[URBAN NOTE] On Toronto's potential French quarter
There was recently news of a push to get the city to officially recognize a "French Quarter" in Toronto on the pattern of Toronto's other ethnic neighbourhoods.
A number of francophone groups in Toronto want to see a section of Carlton Street between Yonge and Parliament streets designated as the city’s French quarter.
From Little India in the east end to Little Italy in the west, Toronto is famous for its neighbourhoods, and Rolande Smith said francophones want a section of the city to call their own.
Smith is the president of Toronto's French History Society. She made her comments standing in front of Sacré-Coeur church on Sherbourne Street.
Built in the 1930s, it's the first French church in the city, and in the future it could be in the middle of Toronto's own French quarter.
“That would anchor us,” Smith told CBC News. “That'd be an anchor for a lot of activities that are scattered here and there, and give the impression that there's really nothing in French.”
[. . .]
According to the last census, more than 50,000 Torontonians identified themselves as francophones.
I've blogged in the past about Franco-Ontarians. Broadly speaking, the population--while very sizable, even numbering in the tens of thousands in the Ontarian provincial capital--is substantially hit by assimilation.
Ontario's Franco-Ontarian community, amounting to perhaps a half-million people or 5% of the province's population, is the largest Francophone population in Canada outside of Québec, larger even than New Brunswick's Acadians. Unlike the Acadians of that Atlantic Canadian province, who mainly live in compact territories where they form a majority population and have a strong group identity, however, Franco-Ontarians represent a diverse group, including long-settled French Canadian populations in northern and eastern Ontario and large populations of more recent immigrants from around the Francophone world, and form minority populations almost everywhere. Partly as a result, language shift to English among Franco-Ontarians is quite high; in the northern Ontario city of Sudbury, where Francophones make up 28% of the total population and can claim access to a broad variety of governmental, educational and even media resources, the shift to English remains quite high, with only 64% of the current generation of Francophones passing on their language to their children. Even Vanier, a long-established Francophone community in Ottawa that has served as something of a cultural centre, is increasingly Anglophone.
Toronto's Francophone population does stand out, not least because it's probably growing. The important thing to note is that unlike the traditional Franco-Ontarian community that's the product of French Canadian migration west across the Ottawa River from Québec, Toronto's Francophone population is heterogenous, product of immigration from across the Francophone world--Europe, Africa, the Caribbean--as well as across Canada. I hear a reasonable amount of French spoken on Toronto's streets, but most of the people doing the speaking are of an immigrant background.
Most urban Francophone enclaves in English Canada, like Ottawa's Vanier and Winnipeg's Saint-Boniface, are pre-existing communities engulfed by an expanding city. Toronto's French neighbourhood would stand out in beign a creation de novo. To, such a French Quarter would stand out as unique among Toronto's ethnic neighbourhoods in that whereas the community was created by immigration from a single country or region--Portugal, Italy, South Asia--Toronto's French Quarter would represent Francophones from potentially dozens of different countries.
Can this project work? I think so. As noted above, there is a critical mass of Francophone institutions and--more importantly--people in that neighbourhood and arguably in Toronto as a whole, a geographic focus for Canada's other official language community in its largest city makes sense, and there definitely seems to be a desire by people from across Toronto's diverse Francophone community to create the neighbourhood. Why not?
A number of francophone groups in Toronto want to see a section of Carlton Street between Yonge and Parliament streets designated as the city’s French quarter.
From Little India in the east end to Little Italy in the west, Toronto is famous for its neighbourhoods, and Rolande Smith said francophones want a section of the city to call their own.
Smith is the president of Toronto's French History Society. She made her comments standing in front of Sacré-Coeur church on Sherbourne Street.
Built in the 1930s, it's the first French church in the city, and in the future it could be in the middle of Toronto's own French quarter.
“That would anchor us,” Smith told CBC News. “That'd be an anchor for a lot of activities that are scattered here and there, and give the impression that there's really nothing in French.”
[. . .]
According to the last census, more than 50,000 Torontonians identified themselves as francophones.
I've blogged in the past about Franco-Ontarians. Broadly speaking, the population--while very sizable, even numbering in the tens of thousands in the Ontarian provincial capital--is substantially hit by assimilation.
Ontario's Franco-Ontarian community, amounting to perhaps a half-million people or 5% of the province's population, is the largest Francophone population in Canada outside of Québec, larger even than New Brunswick's Acadians. Unlike the Acadians of that Atlantic Canadian province, who mainly live in compact territories where they form a majority population and have a strong group identity, however, Franco-Ontarians represent a diverse group, including long-settled French Canadian populations in northern and eastern Ontario and large populations of more recent immigrants from around the Francophone world, and form minority populations almost everywhere. Partly as a result, language shift to English among Franco-Ontarians is quite high; in the northern Ontario city of Sudbury, where Francophones make up 28% of the total population and can claim access to a broad variety of governmental, educational and even media resources, the shift to English remains quite high, with only 64% of the current generation of Francophones passing on their language to their children. Even Vanier, a long-established Francophone community in Ottawa that has served as something of a cultural centre, is increasingly Anglophone.
Toronto's Francophone population does stand out, not least because it's probably growing. The important thing to note is that unlike the traditional Franco-Ontarian community that's the product of French Canadian migration west across the Ottawa River from Québec, Toronto's Francophone population is heterogenous, product of immigration from across the Francophone world--Europe, Africa, the Caribbean--as well as across Canada. I hear a reasonable amount of French spoken on Toronto's streets, but most of the people doing the speaking are of an immigrant background.
Most urban Francophone enclaves in English Canada, like Ottawa's Vanier and Winnipeg's Saint-Boniface, are pre-existing communities engulfed by an expanding city. Toronto's French neighbourhood would stand out in beign a creation de novo. To, such a French Quarter would stand out as unique among Toronto's ethnic neighbourhoods in that whereas the community was created by immigration from a single country or region--Portugal, Italy, South Asia--Toronto's French Quarter would represent Francophones from potentially dozens of different countries.
Can this project work? I think so. As noted above, there is a critical mass of Francophone institutions and--more importantly--people in that neighbourhood and arguably in Toronto as a whole, a geographic focus for Canada's other official language community in its largest city makes sense, and there definitely seems to be a desire by people from across Toronto's diverse Francophone community to create the neighbourhood. Why not?