[URBAN NOTE] "The unequal geography of Toronto supermarkets"

[rfmcdonald]

Shawn Micallef explores food deserts in Toronto. My stretch of Dupont is far from that, thankfully, grocery stores everywhere.

A new Rabba supermarket has opened on the corner of Jarvis and Charles Sts., just south of Bloor St. This part of the city could be called the “Rabba District” as this is the sixth Rabba in a one-kilometre radius of Yonge and Bloor, almost a Starbucksian level of proliferation, where you can almost see one Rabba from another.

A welcome addition, its 24-hour lights will illuminate the sidewalk around the new condo building it inhabits. There are over 30 Rabbas in the GTA, a family business that got its start a few blocks from this new location at Charles and Balmuto Sts. in 1967.

When I was a Toronto newcomer, Rabba seemed particularly urban: not a convenience store, but smaller than a proper grocery store, open all night, and usually some kind of sidewalk display of produce, firewood or Christmas trees outside. Food whenever you want it. Not all places are as lucky.

Cities are all about food, and getting it into one as big as Toronto is a daily military-like operation. The Ontario Food Terminal in south Etobicoke is the largest wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market in Canada, and one of the five biggest produce markets in North America. Toronto’s “food and beverage cluster” itself generates sales of $17 billion a year and is one of the biggest on the continent.

Most of us only see the food once it reaches our local stores, and the amount of visible food variety in neighbourhoods like Yonge and Bloor is stunning. There’s lots of choice here, from upmarket places like Whole Foods and Pusateri’s, to discount places like No Frills a few blocks east at Sherbourne. In the middle are the big Canadian chains with stores tucked in throughout the neighbourhood, in the main or lower floors of mixed-use buildings.