Toronto's third Chinatown, on Spadina Avenue, which is wide because it was planned for a streetcar and got one.
Toronto’s main Chinatown runs along Spadina Avenue around Dundas Street West, and it is the third one the city has had.
The displacement
The first Chinatown was around Elizabeth and Dundas, established from the 1890s by Chinese migrants who had come to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and then faced the head tax — a levy imposed only on Chinese immigrants from 1885, rising to $500 by 1903, roughly two years’ wages.
The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 barred Chinese immigration almost entirely for 24 years. It was repealed in 1947. Canada formally apologised and offered redress for the head tax in 2006.
In the 1950s and 60s, the city expropriated and demolished around two-thirds of that Chinatown to build Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall. The community moved west to Spadina.
That is worth knowing while you stand in the square.
Spadina
Spadina Avenue is unusually wide — 40 metres — because it was laid out in 1815 as a grand approach to a house on the hill and later widened for a streetcar. The streetcar was removed in 1948 and restored in 1997, and the 510 Spadina now runs in its own right-of-way down the middle.
The strip around Dundas is dense with grocers, herbalists, bakeries, barbecue shops with ducks in the window, and restaurants.
Eating
Dim sum at the large second-floor restaurants — go before noon at weekends. Roast meats — duck, char siu, crispy pork — from the counters. Hand-pulled noodles, hot pot, Vietnamese pho (Spadina has a substantial Vietnamese presence from the late 1970s), Malaysian, Sichuan.
Bakeries for egg tarts, pineapple buns and BBQ pork buns, at a price that has barely moved in a decade.
The other Chinatowns
Toronto has several, and the Spadina one is no longer the largest.
East Chinatown at Gerrard and Broadview. Agincourt and Scarborough — large, suburban, and where much of the Hong Kong migration of the 1980s and 90s settled. Markham and Richmond Hill north of the city, with enormous Chinese malls and arguably the best Chinese food in the region.
If you are serious about the food, the suburbs are where to go.
Around it
Kensington Market is immediately west across Spadina. The AGO is a few minutes south-east. The Fashion District and Queen West are south.
Practicalities
Streetcar 510 runs the length of Spadina from Union to Bloor.
Cash is still preferred in a number of the smaller places. Most restaurants are open late.
