{"id":433,"date":"2013-03-05T20:02:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T01:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kmhs.ca\/?page_id=433"},"modified":"2020-12-17T21:34:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T02:34:05","slug":"kensingtons-ever-shifting-population","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kmhs.ca\/footnotes\/kensingtons-ever-shifting-population\/","title":{"rendered":"Kensington’s Ever-Shifting Population"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, the population of the market began to change. Jewish families who had moved to the area from the Ward now had the funds to move to larger plots of land in parts of the city that were newly becoming available in the north and west.[i]<\/a> The Jews were beginning to leave, but for some time the shops they had established remained.[ii]<\/a> In the post-WWII era, supermarkets were also beginning to change \u2013 the higher availability of previously hard-to-find items meant that the market\u2019s knack for specialty foods and ingredients was not as necessary. The remaining market merchants who did not move north and west with their customers altered their businesses accordingly, changing their shops to wholesale for restaurants in the area or going into entirely new lines of work.[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Kensington, 1939-1951 – Ronny Jaques, 1910-2008.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Frances Borg recalled this shift from her youth. Her father Salvatore Sanci opened a banana store in 1928. Known as Sanci\u2019s Tropical Foods<\/strong> at 66 Kensington Avenue, Sanci\u2019s was the first non-Jewish merchant in the market \u2013 he moved to Toronto from Sicily in 1914.[iv]<\/a> As his family\u2019s business moved into the wholesale market, and small businesses became obsolete, it was proposed to Borg and his family that they branch out from bananas and start receiving mangoes shipped in from Jamaica. He accepted this change, and spurred on by a growing Jamaican presence in the market and Toronto in general, his family stopped selling wholesale bananas altogether in 1962.[v]<\/a> This shift in both consumer and product is an important part of this moment in Kensington Market\u2019s history, as the Market would continuously experience these shifts and changes throughout the 20th<\/sup> century, and into the 21st<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

\"sanci's\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the 1930s, many of Kensington\u2019s residents worked on Spadina Avenue in garment factories, where unions were constantly organizing and re-organizing, resulting in a neighborhood that was in a continuous state of uproar.[vi]<\/a> The unrest of the 1930s was affected by the Great Depression, but also political conflict. Large protests against anti-Semitism in Germany were organized and moved through the area, and political films and rallies were held at the Strand at Spadina and Dundas. Groups like the United Jewish People\u2019s Order (UJPO) recruited and met in these spaces, along with the Jewish Women\u2019s Working League, which led protests against prices in butcher shops and milk prices, and won.[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hungarians in Kensington arrived in three waves. The first occurred in the 1920s and 30s, a group one Kensington native calls \u2018the old Hungarians.\u2019 The second wave was the displaced persons who left Hungary after WWII in the late 1930s, and the third wave was comprised of people who came to the neighborhood and city following the 1956 Revolution.[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n

From 1930 through the 1940s, the exclusively Jewish character of the market began to change, and what had once been a shtetl-like environment, providing Jewish residents with otherwise hard to find goods and services, began to evolve into a neighborhood for various recent Canadian immigrants finding their feet in a new nation. Kensington Market was fast becoming a multicultural neighborhood that provided a microcosmal space for Canada\u2019s developing identity as a cultural mosaic.<\/p>\n

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Back kitchen of a home at 77 Nassau Street, July 1943. Copyright City of Toronto Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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[i]<\/a> Myrvold, Walking Tour<\/em>, 15.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[ii]<\/a> Cochrane, Kensington,<\/em> 50.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[iii]<\/a>[iii] Ibid,<\/em> 50.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[iv]<\/a> \u201c(Kensington Alive) Virtual Tour.\u201d Accessed February 10th<\/sup>, 2012, http:\/\/www.ststephenshouse.com\/kensingtonalive\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[v]<\/a> Cochrane, Kensington,<\/em> 50.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[vi]<\/a> Ibid,<\/em> 59.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[vii]<\/a> Ibid,<\/em> 61.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[viii]<\/a> Ibid, <\/em>63.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, the population of the market began to change. Jewish families who had moved to the area from the Ward now … <\/p>\n

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