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- Prospect Magazine shares Ivan Rogers' inside perspective on how David Cameron's misunderstanding of the political priorities in the wider EU was (mostly) responsible for the ill-judged decision to hold a referendum on Brexit.
- Haaretz shares Oz Katerji's devastating criticism of many left-wing intellectuals for turning a blind eye to genocides they find politically inconvenient. (Noam Chomsky, stand up please.)
- Eric Lee suggests that the moderate Menshevik government that ruled Georgia for a few brief years offers insight into a more humanistic way that the Russian Revolution could have taken, over at Open Democracy.
- Irena Guidikova suggests that initiatives taken at the level of the cities are most important for the integration of immigrants, that helping them build networks and acquire social capital must be central to any project, over at Open Democracy.
- Matt Novak at Gizmodo's Paleofuture notes that, after substantial work, copies of the Voyager Golden Record are finally available for purchase.
Brian Bethune's review in MacLean's of the new book edited by John Lorinc, The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood, really makes me want to read it. How many people know that, where City Hall stands now, an entirely different neighbourhood once existed?
To arrive in Toronto, and to arrive poor, in the decades before the Great War—when the city’s population ballooned from 56,000 in 1871 to 376,000 in 1911—almost always meant arriving in St. John’s ward. Stretching over a large chunk of what is now Toronto’s central core—between Queen and College Streets, Yonge and University—the ward had always housed many of the city’s first outsiders: Catholic Irish and black Canadians. Now they were joined by new waves of non-traditional immigrants: Jews, other eastern Europeans, Italians and Chinese.
The 50-odd short pieces in The Ward—a mixed collection of memoir, archival research and micro-history—bring it back to vivid, impressionistic life. Crammed into cheap lodgings, subject to an appalling sanitation system and often desperately poor, the inhabitants were nonetheless remarkably entrepreneurial. All kinds of businesses flourished in the neighbourhood, legal and illegal: The ward was ground zero for bootlegging during Ontario’s flirtation with prohibition from 1916 to 1927. Contributors to The Ward explore the rag trade, the sex trade, Chinese laundries and paper boys. The outspoken former city councillor Howard Moscoe provides “My Grandmother the Bootlegger”; gallerist Stephen Bulger writes on Arthur Goss, Toronto’s first official photographer—in an era where there was such a thing—whose photos became source material for Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion. There are entries on the Eaton’s strike of 1912, the drive to eradicate tuberculosis, and monumental avenues never constructed. Writers pore over old maps and try to reimagine what once was.
One of the tags I'll be giving Debra Black's Toronto Star article will be "Three Torontos" since this article speaks about the ongoing ethnic--and, consequently, geographic--polarization of Toronto between a well-off largely white population and a less-well-off population of immigrant origin. This Is Not Good.
[S]ome experts worry the increasing creation of an immigrant underclass will brew trouble — sadly ironic in a region that for decades has taken pride in and built a reputation on its multiculturalism and acceptance of immigrants from around the world. By 2017, the GTA is forecast to become home to a predominantly non-European population.
A recent backlash over the Royal Bank of Canada’s move to replace Canadian workers with foreign workers, and a battle in Brampton over a townhouse development that erupted along cultural lines with accusations of shady “Indian politics,” reveal simmering tensions. And the Conservative Party’s recent attempt to crack down on abuses to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has done little to appease critics.
“While immigrants and immigration is the heart and soul of the country, if you look at the main basis of inequality in Canada, along with gender, it’s based on race and immigrant status,” said Yogendra Shakya, senior research scientist at Access Alliance.
“Racialized immigrants are facing two to three times the rate of unemployment, higher representation in precarious, contract, on-call or temporary jobs. They are two to four times more likely to be underemployed and have more than double the rates of education level in terms of having post-secondary education.”
Shakya has witnessed the widening inequality and growing frustration at his agency’s clinics. New immigrants often can’t find work in their field and end up in temporary low-paying jobs, often through temp agencies. This precarious work has led to higher rates of poverty among immigrants across the GTA.
Further complicating the picture are temporary workers — often brought in under the temporary workers’ program or under international student visas — who choose to stay here after their visas expire and become part of the undocumented in the city. What’s more, new emerging communities, with perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 people in them, of immigrants from Nepal, Bhutan, Central Asia and parts of Africa such as Cameroon, are also beginning to emerge across the GTA.
[URBAN NOTE] The Portuguese Canadians
Dec. 14th, 2006 06:53 pmWhen I disembarked from the TTC bus at the corner of Dufferin and Dupont, I was interested to see that the Dupont Avenue street sign was labelled, in smaller type, "Rua do Alentejo." Taken from the south-central Portuguese province of the same name, like Dundas Street's label "Rua Açores" near my old neighbourhood, this street sign is ample testimony to the prominence of Portuguese Canadians in west-central Toronto.
This community is a young one, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2003, after the arrival of the first significant group of Portuguese immigrants in Canada. Post-war Canada's need for labour and Portugal's political and economic backwardness prompted a massive population shift to Canada, in particular Toronto. Carlos Teixeira's extensive essay at Multicultural Canada provides an excellent overview.
The Portuguese Canadian community remains a tight one to this very day, though sometimes with negative consequences as recently reported ("Charting a new course") by the Toronto Star's education reporter Louise Brown.
This community is a young one, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2003, after the arrival of the first significant group of Portuguese immigrants in Canada. Post-war Canada's need for labour and Portugal's political and economic backwardness prompted a massive population shift to Canada, in particular Toronto. Carlos Teixeira's extensive essay at Multicultural Canada provides an excellent overview.
Four decades after their first arrival in Canada, the Portuguese have communities from coast to coast. In 1991 most lived in Ontario (202,395), Quebec (42,975), British Columbia (23,380), Alberta (9,755), and Manitoba (9,530). Though many came to work on farms or railways, most settled in cities. In 1991 Toronto had 124,325 residents of Portuguese origin; Montreal, 32,330; Kitchener, Ontario, 13,755; Hamilton, 9,625; Vancouver, 9,255; Winnipeg, 7,970; Ottawa-Hull, 6,580; London, 6,330; and Edmonton, 4,685.
The pioneers lived in deteriorated, low-income, working-class neighbourhoods in the heart of the cities, on the margins of emerging central business districts, near jobs and transportation. The majority were single individuals who resided in low-rental flats, tenements, and rooming-houses – often with relatives or friends from the same village/region of Portugal – in order to save to buy a house and to bring over relatives from Portugal.
Portuguese colonies began taking shape in the 1960s. The steady increase in immigration and the constant arrival of entire families, through chain sponsorship, consolidated immigrant neighbourhoods. Often two or three families shared the same house or apartment/flat. The majority of these immigrants came from rural areas of Portugal, particularly in the Azores, and lacked knowledge of English or French, skills, and money. These districts functioned as reception areas, offering information and security, but also tended to isolate Portuguese from the host society.
Portuguese communities in Canada tend to be self-contained and self-sufficient. Their remarkable level of institutional completeness is demonstrated by the number of social and cultural institutions (198, including 111 in Ontario), religious institutions (thirty-eight churches), and ethnic businesses (over forty-six hundred, with some thirty-five hundred in Ontario), most located within the core of the communities. In 1981 Portuguese Canadians were among the most segregated groups in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
The Portuguese Canadian community remains a tight one to this very day, though sometimes with negative consequences as recently reported ("Charting a new course") by the Toronto Star's education reporter Louise Brown.
“As a community, we’re proud of our ability to preserve our culture — but this is Canada! We have to nail down English! We have to create an environment that expects children to succeed at school,” said [Melissa] Arruda, 22, the youngest member of the new Portuguese-Canadian Education Network.
“Only four out of my 40 Portuguese classmates from grade school went on to university. Not that everyone has to go, but more of us should feel we at least have that choice.”
This is the new face of Portuguese Canada; seeking to rewrite the future by understanding how its children fell behind, and focusing on parents and schools to close the gap.
Fifty years after the first major wave of Portuguese immigrants landed in Canada — from one of the few countries where attending high school had not been mandatory for most of the 20th century — they remain to this day the least likely new Canadians to go to college or university. About 12 per cent of Toronto’s Portuguese community now earn a university degree — a far cry from only 1 per cent in 1971, but about one-third as many as in the population at large, according to a study this year by York University professor Michael Ornstein.
Some Portuguese community leaders admit that a culture with deep roots in skilled labour, which often has prized home ownership above higher education, may make it too easy for weak students — especially boys — to quit school for the heady $25 to $30 an hour to be made in construction.
But with more than 70 per cent of new jobs in Canada predicted to need some post-secondary training, many Portuguese-Canadians want to break that blue-collar cycle.
“We helped build this city. We help clean this city. Now we’d like to help run this city,” said lawyer Cidalia Faria, an assistant Crown attorney, at a recent standing-room-only conference for Portuguese parents run by the education network.
“Don’t think we’re asleep at the wheel — the Portuguese community has got its eyes wide open,” said Marcie Ponte, executive director of the Working Women’s Community Centre, which runs a free tutoring program called On Your Mark. But why do Portuguese Canadians still drop out in such numbers? It doesn’t help that some teachers and principals seem to have given up on the community, said high school English teacher Ana Fernandes, chair of the Portuguese Canadian Education Network.
“I hear that a lot: `Oh, he’s a Portuguese student; what can you expect?’ or `He’s Portuguese? Better give him just five pages to read instead of 10,’.” said Fernandes, who is working on her PhD in literature. Fernandes said Portuguese students need more role models.
Others say schools could do more to reach out to Portuguese parents and include material of interest to Portuguese Canadians in the curriculum.
“We’re still a massively working class community and a lot of parents don’t know where to go for help for their children, between the education barrier and the language barrier and shift work,” said professor Fernando Nunes, vice-president of the Portuguese-Canadian National Congress.
He added the curriculum makes very little mention of the Portuguese community’s contributions to Canada.
Some admit its tight-knit nature — in which it is possible to live and shop in Portuguese neighbourhoods and work on predominantly Portuguese job sites without ever needing to speak much English — plays a role in keeping children in the same footsteps as their parents.
At St. Helen Catholic School in Little Portugal, for example, 89 per cent of students were born in Canada, yet for 61 per cent, the first language they learned at home was not English.
