[URBAN NOTE] Torontoist on the birth of Greektown on the Danforth
David Wencer's Historicist feature looks at how Greek immigration transformed Danforth Avenue.
In spring of 1966, the once thriving commercial strip along the western portion of Danforth Avenue appeared to be struggling. “The area, universally referred to as ‘The Danforth,’ was the classic Canadian shopping strip of the Nineteen Forties and early Fifties,” reported the Globe and Mail that April. “[The district featured] local merchants in small stores, block after block of them, prospering on neighbourhood pedestrian traffic.” The opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway that February, however, gave local residents easier access to downtown shops, and meant the end of the streetcar service along Danforth, which had previously delivered shoppers to the front doors of east-end businesses. Danforth-based business owners told the Globe and Mail that the subway was “taking customers away from us,” and, fearing that the neighbourhood would go into decline, circulated a petition to reinstate regular surface transit along Danforth. Within a decade, however, the Danforth had reemerged as a popular commercial strip, but as one with a considerably different look and identity.
The decades after the Second World War saw an unprecedented rise in the number of European immigrants to Canada, and to Toronto specifically. In 1960, the Globe and Mail reported that close to 500,000 European immigrants had come to the Toronto area since the war, and that “the city of Toronto, stubbornly traditional, unquestionably British, unopposedly Protestant, shook itself after the chief force of the immigration wave was spent, [and] came to the startled realization that the newcomers make up almost one third of its total population.” Toronto had maintained a small population of Greek immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, estimated at a low four-digit figure prior to the 1940s. For Greece, the decades immediately following the war were marked by considerable political instability, and by 1950, Toronto’s Greek population was estimated at 5,000, rising to 12,500 in 1960.
The Toronto establishment soon noticed the city’s emerging cosmopolitan identity. In the 1960s, the mainstream Toronto press began highlighting the city’s newly prominent immigrant groups and reporting on some of the challenges and community supports (or lack thereof) that existed for the city’s changing population.
As part of a 1967 series sharing accounts of individual Toronto immigrants’ stories, the Telegram profiled Peter Skretas, who had emigrated from Thessaly at age 19, eight years earlier. Skretas had begun work in Toronto as a busboy, and then as a waiter at Barberian’s Steak House, all in the hopes of earning money to help support his family’s grocery store back home. Skretas, the Telegram reported, had managed to send $8,000 home in five years, but his plans soon changed. After learning the restaurant trade, Skretas opened a steak house of his own in Etobicoke, and helped bring two of his siblings to Canada, explaining to the Telegram that he now felt at home in Toronto and no longer planned to return to Greece.
Research by numerous writers indicates that Peter Skretas’ story represents a typical experience for many Greek immigrants in Toronto at this time. In a 1973 research paper, Konstantine Konstantinou observed that many of Toronto’s Greek immigrants in the 1960s were rural-born young men with limited English, and with a “plan of staying for a few years only.” Both Konstantinou and several Toronto journalists also noted the very high proportion of Greek immigrants who entered the restaurant industry. In his 1980 book, The Canadian Odyssey: The Greek Experience in Canada, Peter D. Chimbos notes that “an immigrant could enter the [restaurant] business with a small investment, no academic training, and little knowledge of the English or French language. In was an enterprise where the ambitious, talkative, and hospitable Greek had the opportunity to interact with his patrons, work hard to satisfy them, and become economically successful.”
In spring of 1966, the once thriving commercial strip along the western portion of Danforth Avenue appeared to be struggling. “The area, universally referred to as ‘The Danforth,’ was the classic Canadian shopping strip of the Nineteen Forties and early Fifties,” reported the Globe and Mail that April. “[The district featured] local merchants in small stores, block after block of them, prospering on neighbourhood pedestrian traffic.” The opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway that February, however, gave local residents easier access to downtown shops, and meant the end of the streetcar service along Danforth, which had previously delivered shoppers to the front doors of east-end businesses. Danforth-based business owners told the Globe and Mail that the subway was “taking customers away from us,” and, fearing that the neighbourhood would go into decline, circulated a petition to reinstate regular surface transit along Danforth. Within a decade, however, the Danforth had reemerged as a popular commercial strip, but as one with a considerably different look and identity.
The decades after the Second World War saw an unprecedented rise in the number of European immigrants to Canada, and to Toronto specifically. In 1960, the Globe and Mail reported that close to 500,000 European immigrants had come to the Toronto area since the war, and that “the city of Toronto, stubbornly traditional, unquestionably British, unopposedly Protestant, shook itself after the chief force of the immigration wave was spent, [and] came to the startled realization that the newcomers make up almost one third of its total population.” Toronto had maintained a small population of Greek immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, estimated at a low four-digit figure prior to the 1940s. For Greece, the decades immediately following the war were marked by considerable political instability, and by 1950, Toronto’s Greek population was estimated at 5,000, rising to 12,500 in 1960.
The Toronto establishment soon noticed the city’s emerging cosmopolitan identity. In the 1960s, the mainstream Toronto press began highlighting the city’s newly prominent immigrant groups and reporting on some of the challenges and community supports (or lack thereof) that existed for the city’s changing population.
As part of a 1967 series sharing accounts of individual Toronto immigrants’ stories, the Telegram profiled Peter Skretas, who had emigrated from Thessaly at age 19, eight years earlier. Skretas had begun work in Toronto as a busboy, and then as a waiter at Barberian’s Steak House, all in the hopes of earning money to help support his family’s grocery store back home. Skretas, the Telegram reported, had managed to send $8,000 home in five years, but his plans soon changed. After learning the restaurant trade, Skretas opened a steak house of his own in Etobicoke, and helped bring two of his siblings to Canada, explaining to the Telegram that he now felt at home in Toronto and no longer planned to return to Greece.
Research by numerous writers indicates that Peter Skretas’ story represents a typical experience for many Greek immigrants in Toronto at this time. In a 1973 research paper, Konstantine Konstantinou observed that many of Toronto’s Greek immigrants in the 1960s were rural-born young men with limited English, and with a “plan of staying for a few years only.” Both Konstantinou and several Toronto journalists also noted the very high proportion of Greek immigrants who entered the restaurant industry. In his 1980 book, The Canadian Odyssey: The Greek Experience in Canada, Peter D. Chimbos notes that “an immigrant could enter the [restaurant] business with a small investment, no academic training, and little knowledge of the English or French language. In was an enterprise where the ambitious, talkative, and hospitable Greek had the opportunity to interact with his patrons, work hard to satisfy them, and become economically successful.”