Welcome to General Eclectic: Oral Histories from Kensington Market.

Kensington Market is a richly diverse and deeply beloved neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, Canada.

Over the last century, the Market has been home to successive waves of immigrants, starting with Eastern Europeans in the early 1900s. Since then, Italians, Portugese, Caribbeans, and Southeast Asians, amung many others, have come to live and work in the Market. Affordable rent has also attracted artists, students, activists, musicians, punks, and entrepreneurs.

The Market continues to attract new Canadians and non-conformists, and the neighbourhood has a hard earned reputation for supporting small businesses, artists, and community activism.

The Kensington Market Historical Society was estabilished in 2012 to gather, study, preserve, and disseminate information pertaining to the history of this unique neighbourhood. An ongoing oral history project was launched in 2013 to record interviews with current and former residents of the Market, to collect testimonies and personal histories. The Market has always had a reputation for being eclectic; Old World charm mixed in with tolerant and progressive attitudes.

General Eclectic is an online exhibition of audio excerpts from these oral history interviews, featuring current and former residents of Kensington Market. To start, click on an audio piece from the Main menu, or explore the Themes menu above.