Parkdale toronto melinda7/7/2023 “The fact of it is that the primary impediment for these corporations increasing their profits is the ongoing tenancy of working-class people who live in Parkdale. “Gone are the days of the mom-and-pop slumlord, which was the dominant make-up of the rental housing market in Parkdale for years,” says Cole Webber, a legal aid worker with the Parkdale Community Legal Services (PCLS), a provincially-funded agency for free legal services (which was itself evicted from its long-time Parkdale offices last year). In a city famous as a landing pad for immigrants, many recently-arrived residents, often without either English or an understanding of Canadian legal protections around tenancy, simply pack up and leave. Those protesting, however, are the lucky ones. Photograph: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images So too have tenant protests and rent strikes, where slick corporate offices find themselves occupied by hundreds of angry tenants demanding redress.Ī proposal for a new 19-storey condo development, which prompted resident concern. Residents claim that threats, intimidation, rampant eviction notices and strategic neglect have become common. Huge international real estate investment firms have embedded themselves in Parkdale’s urban fabric, buying dozens of apartment towers and thousands of rental units. Outside, Queen Street bustled with an almost fairy-tale version of multicultural Toronto: Tibetan monks in flowing orange robes slipping into a flow of South Asian, Caribbean and African immigrants a mom-and-pop grocer sells roasted barley, a favourite Tibetan snack other restaurants offer roti, a Jamaican/Indian wrap that fuses the spicy flavours of both cultures.īut the lively streetscape here masks a threat to what could very well be the last island of diversity in a city swamped by the flood waters of global capital. As Nguyen spoke, runny-nosed toddlers fiddled with coloured blocks, while their parents, all recent immigrants, tried to focus on an English as a second language class. Parkdale, however, an inner-city neighbourhood just six kilometres west of downtown along Lake Ontario’s shore, has long been an outlier. Property values have soared beyond the most fevered speculators’ imagination, mostly relegating those representing Toronto’s vast swaths of difference to the suburbs. It really puts things into perspective.Toronto’s much-vaunted international brand – the poster-child for extreme diversity, a global social experiment done right – has become a faded myth in many of its inner-city neighbourhoods. You can't help but feel immersed in the unique culture Tibetans have brought to the neighbourhood. The Tibetan way of life is prominent in Parkdale these days - you can often see Buddhist monks strolling through the area, going through the same practices they would in their homeland. The 2006 census even revealed that over 75% of the Canadian Tibetan community lived in the city. The invasion forced many Tibetans to flee their homes and immigrate to Canada, specifically Toronto. The invasion led to a military conflict and decades of repression. However, in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invaded Tibet, claiming it as part of the People's Republic of China. Tibet was believed to be a de facto independent state in East Asia, known for possessing its own unique culture, language, and religion. The neighbourhood, which spans six blocks of Queen Street West, lives in the shadow of spots like Chinatown, Greektown, and Little Italy, but its history is just as important. You can spend years living in Toronto and not hear a peep about Little Tibet.
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