Italian Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area location Little Italy
History
"Soldiers of fortune" and "men of letters" from Italy immigrated to Toronto prior to the 1850s. Toronto absorbed peddlers and craftspeople from northern Italy until the 1880s. By 1860, 17 Italians lived in Toronto. Additional tradespeople arrived by 1870. After the 1880s many came from northern Italy, with most being from Genoa. The occupations tended to be craftspeople, service tradespeople, and peddlers. Italians arrived in Toronto in large numbers during the early 20th century. Italians first settled in an area then known as The Ward, centred on University Avenue and College Street. By the 1920s, most Italians had moved west of Bathurst Street and the College-Clinton area had emerged as the city's major Little Italy. They mainly immigrated to Toronto—increasing from 4,900 Italians in 1911, to 9,000 in 1921, constituting almost two per cent of Toronto's population. Approximately 40,000 Italians came to Canada during the interwar period, predominantly from southern Italy where an economic depression and overpopulation had left many families in poverty.Italian immigration continued into the post-World War II era, where approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Italians immigrated to Canada each year between the early 1950s and the mid 1960s. By the 1960s, more than 15,000 Italian men worked in Toronto's construction industry, representing one third of all construction workers in the city at that time. 90 per cent of the Italians who immigrated to Canada after World War II remained in Canada, and decades after that period, the community still had fluency in the Italian language. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Italian community shaped Canada's Italian culinary culture as Italian restaurants began to emerge, as well as storefront supermarkets that expanded over time, such as Longo's. In the late 1960s, the Italian economy experienced a period of growth and recovery, removing one of the primary incentives for emigration.
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