[URBAN NOTE] Little Italy
Feb. 22nd, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI got out early from work today thanks to an expected shift change, and was able to get outside in time to enjoy the last couple of hours of today. It was warm, feeling almost like a day in early spring with just a faint chill in the air. It was a perfect time, I decided, for me to venture forth in the grey light of evening into another district of downtown Toronto. I've a regrettable tendency towards conservatism, hanging out on the Yonge and Church streets that I've known ever since my first visit to Toronto four years ago, by the Queen Street West I've lived near for the past couple of years, and more recently on Bloor. Today, I decided that it was just silly that Toronto's Little Italy is so close to my home and yet so unvisited. So, at the corner of Church and Carlton I boarded a streetcar headed westbound on College.
If Portugal Village finds its axis along Dundas Street, Little Italy does the same along College street. This area of the western downtown first became a locus for Italian immigration early in the 20th century, reaching its glories after the Second World War. Even though it began to transform shortly thereafter, as new waves of Italian immigrants settled elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area while suburbanization created large Italian-Canadian pockets like the town of Woodbridge in suburban Vaughan, Little Italy has retained its sentimental value as the historical nucleus of the Italian-Canadian community, at least for the more than four hundred thousand Italian-Canadians of the GTA.
As the streetcar headed west, I watched the notable sights: Women's College hospital, Queen's Park, the southern perimeter of the University of Toronto, the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto public library system with its engrossing children's literature and science fiction collections, Chinatown on Spadina, Kensington Market and the hostel where I stayed in April 2003. I didn't have Wikipedia and its definitions of Toronto neighbourhood boundaries handy, and chose to disembark as soon as I saw a sign, in my case Little Italy Dental Practice at 536 College Street.
I walked west along College. To my perhaps-superficial gaze, Toronto's Little Italy isn't so much Italian-Canadian as it is well-off. Most of the buildings have immacculate sleek modern facades, the sort with the new perfect paint jobs and the sidewalk-to-rooftop glass windows framed either in chrome or in wood veneer. In all honesty, despite placenames like Johnny Lombardi Way and remnants of the old neighbourhood like the appetizing-looking Il Centro Del Formaggio (578 College), Little Italy seems to be becoming another upscale Toronto neighbourhood. This process might be best exemplified by the Vespa dealership at 554 College Street. More, Italy's ascension to First World status has combined with new waves of immigration, from first Portugal and Vietnam then Latin America, to produce an ethnic shift in the west of the neighbourhood, with Vietnamese-owned pharmacies and Lusophone salsicharia restaurants.
There's still plenty of places to see, though, and the atmosphere of the neighbourhood remains atmospheric. Little Italy has stores like Balfour Books (601 College), brightly lit with cracking linoleum tiles, slow-rotating fans, art and architecture and philosophy, and Dragon Lady Comics & Paper Nostalgia (609 College) with an impressive collection of comic books and posters that produced the dust that bit into my sinuses as soon as I entered. I passed by Vivoli (665 College), a very upscale restaurant that I remember mainly because I was parked outside it to watch the neighbourhood's Good Friday procession last March with the then-boyfriend. I missed the inconspicuous entry of El Convento Rico (750 College) the first time I passed by it; I'll have to end up going there one day.
If Portugal Village finds its axis along Dundas Street, Little Italy does the same along College street. This area of the western downtown first became a locus for Italian immigration early in the 20th century, reaching its glories after the Second World War. Even though it began to transform shortly thereafter, as new waves of Italian immigrants settled elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area while suburbanization created large Italian-Canadian pockets like the town of Woodbridge in suburban Vaughan, Little Italy has retained its sentimental value as the historical nucleus of the Italian-Canadian community, at least for the more than four hundred thousand Italian-Canadians of the GTA.
As the streetcar headed west, I watched the notable sights: Women's College hospital, Queen's Park, the southern perimeter of the University of Toronto, the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto public library system with its engrossing children's literature and science fiction collections, Chinatown on Spadina, Kensington Market and the hostel where I stayed in April 2003. I didn't have Wikipedia and its definitions of Toronto neighbourhood boundaries handy, and chose to disembark as soon as I saw a sign, in my case Little Italy Dental Practice at 536 College Street.
I walked west along College. To my perhaps-superficial gaze, Toronto's Little Italy isn't so much Italian-Canadian as it is well-off. Most of the buildings have immacculate sleek modern facades, the sort with the new perfect paint jobs and the sidewalk-to-rooftop glass windows framed either in chrome or in wood veneer. In all honesty, despite placenames like Johnny Lombardi Way and remnants of the old neighbourhood like the appetizing-looking Il Centro Del Formaggio (578 College), Little Italy seems to be becoming another upscale Toronto neighbourhood. This process might be best exemplified by the Vespa dealership at 554 College Street. More, Italy's ascension to First World status has combined with new waves of immigration, from first Portugal and Vietnam then Latin America, to produce an ethnic shift in the west of the neighbourhood, with Vietnamese-owned pharmacies and Lusophone salsicharia restaurants.
There's still plenty of places to see, though, and the atmosphere of the neighbourhood remains atmospheric. Little Italy has stores like Balfour Books (601 College), brightly lit with cracking linoleum tiles, slow-rotating fans, art and architecture and philosophy, and Dragon Lady Comics & Paper Nostalgia (609 College) with an impressive collection of comic books and posters that produced the dust that bit into my sinuses as soon as I entered. I passed by Vivoli (665 College), a very upscale restaurant that I remember mainly because I was parked outside it to watch the neighbourhood's Good Friday procession last March with the then-boyfriend. I missed the inconspicuous entry of El Convento Rico (750 College) the first time I passed by it; I'll have to end up going there one day.
