page_title: Chinese Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area
section_title: Commerce
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area / Commerce
caption_attribution_description: English: Pacific Heritage Town
context_page_description: The Chinese Canadian community in the Greater Toronto Area was first established around 1877, with an initial population of two laundry owners. While the Chinese Canadian population was initially small in size, it dramatically grew beginning in the 1960s due to changes in immigration law and political issues in Hong Kong. Additional immigration from Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and related conflicts and a late 20th century wave of Hong Kong immigration led to the further development of Chinese ethnic enclaves in the Greater Toronto Area. The Chinese established many large shopping centres in suburban areas catering to their ethnic group. There are 631,050 Chinese in the Greater Toronto Area as of the 2016 census, second only to New York City for largest Chinese community in North America.
context_section_description: As of 2000 there are several businesses that provide services tailored to Chinese customers, including banks, restaurants, shopping malls, and supermarkets and grocery stores. Most of them offered services in Cantonese while some also had services in Mandarin.
  The Dundas and Spadina intersection in Toronto was where Chinese ethnic commercial activity occurred during the 1980s. Broadview and Gerrard later became the primary point of ethnic Chinese commercial activity. Ethnic Chinese commercial activity in the Toronto districts of North York and Scarborough became prominent in the 1990s. In the late 1990s the suburbs of Markham and Richmond Hill in the York Region gained ethnic Chinese commerce.
  In Toronto Chinese commercial activity took place in commercial strips dedicated to the ethnic Chinese. Once the commercial activity began moving into suburban municipalities, indoor malls were constructed to house Chinese commercial activity. These malls also functioned as community centres for Chinese people living in suburban areas. Many such malls were established in Agincourt and Willowdale in Metropolitan Toronto, and in Markham and Richmond Hill. The Pacific Mall in Markham opened in 1997. In 2012 Dakshana Bascaramurty of The Globe and Mail wrote that the popularity of ethnic shopping centres declined and that many ethnic Chinese are preferring to go to mainstream retailers.
caption: Pacific Heritage town of the Pacific Mall
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D5100", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.01", "Image DateTime": "2013:12:12 20:26:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "34412", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "34540", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8855", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/10", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "320", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:12:12 20:26:15", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:12:12 20:26:15", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "60", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "60", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "60", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4928", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3264", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "34382", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}