that Chinatown serves in linking both the old and the new worlds, bridging an unfamiliar new place with familiar sounds, smells, sights, and tastes. Chinatown now protects and cares for its residents in a new way - as a comfort for the homesick, and a nostalgia for those who are still searching for that home.

Chinatown is changing every day, and one major change is seen in the demographics of its community. The restaurant is the place that most clearly reflects this demographic change, with restaurant storefronts and menus following the evolving lineage of the major immigration groups to Canada.

At the beginning, all residents of Chinatown would have come from the same area in China, and spoken the same dialects. But the oncoming waves of Chinese immigration to Canada changed that, following with migrants from Hong Kong, Indochinese countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, then Taiwan, and most recently the People’s Republic of China. As the Chinese population has moved outwards to the suburbs of the GTA, new immigrant groups and displaced people have moved in, solidifying downtown Chinatown’s history of being a place for newcomers from all over not just the Chinese. Another new wave of demographic change, most recently, is the rising student population living in and using Chinatown West. This rise has also clearly been reflected in the restaurant offerings today.

The restaurant represents a keystone of a culture and a people - their food. The restaurant is the space where food - and consequently culture and collective memory - are transplanted from a home land to a new place. The restaurant is the place where traditions are preserved with fierce passion, and also the place where the old and new are playfully combined.

Note: Some interesting sub-types of the “restaurant establishment” are also worth mentioningr - the Chinese bakery and the Chinese barbeque house. The bakery continues to hold a hugely significant place in serving the Chinatown community with deeply affordable food, especially for the sizable senior population that resides in the neighbourhood. The Chinese barbecue house also has some interesting stories in the way that it has historically come up against the city’s regulations.

One thread that came up many times in this research, both historically and presently, is the ongoing struggle for a loud, unified community voice. While the Asian diaspora at large has quite a bit more say than it did in the early days, there is still division within the Chinatown community, which is also more diverse culturally and socially than it was at its conception.

Today there are many groups within Chinatown West that are already engaged in work in advocating, protecting the interests of, and caring for the people of Chinatown in different ways. The difficult work of course lies in finding a unified voice that can stand together in its diversity and advocate clearly on behalf of Chinatown.

The gathering place refers to a space that is both physical and abstract. In this author’s hopeful vision of a future Chinatown West, there will be a safe, centralized public space for the community to gather freely and informally.

However, this imagined Chinatown public square is more than a physical intervention. The gathering place is where the community is welcome to congregate, to be in conversation, and to collectively imagine the future.

Keeping a record of the history and heritage of our Chinatowns keeps the stories of the people that came before us alive. Even more than that, having contextual knowledge of where we came from as a community and understanding why things are the way they are, gives us power to influence a better, more inclusive future.

How do we gather and keep these histories of Chinatown?

Who will do this? In what ways will they be archived, used, seen/ heard/ read? How will the community contribute and access these stories?

There is a need to “establish Chinatown through data” - that is, to make the definitions of this place a reality not only in experience but also on paper. Gleaning and spreading knowledge of the history and power systems that have historically and continually governed Chinatown creates a base of credible academic expertise to draw from, becoming assets for community organizers who are advocating for Chinatown’s tomorrow.

History isn’t obsolete - it’s what has made our reality the way it is today, and therefore has influence to shape the reality to come. To understand and remember the past is to prepare for possible futures.

In June's light rays I side step to cross Dundas, Crowded crossways as streetcars Snake over the pavement Even in the sun, This place feels like habit An extension of my space This is safe.

In bits and pieces, In tongues mixed between, Stories like mine Of a place I've never been A part of me, yes The part that remembers Yearns for the comfort Of this grocery aisle colour It's both home and away This place, a contradiction, To the places we're from, To places we're making Forging a railway By our own hands Like a pathway to the familiar Built on roast pork and fruit stands Cigarettes on the curb Hauling boxes in the sun Incense in the doorways And warm pineapple buns This town is moving, and staying Bathed in red and liquid gold Under florescent lights, I wander Until I find my way back home.